The first step towards Australia's battle plan against climate change and the implementation of a carbon trading scheme took it's first tentitive step on Friday 4th July 2008 with the release of The Climate Change Review. Compiled by Professor Ross Garnaut, the Government's climate change advisor, the report encourages, among other things, strong recommendations on reducing emissions and proposes a models for a carbon trading scheme based on the relatively successful EU model. 

We won't go too much into detail about it here because frankly, the report is simply too big to be able to cleanly breakdown many of it's suggestions. In addition, as it is also a report to which the government will respond to, it means there will inevitably be more to-ing and fro-ing before clear cut goals become concrete. If you are keen to read the 600 plus pages, 15.5MB final report as well as any of the predecessor draft reports, they can be downloaded from the Garnaut Review website.

Perhaps the best way to keep abreast of this project is by joining the Garnaut Review Mailing List. It appears to be a fortnightly email offering report updates, media access avenues and, perhaps most importantly, forums hosted by Mr Garnaut covering various aspects of the report. aToMik Green attended the Melbourne forum on Wednesday 9th July 2008 and thoroughly recommends anyone who has an interest in this project to attend Mr Garnaut's forums. 

November 2010

The Australian Government commissioned Ross Garnaut to provide an updated version of his 2008 Climate Change Review. This updated version is expected to be released over a series of papers early 2011, with a final report presented by 31st May 2011. This report will be covering a range of subjects such as climate change science and impacts, emissions trends, carbon pricing, technology, land and the electricity sector. Watch this space for more updates.