Article from: The Courier-Mail, By Greg Stolz | October 31, 2008
- Flannery pessimistic about ETS
- Predicts catastrophe within a decade
- Impact will be unexpected
AN emissions trading scheme will not be enough to stop a potential climatic catastrophe on the same scale as the global financial crisis within 10 years, Australian scientist Tim Flannery has warned.
Dr Flannery told an international carbon market conference on the Gold Coast yesterday that emissions trading schemes alone could not save the planet in time.
The 2007 Australian of the Year said he had a “sense of foreboding” about what lay ahead if more was not done to tackle climate change.
“I suspect that within the next decade, we are likely to see some dramatic climate shift a bit like we’ve seen in our financial systems over the last few months,” he told the Carbon Market Expo Australasia conference.
“It will be swift and it will have many unintended consequences. The problem is a lot closer than we imagined.”
Dr Flannery said the catastrophe could be a large-scale methane release which would cook the planet or major ice sheet destabilisation.
He had not seen the Rudd Government’s economic modelling for the proposed emissions trading scheme but said critics should look to Europe as a guide.
“There has been no impact in Europe and there is likely to be a small impact if any in Australia in my view,” he said.
One of the best ways to slow climate change was to harness the planet’s huge natural power to suck carbon pollution out of the atmosphere, he said