If any in the audience were expecting Ross Garnaut to be bitter about the Federal Government's inadequate response to his September 2008 Review recommendations, they were wrong.
Speaking on Monday night at ANU, it was clear Garnaut remains resolutely glass-half-full. He offered a high degree of patience and equanimity.
He is optimistic about the cumulative positive public impact of his Review. Listening closely to his graceful words, there were also steely messages.
Garnaut noted that climate change policy involves taking rational decisions under conditions of uncertainty and the risk of bad extreme outcomes. He is pleased that his Review's target assumptions — aiming for a 450 ppm CO2-e world 'in which Australia plays its full proportionate part', by targeting a 25 per cent emissions reduction on 1990 levels by 2020, and reductions of 60 per cent or upwards by 2050 — have become part of the Australian electorate's common understanding of what must be done.
He suggests that a 450 ppm global target is the best the world can aim for now, as it will certainly be overshot for several years. He is glad that both Government and Opposition now accept the same 25 per cent 2020 target, though they differ on how to get there.
Garnaut regretted that he had during 2008 displeased some of Australia's top climate scientists by canvassing, in an earlier version of the Review, a reduced 2020 emissions target.
He had expected old-industry vested interests to attack the Review, but hoped that introducing it over several months would help build public momentum for reform. Unfortunately, the political impact of his work was not yet strong enough to prevail over 'the congenial environment in Australia for rent-seeking behaviour by established businesses'. He deplored the success of 'unprincipled' carbon protectionism in securing massive compensation under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme — 'the ugliest money politics we have seen for a generation'.
Yet, he argued, it is important to pass the CPRS in its present diluted form, even if it is weakened further as the price of securing Opposition support: Australia must make a start on reform. He criticised environmentalists who oppose the CPRS on grounds that it locks in under-achievement. The Greens are allowing 'the best to be the enemy of the good, and the friend of the bad' (an allusion to the denialism now rampant in the National Party).
Garnaut suggested that support for