The political economy of climate change

Abstract

Late one day last month, the Federal Government posted on its website a report on the science of climate change which it had commissioned from Professor Will Steffen of the ANU.2 The purpose of the report was to provide a review of developments in climate science since the publication of the IPCC’s Third Assessment Report in 2001. The fourth report is now in draft form. The Steffen report concluded that the upper estimate for global warming made by the IPCC, a global average temperature rise of between 1.4º and 5.8º C by the end of this century, now appears more likely to be reached or exceeded, and that observational evidence supporting the existence of climate change has grown even stronger in the five years since the Third Assessment Report. Among the indicators of a warming planet, Professor Steffen naturally included an assessment of the latest evidence of sea-level rise which, he wrote, has since 1993 risen to about 3mm per year.