THE longer Australian governments hold off from investing in renewable energies the more it will cost financially and environmentally, Catholic Earthcare Australia executive officer Col Brown said last week.
Mr Brown spoke to The Catholic Leader after the release of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in the UK, that said the world faced catastrophic climate change unless urgent action was taken to tackle global warming.
The report said change must be addressed immediately to avoid possible economic and planetary catastrophe.
Acting now would save about US$2.5 trillion (A$3.26 trillion) compared with doing nothing.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair described the Stern report as the “most important” he had received.
The report’s author, British Government Economic Service head and former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern, said the Kyoto Protocol should be seen as a first step towards global emissions trading.
Australia and the US have refused to ratify the agreement.
“This is a golden opportunity in the light of these reports to seize the opportunity for renewable energy,” Mr Brown said.
He said Australian governments were not doing enough to prevent climate change and all governments needed to invest more in clean, green energies.
In Parliament on October 31, Prime Minister John Howard strongly defended his refusal to ratify the Kyoto agreement that set targets for reducing emissions.
