6 Quotes by Ross Garnaut

There is a chasm between a world that quickly breaks the link between modern economic growth and carbon emissions, and a world that fails to do so. The side of the chasm we are now on is a dangerous place. It would be reckless beyond the normal human irrationality for us to stay where we are.

Economic development over the past two centuries has taken most of humanity from lives that were brutal, ignorant and short, to personal health and security, material comfort and knowledge that were unknown to the elites of the wealthiest and most powerful societies in earlier times.

The climate change problem is at its heart an ethical problem. It’s a problem of income distribution and it’s a problem of income distribution with dimensions that we don’t usually think about very much.

I see myself as a climate change skeptic and a skeptic looks at the evidence and bases conclusions on the evidence rather than on belief. To hold the view that this is not an issue that you need to do something about, to hold the view that it’s all a furphy takes belief.

It is a simple fact of life on earth that there is going to be no successful mitigation of the climate change problem without a truly global effort. All developing companies or all major developing countries have to be part of that and accept substantial constraints on greenhouse gas emissions.

A reduction in emissions matters more than what a country pays for it.