“While an effective response to the challenge would play out over many decades it must take shape and be in place over the next few years,” Garnaut said.

“ Without early and strong action some time before 2020 we will realise that we’ve indelibly surrendered to forces that have moved beyond our control.”

He also says that the most inappropriate response would be to delude ourselves, taking small steps that create an appearance of action but which do not solve the problem. Such an approach would risk the integrity of our market economy and political processes to no good effect:

“We will delude ourselves if we think that scientific uncertainties are cause for delay. Delaying now will eliminate attractive lower cost options,” Garnaut said.

“Delaying now is not postponing a decision, it’s making a decision; to delay is deliberately to choose to avoid effective steps to reduce the risks of climate change to acceptable levels.”

Professor Garnaut suggests that Australia is in as good a position as we could possibly be to adopt the needed policy changes.

He believes the economy has never been stronger – a result partly of the internationally-oriented market reforms adopted by the Hawke/Keating or Howard/Costello governments, and partly because of the Asian economic boom, which has seen prices paid for Australian exports reach record levels.

But the Asian economic boom is also the cause of the ‘sharp immediacy’ of the climate change problem.

As Western countries, like Australia, have become richer, particularly since World War II, we have seen greenhouse gas levels increase.

Now, as the booming economies of Asia seek to copy the rise in living standards that we have enjoyed, greenhouse gas emissions are ‘going through the roof’.

There is no chance that these countries will give up their desire to raise their living standards to what we enjoy. The end of prosperity in those countries would soon impact on ours.

The solutions to the climate change challenge must be found in removing the links between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions.

That is, we must force our economic activity to become less polluting, so that we can enjoy its benefits without the ‘downside’ of an uninhabitable planet.

That is why Professor Garnaut advocates a ‘cap & trade’ emissions scheme, whereby those who pollute will pay, and those who develop production systems that do not pollute will prosper.