SEMINAR: Sustainability, displacement and a global agreement: Issues for climate change law and policy in Australia and around the world

There is a gap between emissions reduction targets and timeframes which science tells us are required to deal with climate change and those which are proposed in legislation or treaties. As the International Alliance of Research Universities states, the conclusion from both the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and later analyses is simple: immediate and dramatic emissions reductions of all greenhouse gases are needed if the rise in global temperatures is to be contained to 2° C above pre-industrial levels. It is this challenge with which climate change laws and policy, in Australia and around the world, must deal.

After outlining the climate change problem, this seminar examines the international climate change legal and policy framework, the outcomes from the Copenhagen climate change conference, and prospects for Cancun in December. It also looks at Australian climate change policy action and such action in other jurisdictions. There are a number of policy instruments available to governments to mitigate climate change; particular attention will be paid to carbon taxes (versus emissions trading schemes) which could be implemented at both the national and international levels.

Following an examination of what has been done to address the climate change problem, this seminar asks what should be done about climate change. Ethical concepts and values are at the heart of the international climate change regime, and such concepts and values will be illuminated through a discussion of climate change displacement and a UWA-led proposal for a climate change displacement convention.

The seminar concludes with the question of how to reconcile, in Australia and the world, expectations of economic growth with a desire for a sustainable future. How to make dramatic reductions in energy use without reducing perceived quality of life ('a challenge that involves wrestling with human nature as well as physics')? How to gain agreement to raising the cost of continuing to live as we do now?