Thinktanks and investor groups want economic implications examined as Lancet open letter attacks dismissal of IPCC report

Progressive thinktanks and investor groups want the Australian government to model the economic effects climate change will have on Australia under 1.5C and 2C warming scenarios.

This week the new Treasury secretary, Phil Gaetjens, told a Senate estimates hearing the department had done no modelling that compared the difference in economic impacts of 1.5C of warming and 2C.

“We do not do modelling on that,” Gaetjens said. “There wouldn’t be any information in a quantitative sense that I could provide at the moment.”

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At the same time, in an open letter in the health journal the Lancet, 22 prominent scientists and health professionals have criticised the Australian government for dismissing the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent 1.5C report.

“The Australian government’s contemptuous dismissal of the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the panel’s recommendation to dramatically reduce coal power by 2050, is unacceptable,” the letter, published Thursday, states.

Australian scientists and health professionals were dismayed at the government’s “ongoing stance to disregard the consensus of the world’s leading climate scientists” as well as “any idea of duty of care regarding the future wellbeing of Australians and our immediate neighbours”, the letter said.

The authors include Prof Fiona Stanley and Nobel laureates Peter Doherty and Tilman Ruff.

They say Australia is more exposed to the impacts of climate change than other OECD countries and the government “must commit immediately to embrace strategies of energy generation that do not put more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”.

One of the letter’s authors, Prof Peter Sainsbury, said: “We were just horrified by the Australian government’s response to the report and that’s why we chose to write the letter.

“Everyone who has been paying attention over the last 25 years knows climate change is an environmental issue but it is also a health issue.

“The health implications, which are not well recognised, will be catastrophic.”

Environment Minister Melissa Price said it was “absolutely false” to say the government had dismissed the findings of the IPCC report.

“We have consistently stated that the IPCC is a trusted source of scientific advice that we will continue to take into account on climate policy,” she said.

“The content of the report has been misrepresented. It is also imperative to understand this report makes no recommendations and is not policy prescriptive.”

Emma Herd, the chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change, who was one of the voices calling for economic modelling comparing 1.5C warming impacts to 2C impacts, said similar work was already being done in other jurisdictions, including by the Bank of England, and by China, New Zealand and many European jurisdictions.

“Increasingly we’re seeing financial regulators in many jurisdictions are very active in looking at the economic implications of climate change,” she said.

Herd said while the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission were actively looking at the potential impacts on entities they regulated, this work was not on an economy-wide scale.

“Given the release of the 1.5-degree report, we would think this would be an area where Treasury would have a role to play,” she said.

Richie Merzian, the director of the Australia Institute’s climate and energy program, said Treasury had modelled the impacts of different emissions reductions targets on Australia’s economy, but modelling of what the country would look like under different scenarios was lacking.

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“The Treasury has played a useful role in modelling the impact to the Australian economy of different climate action scenarios,” he said. “It has the capability of modelling the economic impacts of Australia under a 1.5, 2 or 3-degree world. All it’s missing is the political instruction from the government to do so.”

In comments to Fairfax Media the environment minister, Melissa Price, said it was “absolutely false” to suggest the government had dismissed the IPCC’s findings.

“We have consistently stated that the IPCC is a trusted source of scientific advice that we will continue to take into account on climate policy,” Price said.

Guardian Australia approached Price and the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, for comment.