Climate adviser takes aim at Australia emissions plan

Climate change economist Ross Garnaut, who authored a landmark report that set the stage for last Monday's 'white paper', endorsed the government's overall target of a minimum five percent emissions cut from 2000 levels by 2020.

However, in an article published by The Sydney Morning Herald, he criticized "large transfers from the general community to particular interests and to fiscal and environmental risks" that he said details in the government's new policy implied.

Specifically, he said there was "no public policy justification" for an anticipated A$3.9 billion (US$2.7 billion) in payments to electricity generators for future loss of asset value.

"Never in the history of Australian public finance has so much been given without public policy purpose, by so many, to so few," he wrote, paraphrasing a famous World War two speech by then British leader Winston Churchill.

Garnaut also criticized Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government for setting a maximum cut in emissions by 2020 at 15 percent from 2000 levels instead of the 25 percent recommended.

With U.S. president-elect Barack Obama due to take office next month, Garnaut said there remained a chance that more ambitious global targets could be achieved at next year's U.N. meeting on climate change in Copenhagen, he said.

Garnaut also criticized a five-year price cap placed on emissions permits as a "large risk to the public finances."

($A1=$US0.69)

(Editing by David Fox)