Ross Garnaut

Professor Ross Garnaut AC is a Professor Emeritus at The Australian National University and a Professor Emeritus in Economics at The University of Melbourne. His latest book Let’s Tax Carbon: And Other Ideas for a Better Australia was published in October 2024.

Ross's recent articles

Garnaut: The renewables boom within our reach

Garnaut: The renewables boom within our reach

Donald Trump might be a speed hump on the road to net zero, but the business and climate case for renewables leaves Australia in the box seat to capitalise.

Let’s tax carbon: Why the time is right for a second shot at carbon pricing

Let’s tax carbon: Why the time is right for a second shot at carbon pricing

Australia now has a government and parliament wanting timely transition to net zero. We have a government and parliament wanting to build Australia as the renewable energy superpower of the zero-carbon world economy. For the time being, we have favourable international settings for using our opportunity.

Australia: Made for free trade and a tax on rent

Australia: Made for free trade and a tax on rent

There is no more important issue in Australian taxation reform than replacing current arrangements by efficient mineral rent taxation. That requires large analytic effort and effective political leadership. Success would bring high rewards to the Australian polity, and I expect electoral rewards to the Government that is seen as being responsible for a good outcome.

Australia could fall apart under climate change. But theres a way to avoidit (The Conversation, 06 November 2019)

Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2C, and as close as possible to 1.5C.The bad news is that four years on the best we can hope for is holding global increases to about 1.75C. We can only do that if the world moves decisively towards zero net emissions by the middle of the century.

ROSS GARNAUT. Where Australia's at 10 years after climate change review. (AFR 8.10.2018)

Energy costs will be lower if there is more investment in renewables capacity.

The future of Chinese economic growth

At any level of development in any country, but especially from upper-middle incomes, growth momentum can be broken by adverse developments of several kinds.

ROSS GARNAUT. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Part 2.

The Challenge of Globalisation. This is the second of a two-part series of extracts from an address which Professor Ross Garnaut gave to the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney, 7 September 2016.The full text of his address can be found on his website. PART 2. RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALISATION. Democratic capitalisms return to success depends on reconciling concerns for ordinary citizens standards of living with the demands of globalisation. A global economy would work better with global governance. However, there is little tolerance for international governance in contemporary democratic polities. There are some real...

ROSS GARNAUT. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Part 1.

The Challenge of Globalisation. I will be posting in two parts, extracts from an address which Professor Ross Garnaut gave to the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney, 7 September 2016. the full text of his address can be found on his website: https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/rossgarnaut/files/2015/12/Garnaut_CapitalismSocialismDemocracy_070916_3-2ei70mk.pdf PART 1.THE PROBLEMS WE FACE WITH GLOBALISATION In the twenty first century, modern economic growth is raising incomes in the new participantsmost of the worlds peoplemost emphatically in China and other countries which have passed the turning point in economic development. At the same time, it is placing downward pressure on living standards...

ROSS GARNAUT. The economics of the future energy system.

How can we provide a high degree of energy security in Australia at the lowest possible cost, while contributing our fair share to the global effort to contain the costs of climate change? I take as my starting point Prime Minister Turnbulls admonition that we put ideology aside as we seek answers to this question.

ROSS GARNAUT. China's new normal inches on.

China is undergoing profound changes in its economic policy and structure. These changes represent a new model of Chinese economic growth. The recent Five Year Plan (FYP) is an evolutionary document. Building on earlier official statements on the new model of growth, it provides the most elaborate statement to date on the models content and implementation.

Ross Garnaut. Australian Climate Change Policy

Policy Series I once called climate change policy diabolical, but with a saving grace (Garnaut 2008). It is diabolical because of the overlapping of four complex issues. While there is high scientific confidence that human action causes warming and that, beyond some limit, warming damages many aspects of human life, perhaps catastrophically, there is uncertainty about the precise consequences. The costs of effective action come now and the benefits much later. Avoidance of dangerous outcomes requires parallel action in all of the larger countries. And effective action is politically difficult because it confronts the interests of large corporations which...

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