The Garnaut draft report raises innumerable questions about any trading scheme to reduce CO2 emissions, let alone one starting in 2010. First, does our former ambassador to China seriously believe that an Australian emissions trading scheme would help persuade China to adopt an emission reductions policy?
Second, does he have any idea when his ''enormously important'' carbon capture might become a realistic proposition?
Third, while acknowledging ''some uncertainty'' about the science, has he taken into account the recent large increase in scientists questioning the basic thesis, including the 31,000 who signed a petition of denial in the United States?
Fourth, do his apocalyptic projections of the effects on Australian icons of global warming take any account of their survival from past wide variations in temperatures or the fact that average temperatures have not increased since 1998?
Fifth, is he aware that there is no correlation between variations in global temperature and Australian rainfall?
Sixth, as an economist does he seriously believe that a projected reduction of GDP of 4.8 per cent by 2100 (the equivalent of only about one year's GDP) unless emissions are reduced can be of serious concern now let alone to the wealthy living then?
These and many other important questions need to be answered before any responsible government adopts a scheme of reducing emissions.
Des Moore, director, Institute for Private Enterprise, South Yarra, Victoria
From the various reports over the last year (Garnaut, Stern) it is clear that the world environment is in serious danger.
Australia is one of the first to feel serious effects such as water shortages, excessive heat, and economic and health problems resulting. Ross Garnaut thinks that ''there is a risk that Australia is not bold enough to embrace the type of scheme outlined by this review''.
I think we have no choice. If we want future, and even present generations, to survive, we have to pursue all renewable energies.
Clean coal will take too long. We have to embrace clean-energy technologies now. We cannot worry about short-term cost to the economy, it will cost more in future if we don't do it.
During World War II many nations had rationing, and all survived. This is war. We must unite against our common enemy: global warming.
M. Pietersen, Kambah Professor Ross Garnaut, in his draft climate report, says, ''Depopulation will be under way.'' (''Change now or else'',July 5, pB1).
This comment comes after his comment that, by the end of the century, there will be no irrigated agriculture in the Murray Darling Basin.
It comes, however, just before his warning that Queensland will have 4000 more heat-related deaths and that the rise in temperatures will see the end of snow-based tourism.
Do we infer that depopulation will occur in the Murray-Darling Basin, in Queensland, in the snow regions, or for all Australia? Whichever he means, it runs contrary to the current Government's population-expansionist policies which include a huge increase in immigration and a boost to the baby bonus.
May I therefore suggest that the primary adaptive strategy to global warming that we adopt is one of population stabilisation and then reduction?
Jenny Goldie, president, Canberra region branch Sustainable Population Australia Inc, Michelago NSW I have heard that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is going to ''tackle climate change''.
It's a great challenge, but surely around the year 1000 King Knut, or Canute, showed his courtiers that even he could not control the tides?
Malcolm Miller, Lyneham
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