Mr Howard today said he looked forward to discussing climate issues with Sir Nicholas when they met. He said Sir Nicholas favoured clean coal technology and the Australian government had seed funded projects to a value of $3 billion for clean coal and renewables technology.
“I also understand he is in favour of nuclear power making a contribution to solving the problems of climate change,” Mr Howard told the Nine Network. “I will be interested to meet him and hear what he has got to say. He has got a contribution to make to this debate as have many experts.”
In an interview with The Australian during his whistlestop Sydney visit, which included a lecture to the Lowy Institute, Sir Nicholas was optimistic that countries such as Australia could protect their key energy export markets and export the technology by driving cost-effective storage of emissions from coal.
Sir Nicholas made global headlines last year following the release of his report for the British Government, which estimated that the cost of inaction on addressing climate change could be up to 20 times greater than the costs of early action estimated at about 1 per cent of global wealth.
He warned that failure to act on climate change now could cause an economic downturn to rival the great depression.
Sir Nicholas will meet with John Howard today in Canberra, along with Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett before flying to New Zealand tomorrow.
Mr Howard said Sir Nicholas also factored in nuclear power although that was opposed by Labor and the Greens.
“We will factor it in and when it becomes economic we should use nuclear power as a response to the problem of climate change,” he said.
“Stern is very much in favour of clean coal technology. Well, we have been talking about and investing in and supporting clean coal technology.”
Mr Howard said Australia had an agreement with countries like China, Japan, India and the US through the AP6, a grouping of regional nations, to progress the attack on climate change through a greater use of clean coal.
“I have signed a separate agreement with the premier of China to have a clean coal technology partnership between Australia and China,” he said.
“To that extent, what Sir Nicholas Stern is saying is something that we have been doing for some time.”
Sir Nicholas told The Australian yesterday that was ideally placed to lead the world in the development of clean coal technology as a priority response to climate change, former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said yesterday.
"Coal is going to be used," he said. "The challenge is to use it as cleanly as possible. If people can't find a way to use coal cleanly then I think the market for coal should decline, but I'm more optimistic than that."
Following its release last year, the Stern report was criticised by some economists as overstating the costs of climate change by undervaluing the discounting of costs in the future.
While defending his report yesterday, Sir Nicholas welcomed debate on the ethical economics of determining what sort of costs and legacies should be left to future generations.
He said there was still much uncertainty in the understanding of the potential impacts and costs of climate change, requiring more research into specific regional impacts as well as better understanding of how they might adapt to higher temperatures.
"Any kind of policy making like this is informed judgment," he said. "The different studies are different pieces of evidence to inform our judgment."
