Climate change with Nicki Hutley from Deloitte Access Economics

<p>In an Australian <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-06/are-economists-understating-or-overstating-climate-change-cost/11929098" target="_blank">ABC News story</a> in early February, Deloitte Access Economics Partner <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/profiles/nicki-hutley.html" target="_blank">Nicki Hutley</a> referred to the potential cost of climate change as “astronomical”. In this episode, <i>Economics Explained</i> host Gene Tunny chats with Nicki about the cost of action compared with the cost of inaction on climate change. </p><p>Use these (approximate) timestamps to jump right to the highlights:</p><ul><li>1:10 – Nicki describes why the costs of unmitigated climate change would be "astronomical"</li><li>4:40 – reference to <a href="http://australianbusinessroundtable.com.au/assets/documents/ABR_building-resilience-in-our-states-and-territories.pdf" target="_blank">Deloitte report for Australian Business Roundtable</a> finding cost of extreme weather events in Australia will be $40 billion per year by 2050</li><li>8:00 – further discussion of cost of inaction, including a reference to <a href="https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/economics/articles/great-barrier-reef.html" target="_blank">Deloitte’s report on the value of the Great Barrier Reef</a></li><li>10:30 – what needs to be done to avert catastrophic climate change (i.e. need to transition away from using fossil fuels) and the distinction between mitigation and adaptation</li><li>15:20 – current international agreements/measures won’t reduce emissions enough</li><li>16:00 – discussion of the inadequacy of Australian state government aspirational targets for renewable energy in the absence of a carbon price/emissions trading scheme or carbon tax</li><li>21:00 – Nicki argues that, due to the lack of a carbon price, we are not encouraging sufficient investment in renewables or in R&D – reference to blue and green hydrogen (check out <a href="https://www.woodside.com.au/innovation/hydrogen" target="_blank">Woodside’s website</a> for