Professor McKibbin’s address “Designing Realistic Climate Policy”
Department of Economics – Melbourne Institute Public Policy Lecture
Professor Warwick McKibbin at the Department of Economics - Melbourne Institute Public Policy Lecture
On 26 August Professor Warwick McKibbin, of the Lowy Institute for International Policy, presented the Department of Economics – Melbourne Institute Public Policy Lecture. Close to 250 people visited the University’s Parkville Campus to hear Professor McKibbin’s address and the spirited Q&A that followed.
Lecture Abstract:
The lack of a national or global policy on climate change is having real economic consequences as long term investment in energy generation and energy using technologies have stalled. The outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2010 predictably disappointed many but the Copenhagen Accord does provide an opportunity to reconsider sensible and realistic national climate policy and to reconsider the global climate policy architecture.
Professor Warwick McKibbin will outline the key features that are needed in a climate change framework beyond Kyoto. In a large number of published papers McKibbin and Wilcoxen have advocated a national and global policy framework that addresses many of the shortcomings of the current policy frameworks. The fundamental focus has to be on long run credibility of targets and short run cost management. This is a common problem facing central banks and a key area from which we can learn from historical experience.
This lecture will present an approach to climate change policy that does not require “starting again” in either the international negotiations or the national policy design but it does require some key changes to the existing policy to build a political consensus to take action.
About the speaker:
Warwick McKibbin is Professor and Director of the ANU Research School of Economics and Adjunct Professor in the Australian Centre for Economic Research in Health at the Australian National University. He is also a Professorial Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney; a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C where he is co-Director of the Climate and Energy Economics Project; and President of McKibbin Software Group. He is a member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia. He recently served as a member of the Australian Prime Ministers Science, Engineering and innovation Council and on the Australian Prime Minister’s Taskforce on Uranium Mining Processing and Nuclear Energy in Australia.
Professor McKibbin received his BCom (Honours 1) and University Medal from University of NSW (1980) and his AM (1984) and a PhD (1986) from Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and was awarded the Centenary medal in 2003 “For Service to Australian Society through Economic Policy and Tertiary Education”.
Professor McKibbin is internationally renowned for his contributions to global economic modeling. He has published more that 200 academic papers as well as being a regular commentator in the popular press. He has authored and edited 4 books including Global Linkages: Macroeconomic Interdependence and Cooperation in the World Economy, written with Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University and Climate Change Policy after Kyoto: A Blueprint for a Realistic Approach, with Professor Peter Wilcoxen of Syracuse University. He has been a consultant for many international agencies and a range of governments on issues of macroeconomic policy, international trade and finance, greenhouse policy issues, global demographic change and the economic cost of pandemics.
The crowd listens to the Department of Economics - Melbourne Institute Public Policy Lecture
Professor Nilss Olekalns, Professor Warwick McKibbin and Professor Mark Wooden
