Probe carbon claims: Garnaut

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Professor Ross Garnaut has called on Australia’s competition watchdog to thoroughly investigate claims that some Australian businesses have been exaggerating the impact of emissions trading on their operations.

The Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Climate Justice Program have submitted a 200-page brief for the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission comparing what they say are inconsistencies between claims made by some Australian companies to political leaders and those made to investors.

The companies named by the ACF and ACJP are Boral, BlueScope Steel, Caltex Australia, Rio Tinto, Woodside Petroleum and Xstrata.

Professor Garnaut, who the Government commissioned to compile a review into emissions trading in Australia, said the ACCC should pick up the investigation immediately.

“If it is true that some Australian business leaders have been saying something to government in the political debate and contradictory things to their investors then this is a very serious problem for Australian business,” he said. “If allegations have been made that that has happened then that needs to be investigated.”

Professor Garnaut also took aim at new-found climate change sceptic Senator Steve Fielding saying he had also spoken to respected atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen, who Senator Fielding met with on a recent trip to the US, and discounted his opinion that the global warming effect of carbon dioxide is overestimated.

“I would have been delighted if there were 10 or 20 or better still 100 of Richard Lindzens around the world but unfortunately he’s a one off,” Professor Garnaut said. “It would be imprudent beyond the normal limits of irrationality to grab one dissenting view among the serious climate scientists and say `I am going to believe that and not to believe the views of all of Australia’s credentialed climate scientists’.”

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