Ross Garnaut’s Superpower follow-up tells a story of promise but also of peril

‘Ours is the developed country that will be most damaged by climate change,’ Prof Ross Garnaut writes in The Superpower Transformation. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

In his landmark 2019 book Superpower, Ross Garnaut, an economist prominent since the Hawke government years, opened with a projection of Australia’s future that seemed a tad optimistic at the time.

After touring the then desiccated Murray-Darling Basin, Garnaut hailed the tumbling prices for renewable energy as offering a feasible path to cut carbon emissions and halt climate change without stalling the economy.