Economic development over the past two centuries has taken most of humanity from lives that were brutal, ignorant and short, to personal health and security, material comfort and knowledge that were unknown to the elites of the wealthiest and most powerful societies in earlier times.

A reduction in emissions matters more than what a country pays for it.

It crosses my mind that our generation may leave problems that are simply too hard for human society in the generations that follow. The structures that separate civilisation from disorder are thin and fragile. (But) I am not gloomy by nature so don't presume that the global community will fail the young people.

Carbon capture and storage, its commercial development.. is going to be the key to the future of coal. If it is successful commercially, then the Australian coal sector will be a center of prosperity and growth; if it's not successful then it won't be. I think in the long run it's as simple as that.

The international equity question arises from the costs of climate change itself and mitigation varying greatly across countries. It is affected by the historical responsibility for current greenhouse gas emissions, which countries which were not responsible for what's in the atmosphere now think are very important. Currently rich countries don't think those issues are very important.

The climate change problem is at its heart an ethical problem. It's a problem of income distribution and it's a problem of income distribution with dimensions that we don't usually think about very much.

It is a simple fact of life on earth that there is going to be no successful mitigation of the climate change problem without a truly global effort. All developing companies or all major developing countries have to be part of that and accept substantial constraints on greenhouse gas emissions.