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Turning around emissions growth this decade and then cutting greenhouse pollution by 80 per cent by 2050 – the target announced by the Gillard government yesterday – would put Australia on the trajectory the world needs to take to avoid the catastrophic consequences of four degrees warming this century, leading climate scientists said yesterday.

But they warned that the next few years would be critical and that the planet’s systems were poised on the brink of a man-made climate shock equivalent to the most devastating shifts nature had ever delivered on human civilization.

”As a scientific community we have said we have to look at the end game, which is to decarbonise economies – especially industrialized ones – by mid-century,” ANU Climate Change Institute executive director Will Steffen, said. Advertisement: Story continues below

”That allows some space for the developing world to bring its people out of poverty. So the 80 per cent target by 2050 is sending a strong signal in that direction,” Professor Steffen said.

He was hopeful the momentum of such a target and the new technologies and confidence it would nurture would ultimately enable even bigger cuts. ”The first change is to just slow the growth of emissions,” he said. ”The long-term aspiration target is great and very consistent with what the science is saying we have to do. But to have a chance of reaching that, we actually have to bend the curve this decade.”