A Stern Warning

Tuesday October 31, 2006 - The Guardian

The report by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief World Bank economist, represents a huge contrast to the U.S. government's wait-and-see global warming policies.

The overwhelming message of yesterday's review on the economics of climate change is that it is now time to move on from arguing about statistics to taking drastic action at an international level.

Most of the facts contained in the report will not come as a surprise to people who have been following the debate but that is not the point. It is aimed at an international audience and amounts to a devastatingly convincing argument of the urgent need for all of us to change our energy-guzzling behaviour and all the more so coming from an internationally respected economist.

The figures speak for themselves. A rise in temperatures of between 5C and 6C, which is "a real possibility for the next century" could trigger a global loss of economic wealth (GDP) of 10% with poorer countries, which have contributed least to the problem, suffering most of the damage.

A "worst case" scenario could cut GDP by 20%" with global floods displacing 100m people and drought creating hundreds of millions of "climate refugees". He emphasises the seriousness of the figures by reminding people that the world is only 5C warmer now than in the last ice age.

Targets alone are not enough, as has become clear in the UK. The prime minister talks sense but emission-reduction targets have been missed. Gordon Brown, whose ownership of this review has a domestic political motive as well as an international one, also has a mixed record: he chickened out of continuing the fuel duty escalator (introduced by the Tories) and is even now cutting back spending on environmental issues such as flood protection.

The unambiguous message from Stern is that politicians have no alternative: action must be taken on a world scale. Yet on recent experience global institutions are not up to the task.

The institutions are there: the G8 group of leading economies, the G20 - which includes the main developing nations - and the organisations that try to run the Kyoto agreement. What is lacking is for the world's politicians to think beyond the confines of the next four or five years, and to consider a statesmanlike span of 50 years or more, because what is at stake is not the electability of a political party but the survival of the planet.

Environmentalists, many of whom welcomed the Stern report as a needed "wake-up call," have said the Kyoto accord must be replaced by a more binding commitment.

Canada is committed to cutting its emissions six per cent from 1990 levels by 2012, but emissions are now up about 35 per cent from 1990, and Harper and the Conservatives maintain the targets are unachievable.

The argument is now over. Even if Stern is only half right, the consequence of doing nothing is still so dreadful that it ought not to be contemplated.