A Hot Topic
October 31st, 2006 by Carbon Coalition“The Stern Review: The Economics of Climate Change” was released in Great Britain yesterday creating quite a buzz about global warming. A flurry of news posts about the report hit US newspapers including this article in the Boston Globe, this article in the Washington Post, and this article in the New York Times.
The report predicts that “failure to tackle climate change could push world temperatures up by 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) over the next century, causing severe floods and harsh droughts and uprooting as many as 200 million.” This may not come as a shock to someone who keeps on eye on climate change news–predictions such as these have become redundant in recent reports on global warming–however, the economics of climate change presented in the report are rather startling. This article in the New York Times reports that the net benefits of taking strong action to combat climate change could generate savings of $2.5 trillion annually. “Failure to act could plunge the world into an economic crisis on par with the 1930s Depression.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair responded to the report saying, “it has demolished the last remaining argument for inaction in the face of climate change…urgent action will prevent catastrophe, and investment in preventing it now will pay us back many times.”
As Americans, we must hope that someone in the White House read the newspaper yesterday…
