The Stern Review, a new, 700-page report by the British government on the economic consequences of climate change, should help refocus our own national debate on global warming, says a Duke University environmental policy expert.
"The review quantifies the enormous costs of not taking action on climate change," said Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke. "If you are diagnosed with cancer, you wouldn't forego treatment because of the costs -– you would look at the benefits of acting as quickly as possible. The Stern Review, and its daunting assessment of the impacts of unchecked climate change, clearly illustrates that the same logic applies to climate change.
"We should never have a discussion henceforth about the costs of action without taking into consideration the costs of inaction."
The Stern Review, written by Sir Nicholas Stern, the British government's chief economist and a former chief economist at the World Bank, calculates that making the necessary changes now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions –- through options such as carbon emissions trading programs and carbon taxes -– would likely cost one percent of the world's gross domestic product, or about $350 billion a year.
If world leaders do not act to reduce emissions, however, the consequences of climate change could cut the global GDP by as much as 20 percent a year by mid-century, the report states. That would lead to an economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression.
"We can pay now or pay later," Profeta said. "The longer we wait, the more we will pay."
The Nicholas Institute will host a policy discussion on climate change, featuring U.S. Sen. John McCain, on Thursday, Nov. 16, at the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. The lunchtime discussion with McCain and others is part of the institute's launch of its new D.C. office. The institute and Duke faculty are conducting similar economic analyses of U.S. policy options, focused on comparing the costs of acting now versus waiting to enact a U.S. limit of carbon emissions.