Climate change: US economist’s grim warning to Blair’s Cabinet
I’m in the UK where The Independent is saying Climate change: US economist’s grim warning to Blair’s Cabinet.
Global warming could cost the world’s economies up to 20 per cent of their gross domestic product (GDP) if urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms and natural catastrophes.
That stark warning was given to Tony Blair and his cabinet yesterday by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank economist, and is said to have left cabinet ministers chastened by the magnitude of the threat posed by climate change.
In a preview of a report he is to deliver next Monday, Sir Nicholas told the Cabinet the world would have to pay 1 per cent of its annual GDP to avert catastrophe. But doing nothing could cost 5 to 20 times that amount. He told them: “Business- as-usual will derail growth.”
We are sleepwalking into the next great economic depression. This report puts the lie to Bush and Howard’s claims that cooling the planet is just too expensive. — DS
Technorati Tags: climate change, global warming, politics, UK, Sir Nicholas Stern, World Bank
