How seriously are we to take Lord Stern on the economics of climate change? At the LSE yesterday, he rather hysterically claimed that the Copenhagen summit will be “the most important international gathering since the Second World War”. Crucially, he added that the cost of dealing with the problem may reach 5 percent of GDP. Even so, “it would still be a good deal,” he said.
Really? Losing world economic growth condemns millions in the Third World to poverty: the globalisation of the last 15 years has been the greatest anti-poverty tool ever invented. So we should not be blasé about sacrificing growth, as if all it means is smaller cars for the rich. Poverty kills, and so will forfeited economic growth.
Stern would argue that climate change also kills. And then we play that daft game where we transpose the supposed sea levels of 2100 on to today’s Bangladesh, conveniently forgetting that, under the IPCC scenario, it would be as rich as the Netherlands is today by then and, ergo, able to build the odd flood defence.
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