World leaders must act urgently to avert a looming environmental catastrophe, the author of a major British report, which sounds a wake-up call on climate change, said on Monday.
Former World Bank chief economist Sir Nicholas Stern singled out the United States, China and India as economic powerhouses whose backing is crucial for a global solution.
The world must be prepared to pay now — in the form of things like green taxes or emissions trading schemes — to prevent economic fall-out in the future, which could be on the scale of the Great Depression of the 1930s, he added.
”There is still time to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, if we act now and act internationally,” he said, launching his 600-page report in London.
”The task is urgent. Delaying action even by a decade or two will take us into dangerous territory. We must not let this window of opportunity close.”
His message was backed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who was at the report’s launch in central London with his finance minister and likely successor, Gordon Brown.
”Should we fail to rise to this challenge, I don’t believe we will be able to explain ourselves to future generations,” said Blair, warning of ”disastrous” consequences for the planet unless action was taken swiftly.
The Stern review estimates that worldwide inaction could cost the equivalent of between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product every year, forever.
By contrast, the cost of action is equivalent to 1% of GDP, a ”manageable” increase equivalent to a one-off price increase of goods of 1%, Stern said.
To address the situation, the economist called for carbon pricing, policies to support low-carbon technologies and more education of individuals about how they can tackle climate change.
He also advocated the expansion of international frameworks on emissions trading, technology cooperation, deforestation and adaptation to climate change to develop a coordinated approach to climate change.
Brown also announced that former US vice-president Al Gore, who earlier this year released An Inconvenient Truth, a documentary about climate change, will become one of his personal advisors on green issues.
Stern warned that global warming, if left unchecked, could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the Great Depression, or climate change many times worse than last year’s Hurricane Katrina in the US.
He also suggested that rich countries should pay more than poor ones to offset their higher levels of carbon emissions.
”The poor countries will be hit earliest and hardest … It is only right that the rich countries should pay a little more,” he said.
His report is thought to be the first heavyweight contribution to the debate on climate change by an economist rather than a scientist.
It was welcomed by green groups and others.
”The Stern Review is a wake-up call to the world,” said Hans Verolme, director of environmental group World Wildlife Fund’s Global Climate Change Programme.
The report ”provides a step-change in the way we think about climate change”, said Beverley Darkin of the Chatham House think-tank in London.
”It is no longer an issue to be tackled solely by those working on environment and science issues.”
Elsewhere on Monday, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change announced that greenhouse gas emissions from the industrialised world are rising and the US remains the biggest polluter.
Excluding former Soviet bloc economies, industrialised nations saw an 11% increase in pollution from 1990 to 2004. From 2000 to 2004, the figure was 2%. — AFP
