Stern words on climate and the economy
The economist who famously said the cost of doing nothing about climate change would be far greater than the investment required to address the problem, now says the global economy will face a more severe downturn than the current financial crisis if it fails to halt climate change.
Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s leading environmental economists, said this week that the global economy will face a more severe downturn than the current crisis if it fails to halt climate change and we must not stifle moves towards a low carbon economy because of the current economic downturn
Stern is a former World Bank chief economist. “One thing we should have learned from this experience of the financial crisis is if we ignore risk building in the system, that risk will get much more difficult to manage than if we recognise it and tackle it early,” the British economist told reporters in Hong Kong.
Stern added that failure to act could lead to a temperature rise that would have severe consequences for global stability.
“These kinds of changes will transform the physical geography of the planet. They will transform where people will live,” he told reporters at an event for HSBC, a bank where he is a part-time policy advisor.
“You will see movements of billions of people, the result of that will probably be extreme conflict.”
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