James Pomfret, PlanetArk 28 Oct 08;
HONG KONG - The risks of inaction over climate change far outweigh the turmoil of the global financial crisis, a leading climate change expert said on Monday, while calling for new fiscal spending tailored to low carbon growth.
"The risk consequences of ignoring climate change will be very much bigger than the consequences of ignoring risks in the financial system," said Nicholas Stern, a former British Treasury economist, who released a seminal report in 2006 that said inaction on emissions blamed for global warming could cause economic pain equal to the Great Depression.
"That's a very important lesson, tackle risk early," Stern told a climate and carbon conference in Hong Kong.
As countries around the world move from deploying monetary and financial stabilisation measures, to boosting fiscal spending to mend real economies, Stern said the opportunity was there to bring about a new, greener, carbon-reducing world order.
"The lesson that we can draw out from this recession, is that you can boost demand in the best way possible by focusing on low carbon growth in future," Stern said, including greater public spending on mass public transport, energy and green technologies.
Stern's warning comes on the heels of last week's Asia-Europe or ASEM meeting in Beijing, where China indicated in talks it was committed to seeking a climate change pact in vital end-game talks in Copenhagen at the end of next year.
Leaders at the summit also urged countries not to use global economic upheaval as a reason for delaying a deal. Partly as a result of the darkening global economic outlook, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi recently warned that 10 other EU nations backed his efforts to block an EU climate plan, prompting further doubts over European action on global warming.
Yet Stern remained optimistic, saying while talks would be "very tense" the likelihood of a deal in Copenhagen to reduce carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2050 remained "very high".
Any deal would have to iron out differences between the United States, historically the largest greenhouse gas emitter, and rapidly developing countries like China, which by some accounts has surpassed the United States on emissions.
China, with its bulging output of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas behind global warming, was singled out by Stern along with the US as pivotal in the talks, with the next US president likely to be much more proactive than George W. Bush.
"The US and China will be the key leaders for a global deal. Either one of them could kill it, and I don't think either one of them will kill it."
Fresh from a trip to China, Stern said China's next national economic blueprint or five-year plan would acknowledge its key role to stave off a big rise in global temperatures, the melting of ice-caps and destructive rises in sea levels the world over.
"I think we'll see the 12th five-year plan focus on low carbon growth," he said.
(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
Top economist talks up risks of climate inaction
Yahoo News 27 Oct 08;
HONG KONG (AFP) – Nicholas Stern, one of the world's leading environmental economists, said Monday that the global economy will face a more severe downturn than the current crisis if it fails to halt climate change.
Stern, the author of a key climate change report and a former World Bank chief economist, said moves towards a low carbon economy should not be stifled by the fallout from the current economic downturn.
"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.
"We have seen the consequences of ignoring risk in the current economic and financial crisis. It has already led to negative growth in rich countries.
"The risk consequences of ignoring climate change will be very much bigger that the risk consequences of ignoring risk from the financial system."
Stern, whose 2006 report estimated the effects of climate change could cost up to a fifth of worldwide gross domestic product if no action was taken, said that countries should try and grow out of the current recession by focusing on low carbon growth.
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."
Earlier, Stern addressed a group of business and political leaders at a conference organised by the Climate Group, a non-governmental environmental group, where he stressed the opportunities for firms that adapt early to a low carbon model.
