The elite are planning for climate change

Excerpts from the Telegraph about what the elite are thinking about climate change….

 

“Lord Stern and Lord Giddens frightened the wits out of a Goldman Sachs audience I attended this week on the risks of a global water, food, and energy crisis.

Nicholas Stern — the author of the Government’s Stern Report on the economic effects of climate change, and former chief economist at the World Bank — said we have a one in two chance of destroying civilization within the life-span of people already born, unless drastic action is taken to slow CO2 emissions.

“If we let go, if we carry on with business as usual, there is a 50pc chance that global temperatures will be 5 degrees centigrade higher by the end of century than it was in pre-industrial times. The last time that happened, the world was a swamp and there were alligators up to the North Pole,” he said.

“We have had a rise of 0.8 degrees so far, and already South West Africa and parts of Spain are drying out.”

“We can draw the risk down to 3pc if we cut emissions by 50pc by 2050. That means will have to cut from 6 tonnes of carbon per capita to 2 tonnes. This insurance policy would amount to a one-off cost 1.5pc to 2pc of world GDP”.

(At the moment, use per capita is roughly 20 tonnes in the US, 12 in Europe, and 5 in China. Goldman’s Abby Cohen, who hosted the panel, said Russia uses 8 times as much energy as the US or Europe to produce an equivalent amount of GDP, while China uses four times as much.)

Lord Stern said this would entail an 80pc cut in emissions for the rich world. “Gordon Brown has already declared for 80pc, and both McCain and Obama in the US are near that figure.” He said it was politically ‘doable’.

Anthony Giddens — a Professor at the London School of Economics, and Tony Blair’s “Third Way” guru — said the leading nations would have to relearn the forgotten art of long-term planning. “Leaving this to the market is not a possible solution. There is no technology even close to solving this crisis. All it can do is to nibble away”. ie, mass rationing of energy.

Lord Giddens said there are three main schools of thought. The deniers (he singled out former Chancellor Nigel Lawson, author of `An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming’), the mainstream consensus around the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that views the world as a fragile creature, and those that fear the IPCC is far too optimistic (they see the planet as an angry beast that lashes out when prodded).

Lord Giddens is — I suspect — in group three. “This could be even more dangerous than we think. We know there are threshold effects. Dramatic climate change can happen in less than ten years,” he said.

 

Such are the debates are going on inside the elite banks in the City. There was very little dissent. Not a single member of the high-powered audience questioned the Stern assumptions.

The chit-chat was purely about the best instruments for cutting CO2 emissions. (Lots of disagreement on carbon trading).

I make no judgment on these views (though I confess to having read Fred Pearce’s “Last Generation”, twice, and found it quite arresting).

 

Posted by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on 05 Jun 2008 at 16:35