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Arise, sir Nicholas!

I am currently watching “The Economics of climate Change” talk by Sir Nicholas Stern, which is hosted by the Press Association of Australia, and screened on ABC in Australia.

It is a pretty good speech. He makes a lot of points, as the spokesman for what is a 700 page document, but his overall message is this:

We need to sort out climate change by reducing the amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere right now, or it is going to cost us heavily, both financially and as a society, in the future. That is the near future. Within 15 years.

I’m paraphrasing, or summerising what he said, because I can’t type that quickly, and I’m sure that is the main point.

However, he mentions some other facts:

Currently, the worst performers in terms of emissions are:

1. USA
2. China
3. Indonesia - due mainly to their deforestation and the burning off related to this

The first 2 are perhaps understandable due to their size and relative industrialisation, however, the third seems ludicrous, and all three need to significantly reduce their carbon emissions.

Unfortunately, however, I fail to see any way to force the arm of entire nations, and as we’ve already seen, there is no recourse when a country decides it will disregard what the rest of the world tells it. Furthermore, it will surely be the view of developing nations that “you were allowed to emit a lot of carbon (when industrialising) so why can’t we?” And, they have a point. An example must be set by those countries who are committed to preventing climate change.

Anyway, the rest of the speech was a bit long, so its up to you to find out more.

I concur with most of what Sir Nicholas says…