The Price of Harper's Failure
From the Harper can stop the Liberals but not Global Warming department:
2006–10-29 (Gaby Hinliff, The Guardian)
£3.68 trillion: The price of failing to act on climate change
Landmark report reveals apocalyptic cost of global warming—The review by Sir Nicholas Stern, commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and published tomorrow, marks a crucial point in the debate by underlining how failure to act would trigger a catastrophic global recession. Unchecked climate change would turn 200 million people into refugees, the largest migration in modern history, as their homes succumbed to drought or flood.
Stern also warns that a successor to the Kyoto agreement on cutting greenhouse gas emissions should be signed next year, not by 2010/11 as planned. He forecasts that the world needs to spend 1 per cent of global GDP – equivalent to about £184bn – dealing with climate change now, or face a bill between five and 20 times higher for damage caused by letting it continue. Unchecked climate change could thus cost as much as £566 for every man, woman and child now on the planet – roughly 6.5 billion people.
Downing Street and the Treasury believe that the report marks a decisive moment in international politics. Stern’s is the first heavyweight contribution by an economist rather than a scientist and senior officials believe he will make what might seem a hopelessly ambitious timetable credible. ‘This will give us an argument to make,’ said a Whitehall source. ‘I think we are at a tipping point in terms of the debate, as we were at a tipping point in 2004/05 in terms of the science.’
Stern’s forecast cost of 1 per cent of global GDP is roughly the same amount as is spent worldwide on advertising, and half what the World Bank estimates a full-blown flu pandemic would cost. Without early intervention, he estimates the cost would be 5–20 per cent of GDP…
The report by Sir Nicholas Stern, commissioned by the British government, warns the economic consequences of not acting on climate change, within a decade, will cost the world up to £3.68 trillion (at today’s rate of exchange $7.9 trillion CAD, $7 trillion USD).
As they say on The Street, that’s some real money.
The noted former chief economist of the World Bank also warns that delay in addressing and mitigating climate change will result in markedly higher costs and significantly impact hundreds of millions of people.
Look to Harper (and Bush) to play politics with this news and of course do nothing constructive. He’ll blame everything on the Liberals, but we Canadians ought not to allow him to shirk his responsibility. Industry and government have been meeting and talking about climate change for years. Nothing that to be said has been left unsaid at this point.
Its time to act. Harper could, but doesn’t want to.
That, not made up issues of parliamentary roadblocks, should be the real question put before voters in the next, inevitable, federal election. If the threat of defeat can’t push Harper and my party to act, seriously act, on the climate change file, then Canadians should push them out pronto.