Climate Change: UK Climate Group Responds to Stern Report

The Stern review, released on October 30th, stated that failure to tackle climate change could cost the world up to 7 trillion dollars, and leave 200 million people as refugees amid drought or flood. The Climate Group, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change, has just released its commentary and analysis of the Stern report.

The group identifies the key message from the report,

the most extensive analysis carried out to date on the economics of climate change, is that the costs of taking action now (likely to amount to approximately 1% of GDP) are far outweighed by the costs associated with adopting a ‘wait and see’ attitude.

This macro-level analysis showing that taking early action to combat climate change is an economically sound course of action is backed up by much of The Climate Group’s work at the micro-level, which has shown how companies from a range of sectors have made significant emissions reductions and made or saved money in the process.

Steve Howard, The Climate Group’s CEO, said “The Stern Review provides clear evidence to support what many businesses, governments and the public have known intuitively for years; cutting carbon emissions is the only sensible course of action, both environmentally and economically.”

For The Climate Group's response and a link to the Stern report: Climate Group

Categories: climate change, global warming, poverty, economy