Download For Nicholas Stern, BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge

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For Nicholas Stern, BBVA Foundation
Frontiers of Knowledge laureate, the
fight against climate change is “an
industrial revolution” that will help us
emerge from the current crisis

This economist and author of the pioneering Stern Review, a watershed
study on the economics of climate change, locates climate change
alongside poverty as the two great challenges of our century

Stern contends that climate change is hitting harder and earlier than was
first thought, but “the good news is that the technology is increasingly
available to switch over to a low-carbon economy”

The presentation ceremony of the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of
Knowledge Awards will take place on Wednesday, June 15 in the Madrid
headquarters of the BBVA Foundation.
June 13, 2011.- “The crisis will mean ten years of slow growth in Europe, but one of
the drivers of recovery will be the switch to a low-emissions economy. We should
not see the fight against climate change as a sacrifice, but rather as an
opportunity.” These words were pronounced this morning by Lord Nicholas Stern,
distinguished with the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Climate
Change for heading the first study to quantify the impacts and costs deriving from
the alteration of our planet’s climate.
Stern is confident that the technological applications that can bring down
emissions “are already coming through; in agriculture, in transport and as part of
the broader quest for improved energy efficiency,” and maintains that such
technology will spearhead a “new energy and industrial revolution.”
This is the positive side of what he still sees as a deeply worrying scenario: “If you
are asking me are we acting fast enough against climate change, then the
answer is no,” he affirms.
The pioneering Stern Review, commissioned by the British Government and
published in 2006, concluded that “the costs of inaction are far higher than those
of acting against climate change.” Today its author assures that the impact of
climate change is proving “faster and harder” than anyone thought, so the costs
of managing it are also rising.
Billions of people forced to uproot
Stern is adamant about the link between climate change and global
development. The “two great challenges of our century” are “poverty and
climate change”, he contends, and the two are intricately linked: “If we fail on
one, we fail on the other.”
The result of such failure would be “a physical environment so hostile that possibly
billions of people would have to uproot.” A movement on this scale,
unprecedented in the whole of human history, would lead to “severe, prolonged
and global conflict.” In economic terms, we would be looking at “a reversal of
development.”
In Stern’s view, what we have to do is “break the link between emissions, on one
hand, and production and consumption on the other,” and embark on the
transition to a “cleaner, safer” low-emissions economy.
“The good news is that we can not only see how to begin and pursue that
process, but also we can see that it will be creative, innovative and a driver of a
very different type of growth,” says Stern. “Science has guided us on the risks and
necessary scale of action. We can see technologies emerging. We understand
the essence of the key economic policies. The challenge now is creating the
political will.”
It will take good-quality market regulations, Stern opines, to unleash the power of
this new economy – measures able to correct “the greatest market failure the
world has seen,” whose cause is the absence of a price for carbon.
Nuclear power is not the key
Stern also talked about the role of nuclear power in the new energy scenario. The
nuclear scare in Japan may slow the growth of this kind of energy, but this, Stern
reminds us, is only part of the wider story. “Nuclear power stations will continue to
be built, though possibly at a slower rate, but in general terms expansion is being
tilted to renewables and gas.”
What this will mean, he explains, is that “we have to press on with developing
technologies for carbon capture and storage,” since gas is notwithstanding an
energy source that adds carbon to the atmosphere.
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The Frontiers of Knowledge laureate in Climate Change is adamant that the rich
countries cannot ignore the plight of less well-off nations or take measures that
imply “an obstacle in the way of rising standards of living for the poor people of
this world”.
Poor countries, Stern emphasizes, “are hit earliest and hardest by climate
change,” and our duty is to help them adapt to these changed conditions. “The
rich countries must accept their responsibilities for the past and for the future.”
Stern believes Europe has an important part to play in the developed world as a
promoter of economic and technological change, but also draws attention to the
example of China, which has launched “a radical plan of emissions targets.”
Nicholas Stern (Hammersmith, United Kingdom, 1946) is I.G. Patel Professor of
Economics and Government at the London School of Economics (LSE). He has
served as Chief Economist with the World Bank, Head of the Government
Economic Service in the United Kingdom, and Chief Economist at the European
Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
He has been knighted for his services to the UK economy and awarded a life
peerage. He currently heads the India Observatory within the Asia Research
Centre and the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the
Environment. As a development economist, he has spent long periods researching
in some of India's most disadvantaged regions, as well as various parts of Africa.
AWARD PRESENTATION CEREMONY
The presentation ceremony of the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge
Awards will take place on Wednesday, June 15 at 19:00 in the Madrid
headquarters of the BBVA Foundation.
For further information, contact the BBVA Foundation Communication Department (tel.:
+34 91 374 52 10 / [email protected]), or visit the website www.fbbva.es
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