Sir Nicholas Stern Wows Bay Street
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 02.20.07
That's Canada's Wall Street, where the Suits turned out en masse to hear Sir Nicholas Stern talk to the Economic Club of Canada. According to Tyler Hamilton in ::the Star: "Only a few years ago you would have seen climate change attract a much smaller audience than we have here today," said Clive Mather, chief executive of Shell Canada, as he introduced Sir Nicholas to hundreds of Canada's business and political elite, including Mayor David Miller, Ontario PC leader John Tory and former Ontario premier Bob Rae.
Thomas Homer-Dixon, director of the Trudeau Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Toronto and host of [an earlier] Hart House meeting, said Stern's report has altered the dialogue on global warming in the same way as Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth documentary and the recent United Nations-backed report on climate change.
"The Stern report has been particularly influential because it speaks in the language of our most powerful decision-makers: the heads of corporations, finance ministers, the leaders of central banks and international financial institutions," said Homer-Dixon.
According to the Globe: "It's very clear to me now that we can be green and grow," he told reporters outside the Toronto Stock Exchange, where he held a joint news conference with Dr. Suzuki.
"I don't think it's a horse race between growth and being responsible on climate change. Good policy can give us both," Sir Nicholas said. "Eventually, if we ignore the problem of climate change, it's growth and living standards that will suffer."
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Stern also packed the World Bank's main auditorium here in DC last week--warning attendees that there were only three reasons not to stay and listen: if they believed (1) that the science is all wrong, ie the biggest hoax since Y2K; (2) that human beings are adaptable, and can deal with any problem, by wearing less clothes, swimming, etc; or (3) that the risks fall so far into the future that we should just relax and enjoy ourselves right now.
He then went on to say that believing reason (1) is absurd; (2) is reckless; and (3) is immoral. Needless to say, the packed auditorium stayed packed.
Although it's good that people are listening to Stern, many others have been warning of the dangers of climate change long before. If there was no likelihood of economic harm from climate change, would as many of us care about addressing the issue?
It says a lot about what motivates us humans that a report by an economist that puts a financial perspective on climate change is what gets so many of us to sit up and take notice. Too cynical?
"It says a lot about what motivates us humans that a report by an economist that puts a financial perspective on climate change is what gets so many of us to sit up and take notice. Too cynical?"
I would argue that its the ones with the money who are in control anyway. Purely they want to protect their bottom line, maintain their power and influence and profit gathering, and if Global Warming is going to COST money then it is likely to expect a reaction from that sector.
As long as big companies can influence foreign and domestic policies its not the people who are control of the country its the bottom line that is in control.
I think the Stern report is great in that it draws attention to fact that global warming is first and foremost an economic problem, a type of market failure that can best be addressed through market-based policies like carbon taxation and a cap-and-trade for big industries (and even individual carbon quotas). But Stern misses the big picture when he claims we can keep physically growing the economy while still saving the environment. Even if we get the carbon problem under control (big if), we'll soon end up encountering other hard environmental limits (lack of land, fresh water, energy resources etc.) if everyone on earth continues to consume more and more and more useless STUFF. Stern doesn't see the problem with unending growth because conventional (environmental) economics has nothing to say about the scale of the macroeconomy: that's why the new field of ecological economics needs to replace these tired old, outmoded environmental economists.