Book by Nicholas Stern - The Global Deal

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The Global Deal

Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity
by Nicholas Stern

0 Reviews
Publisher: Public Affairs
Publish Date:Apr 27, 2009
Hardcover, 256 pages

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Summary

A world-renowned authority vividly tallies of the costs of global warming and issues an urgent and inspiring call for action.

In October 2006, Nicholas Stern, one of the greatest economists and public intellectuals of our day, made headlines around the world with a report assessing the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming. The world�s community has learned that it must act to mitigate global climate change, but until the Stern Review, no one knew how much it would cost, and how to do it.

Now, Stern (a member of the British House of Lords and Director of the India Observatory at the London School of Economics) has transformed his report into a powerful narrative book for general readers. The Global Deal evaluates the economic future, and the essential steps we must take to protect growth and reduce poverty while managing climate change.

The future Stern outlines is optimistic and pragmatic; he believes we have the capacity and creativity to change. But we need the will to inspire our political leaders to drive a new global strategy.

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Editorial Reviews

Progressive Book Club Review: The Global Deal
By Bill McKibben
The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity, By Nicholas Stern, Public Affairs Press, 256 pages, $26.95

Nicholas Stern is a very interesting man. A member of the British House of Lords (Baron Stern of Brentford!), he was chief economist of the World Bank and head of the British government�s economic service. In 2005, the UK leadership asked him to undertake an evaluation of the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming, and the report he produced a year or so later became one of the landmark documents in the twenty-year debate over climate change.

What Stern�s team concluded, to be very brief about it, is that the cost of doing nothing about global warming would be very high (larger than the costs of the both world wars and the Depression combined), while the cost of transforming our energy system would be relatively low. In this very lucid and well-written book, he manages to go into detail on those points, mixing in some of the latest science. And as a bonus, he provides a fascinating look at the complicated international politics of climate as we approach this December�s momentous Copenhagen global warming negotiations.

Stern begins where any account of the problem must, with a quick recapitulation of the science. Though he has the annoying habit of using a particularly arcane metric (co2-equivalent concentrations, which includes a variety of other gases and is an unnecessary and obscuring filigree when carbon dioxide is the main problem), his view is based fairly strongly on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He believes that nothing we can do will prevent us from a warming of more than three degrees Fahrenheit (so far we�ve seen about one degree) and he believes really catastrophe lies north of that number, at five or six degrees Fahrenheit. Here his science is perhaps a little out of date�the most recent data indicates that we�re already seeing e ... continue reading >

Member Reviews

Biography

Nicholas Stern, author of The Global Deal, is the I. G. Patel Chair and Chairman of the Grantham Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and Director of the India Observatory at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President of the World Bank (2000�03), head of the U.K. Government Economic Service (2003�07), and head of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change (2005�07).

Author Interview

Interview with Nicholas Stern (Prospect)

ALUN ANDERSON: It has been less than two years since the Stern review. What has changed since then? With reflection, was the report �alarmist�?

NICHOLAS STERN: Politically, the change is quite remarkable. Somebody who went to sleep at the end of 2006 and woke up now would be astonished at how the discussion has changed. In January 2007, George W Bush acknowledged for the first time that there was a link between human activity and climate change. Since then, the Americans have been debating the issue intensely and investing in technology. A bill that sought to reduce US greenhouse gas emissions by 70 per cent by 2050 came before the Senate recently. Although it did not pass, it is likely to return in 2009. John McCain and Barack Obama both have clear positions on the scale of the cuts, the cap-and-trade schemes and the technology needed.

The G8 summit last June committed to 50 per cent reductions by 2050. Last year the Australians threw out John Howard, partly because of his position on climate change, and elected Kevin Rudd prime minister in his place. Rudd immediately signed the Kyoto protocol. The Chinese published their first climate change action plan last year. India is about to publish its own plan. The challenge now is to go from commitments to action.

The claim that the Stern review was alarmist is nonsense. The dangers of climate change were, if anything, underestimated: since the review, there has been further evidence that if we continue �business as usual� then late this century, levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will reach 750-800 parts per million (ppm), compared to 430ppm now and the pre-industrial figure of 280ppm. That would give us sometime in the next century a 50-50 probability of temperatures being more than 5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. The last time temperatures were that high, 30-50m years ago, the world was covered in swampy forests and alligators lived near the North Pole. A ris ... continue reading >

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