Pay now or later for warming, study says

Published October 31, 2006 by L.A. Times
By Kim Murphy

london — A major study issued Monday concludes that without rapid and
substantial spending, global warming will reduce worldwide productivity
on the scale of the Great Depression, devastate food sources, cause
widespread deaths and create hundreds of millions of refugees.

The
report commissioned by the British government, which officials called
the most comprehensive review of the economics of climate change, warns
that failure to act could cost up to 20% a year in lost income
worldwide. Acting now, however, could bring about meaningful control of
greenhouse gases at an annual cost of 1% of global gross domestic
product, it says.

The findings appear to counter the
long-standing argument of the Bush administration that controlling
greenhouse gases is costly and possibly ineffective.

However,
the savings would occur only with the kind of rapid and comprehensive
international cooperation on the issue that so far has proved elusive.

British
officials said they would take immediate action to legislate
carbon-reduction targets, push expanded international carbon-trading
programs and move toward reducing carbon emissions in Europe by 30% by
2020 and 60% by 2050. Carbon trading allows companies to exceed
emission limits by buying credits from those that are below their
emission targets.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling the report
by senior government economist Nicholas Stern “a landmark in the
struggle against climate change,” warned that there was a limit to what
Britain alone could do.

“Britain is more than playing its part,”
Blair said. “But it is 2% of worldwide emissions. Close down all of
Britain’s emissions and in less than two years, just the growth in
China’s emissions would wipe out the difference. So this issue is the
definition of global interdependence.”

But the report’s findings
show that “if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are
literally disastrous,” Blair said. “And this disaster is not set to
happen in some science-fiction future, many years ahead, but in our
lifetime.”

In Washington, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, the lead U.S. agency on global warming, had no
immediate comment on the British report. Agency spokesperson Jana
Goldman said officials could not react to the report until they had
read it.

The report examines the consequences of acting — or
failing to act — to control rising temperatures due to greenhouse gases
from deforestation and fossil fuels.

The current level of
greenhouse gases is already 54% higher than it was before the
Industrial Revolution, and could be double that level as early as 2035,
the report suggests. Such an increase could raise temperatures by more
than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century and a disastrous 9 degrees
by century’s end, it says.

The result would be melting glaciers
that trigger floods and reduce snowpacks that supply drinking water,
threatening a sixth of the world’s population, the report says. Other
effects would include reduced crop yields, leaving hundreds of millions
of people unable to produce or purchase sufficient food; an increase in
vector-borne diseases; up to 200 million people displaced because of
rising sea levels and drought; and the possible extinction of 15% to
40% of species.

“The report sets out I think very clearly that
this is not just an environmental issue, or even just an economic
issue, but it is a security issue,” Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett
said. “There are some people all over the world who still believe there
can be some kind of trade-off between economic and climate security. I
think this report knocks [that notion] on its head.”

Stern, a
former chief economist for the World Bank, said the study found that it
was still possible to achieve meaningful temperature controls at a cost
equivalent to consumers paying an average of 1% more for everything
they buy, and substantially less than the cost of failing to act.

“That’s manageable,” Stern said. “We can grow and be green.”

The
report calls for using taxes and regulations to make carbon use more
costly, policies supporting low-carbon technology, and changing the
public’s attitude toward energy efficiency.

Air carriers and
utilities could be among those hit hardest by any new
emissions-reduction laws. Already, Britons are looking at a possible
end to bargain-basement fares to the Continent and higher prices for
out-of-season and exotic vegetables from the tropics.

Poor
countries will bear the brunt of the effects of climate change, the
report says, but it suggests that rich countries must bear 60% to 80%
of the responsibility for emissions reductions.

“The conclusion
of the review is essentially optimistic. There is still time to avoid
the worst impacts of climate change if we act now and act
internationally,” Stern said. “But the task is urgent. Delaying action,
even by a decade or two, will take us into dangerous territory. We must
not let this window of opportunity close.”

*

Times staff writer Joel Havemann in Washington contributed to this report.