February 11, 2009 5:49 PM
- Text
U.K. Report: Warming Will Destroy Economy
(CBS/AP)
Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a British government report said Monday, as the country launched a bid to convince doubters that environmentalism and economic growth can coincide.
Britain hired former Vice President Al Gore, who has emerged as a powerful environmental spokesman since his defeat in the 2000 presidential election, to advise the government on climate change — a clear indication of Prime Minister Tony Blair's dissatisfaction with current U.S. policy.
Blair, President Bush's top ally in the Iraq war, said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world between 5 percent and 20 percent of global gross domestic product each year. He called for "bold and decisive action" to cut carbon emissions and stem the worst of the temperature rise.
"It is not in doubt that, if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," he said. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime."
The report emphasized that global warming can only be fought with the cooperation of major countries such as the United States and China, and represents a huge contrast to the Bush administration's wait-and-see global warming policies.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the senior government economist who wrote the report, said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about 1 percent of global GDP each year. He recommended a "low-carbon global economy" through measures including taxation, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading.
Pay now or pay a lot more later — that's the report's stark conclusion, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.
President Bush kept America — by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming — out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy. The international agreement was reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and expires in 2012.
Blair made his displeasure with U.S. environmental policy clear when he signed an agreement this year with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to develop new technologies to combat the problem. The measure imposed the first emissions cap in the United States on utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants in a bid to curb the gases that scientists blame for warming the Earth.
The prime minister and the report also said that no matter what Britain, the United States and Japan do, the battle against global warming cannot succeed without deciding when and how to control the greenhouse gas emissions by such fast-industrializing giants as China and India.
Stern's 700-page report said evidence showed "that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth."
"Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," he said.
The British hope this new economic argument can do what environmental arguments haven't: convince skeptical governments in China and the United States to act now as well, reports Phillips.
Britain hired former Vice President Al Gore, who has emerged as a powerful environmental spokesman since his defeat in the 2000 presidential election, to advise the government on climate change — a clear indication of Prime Minister Tony Blair's dissatisfaction with current U.S. policy.
Blair, President Bush's top ally in the Iraq war, said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world between 5 percent and 20 percent of global gross domestic product each year. He called for "bold and decisive action" to cut carbon emissions and stem the worst of the temperature rise.
"It is not in doubt that, if the science is right, the consequences for our planet are literally disastrous," he said. "This disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future many years ahead, but in our lifetime."
The report emphasized that global warming can only be fought with the cooperation of major countries such as the United States and China, and represents a huge contrast to the Bush administration's wait-and-see global warming policies.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the senior government economist who wrote the report, said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about 1 percent of global GDP each year. He recommended a "low-carbon global economy" through measures including taxation, regulation of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon trading.
Pay now or pay a lot more later — that's the report's stark conclusion, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Phillips.
President Bush kept America — by far the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and other gases blamed for global warming — out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy. The international agreement was reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and expires in 2012.
Blair made his displeasure with U.S. environmental policy clear when he signed an agreement this year with California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to develop new technologies to combat the problem. The measure imposed the first emissions cap in the United States on utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants in a bid to curb the gases that scientists blame for warming the Earth.
The prime minister and the report also said that no matter what Britain, the United States and Japan do, the battle against global warming cannot succeed without deciding when and how to control the greenhouse gas emissions by such fast-industrializing giants as China and India.
Stern's 700-page report said evidence showed "that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth."
"Our actions over the coming decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century," he said.
The British hope this new economic argument can do what environmental arguments haven't: convince skeptical governments in China and the United States to act now as well, reports Phillips.
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Tucker Reals Tucker Reals is a senior news editor and overnight site editor for CBSNews.com, based at CBS News' London bureau.
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