Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ethical attention as the current one. Thus, while we do allow, for example,
for the possibility that, say, a meteorite might obliterate the world, and for
the possibility that future generations might be richer (or poorer), we treat
the welfare of future generations on a par with our own.”
In general terms, treating present and future generations “on a par”
is fine. It squares with the ethical basis of sustainable development that
most people today would accept. Namely, that future generations have a
right to a standard of living no worse than the present generation's, and
that the present generation, in fulfilling its own needs, has a duty not to
compromise the standard of living of future generations.
But the Stern Review goes further, when it turns its generational parity
approach into numbers. By putting present and future on an equal foot-
ing, a future eventual cost of unbridled climate change of “at least five
percent of global GDP” somehow also becomes “the equivalent of at least
5 percent of global GDP each year,
now
and forever”. This implication - of
possible large and immediate climate costs - is not borne out elsewhere
in the Stern Review. Even its high range of damage estimates shows costs
only building up gradually, and still to under three percent of world GDP
by 2100. This doesn't sound quite like a repeat of great wars or depressions
- at least not in this century.
It is important to remember that Stern's report dates from 2006 - with
each year that passes, it becomes harder and harder for the words “early
action” to mean anything. Furthermore, climate-change modelling is not
an exact science: some of the positive-feedback scenarios posited by cli-
matologists could lead to exponential, runaway climate change that would
radically alter Stern's climate-change accountancy.
But even at the time, no one queried Stern's stress on the energy sec-
tor as the main focus for climate action. The report called for the power
sector around the world to be “de-carbonized” by at least sixty percent by
2050, and also urged deep cuts in transport emissions. Stern called climate
change “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen” - particularly
because the considerable damage of carbon to society and to the envi-
ronment in general was not, and still isn't, reflected in the pricing of the
energy producing the carbon. So, in addition to prescriptions for energy
innovation and efficiency, the Stern Review lent its weight to a proper
pricing of carbon, by whatever means: tax, trading or regulation.
