A Further Stern Warning On Climate Change

When the Stern report was published back in 2006, many in the Green movement pointed out that Stern's assessment of the risks erred on the conservative side, and that his suggested remedies were a combination of similarly conservative steps and fashionable "market based" solutions like Carbon Trading. It seems that, at least on the analysis of the challenge and threat, Stern has come around to a view a little closer to his critics at that time:

"We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change," said Lord Stern in a speech in London yesterday. "All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago."

More from Danny Fortson in the Independent here.

Yet despite his reassessment of the situation, Stern is still in favour of the "market solutions" (free market economics and neo-liberal globalisation are a large part of the problem) and expensive nuclear technical "fix" (I have less problem with his call for more investment in developing Carbon Capture and Sequestration and renewables)

Will Stern's words have any effect this time? It is sobering to recall George Marshall's account of some of the response to the original Stern Report.