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The world can't afford business as usual
By Nicholas Stern |
November 29, 2010, Monday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
EDITOR'S note: This is the first part of the author's lengthy speech delivered during the World Expo in Shanghai last month.
Unless the world embarks now on a new energy and industrial revolution it will be very difficult to manage the huge risks of climate change.
Business as usual for the next few decades will bring a significant change of global temperatures not seen on the planet for tens of millions of years, long before homo sapiens appeared, with great risks of migration of hundreds of millions of people and extended and severe conflict.
However, the new industrial revolution and the transition to low-carbon growth constitute a very attractive path. It is likely to bring 2 or 3 decades of innovative and creative growth and large and growing markets for the pioneers.
Cities around the world are responsible for around two-thirds or more of both energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The choices that are made about transport, infrastructure, building, and industry in cities, as they grow rapidly in the next two decades, will determine, via the technology and ways of life they lock-in, whether mankind can both manage climate change and draw the benefits of the new patterns of growth.
The challenge for the world as a whole is to cut global emissions by at least 60 percent between now and 2050 whilst maintaining or enhancing growth and overcoming poverty. Cities will be at the center of this story.
China' development as the world's fastest-growing large economy, with very rapid urbanization, will be at the heart of these developments; low-carbon growth in China is vital for the world as a whole and for China's own future.
China is already at the forefront of the development of new low-carbon technologies and China has a great deal to gain by being in the vanguard of this new global growth story.
Greenhouse gas
"Business as usual" (BAU) for the next few decades will bring serious risks.
Greenhouse gas concentrations (or stocks) have increased to around 435 parts per million (ppm) of carbon-dioxide-equivalent (CO2e), from around 285 in the mid-19th century, and are now rising at a rate of around 2.5 ppm per annum.
Thus if we continued with BAU for a century we would add at least 300 ppm more, taking concentrations to around 750 ppm CO2e or higher by the end of this century or the beginning of the next.
That would lead to a 50 percent chance of warming by 5 degrees compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
A rise of 5 degrees is immense: it would mean average temperatures that the planet has not seen for more than 50 million years. It has not been 3 degrees warmer than today for around 3 million years.
Homo sapiens have experienced nothing like this, being present for only around 200,000 years. Such a warming would cause so much disruption to local habitats and climates, for example through flooding, desertification, water scarcity, that hundreds of millions of people would have to move, with the associated risks of severe and extended conflict.
China is especially vulnerable with its large fraction of the population near the coast, its pressures on water supply, its dependence on the Himalayan region as a water source, and the location of so many populous countries along its borders.
In contrast, the transition to low-carbon growth in the world economy over the next two or three decades is likely to bring dynamic, innovative and creative growth, and large and growing markets and opportunities for the pioneers.
Low-carbon future
There are already exciting developments along the way.
For example, it may soon be possible to artificially create bacteria that produce biofuels or soak up CO2 from the atmosphere; new high-capacity batteries made with carbon nanotubes that are coated with titanium dioxide may be able to overcome the capacity and life-span problems of lithium-ion batteries; solar cells printed on aluminium foil using nanotechnology have the potential to significantly increase solar efficiency and reduce costs; and carbon capture and storage techniques may present a very attractive way of sequestering emissions from power stations in cement.
These technologies have the potential to drive an exciting low-carbon future.
And low-carbon growth, when established, will be more energy-secure, cleaner, quieter, safer and more bio-diverse than high-carbon growth. Far more attractive than what has gone before.
Indeed, high-carbon growth will kill itself on the very hostile physical environment it will create; it is not a serious medium-term option.
(The author is I.G. Patel Professor of Economics & Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
Unless the world embarks now on a new energy and industrial revolution it will be very difficult to manage the huge risks of climate change.
Business as usual for the next few decades will bring a significant change of global temperatures not seen on the planet for tens of millions of years, long before homo sapiens appeared, with great risks of migration of hundreds of millions of people and extended and severe conflict.
However, the new industrial revolution and the transition to low-carbon growth constitute a very attractive path. It is likely to bring 2 or 3 decades of innovative and creative growth and large and growing markets for the pioneers.
Cities around the world are responsible for around two-thirds or more of both energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The choices that are made about transport, infrastructure, building, and industry in cities, as they grow rapidly in the next two decades, will determine, via the technology and ways of life they lock-in, whether mankind can both manage climate change and draw the benefits of the new patterns of growth.
The challenge for the world as a whole is to cut global emissions by at least 60 percent between now and 2050 whilst maintaining or enhancing growth and overcoming poverty. Cities will be at the center of this story.
China' development as the world's fastest-growing large economy, with very rapid urbanization, will be at the heart of these developments; low-carbon growth in China is vital for the world as a whole and for China's own future.
China is already at the forefront of the development of new low-carbon technologies and China has a great deal to gain by being in the vanguard of this new global growth story.
Greenhouse gas
"Business as usual" (BAU) for the next few decades will bring serious risks.
Greenhouse gas concentrations (or stocks) have increased to around 435 parts per million (ppm) of carbon-dioxide-equivalent (CO2e), from around 285 in the mid-19th century, and are now rising at a rate of around 2.5 ppm per annum.
Thus if we continued with BAU for a century we would add at least 300 ppm more, taking concentrations to around 750 ppm CO2e or higher by the end of this century or the beginning of the next.
That would lead to a 50 percent chance of warming by 5 degrees compared with pre-industrial temperatures.
A rise of 5 degrees is immense: it would mean average temperatures that the planet has not seen for more than 50 million years. It has not been 3 degrees warmer than today for around 3 million years.
Homo sapiens have experienced nothing like this, being present for only around 200,000 years. Such a warming would cause so much disruption to local habitats and climates, for example through flooding, desertification, water scarcity, that hundreds of millions of people would have to move, with the associated risks of severe and extended conflict.
China is especially vulnerable with its large fraction of the population near the coast, its pressures on water supply, its dependence on the Himalayan region as a water source, and the location of so many populous countries along its borders.
In contrast, the transition to low-carbon growth in the world economy over the next two or three decades is likely to bring dynamic, innovative and creative growth, and large and growing markets and opportunities for the pioneers.
Low-carbon future
There are already exciting developments along the way.
For example, it may soon be possible to artificially create bacteria that produce biofuels or soak up CO2 from the atmosphere; new high-capacity batteries made with carbon nanotubes that are coated with titanium dioxide may be able to overcome the capacity and life-span problems of lithium-ion batteries; solar cells printed on aluminium foil using nanotechnology have the potential to significantly increase solar efficiency and reduce costs; and carbon capture and storage techniques may present a very attractive way of sequestering emissions from power stations in cement.
These technologies have the potential to drive an exciting low-carbon future.
And low-carbon growth, when established, will be more energy-secure, cleaner, quieter, safer and more bio-diverse than high-carbon growth. Far more attractive than what has gone before.
Indeed, high-carbon growth will kill itself on the very hostile physical environment it will create; it is not a serious medium-term option.
(The author is I.G. Patel Professor of Economics & Government and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science. Shanghai Daily condensed the article.)
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