Everybody wants to get into the (power) act. Here's Nicholas Stern at the Bali confab in 2007:
"This (climate change) is much too important to leave to environment ministers"
—Sir Nicholas Stern
to Finance Ministers basking in Bali
Since then he's gotten a Barony and I am reminded to initially address him as "Your Lordship" should we somehow bump into each other somewhere.
From Salon via MSN, December 7:
Climate scientists currently face a dilemma. A scientist's chief responsibility is to report the observed and analyzed facts as neutrally and accurately as possible. On the surface, this would seem to preclude offering policy recommendations. Yet when comes to an issue as dire as climate change, where the stakes are literally humanity's continued existence, it could be argued that failing to prescribe solutions is equally irresponsible. Five lead authors of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are now arguing that climate scientists need to be able to make policy prescriptions and oversee their implementation, according to a report by The Guardian....
....MUCH MORE
Back to his Lordship, he of the eponymous report*:
...Lord Stern at the Bali Climate Conference where the largest NGO contingent were the gang from the International Emissions Trading Association, 336 representatives including lawyers, financiers, emissions traders, consultants, certifiers and emissions trading experts... the IETA made up 7.5% of the 4483 Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) delegates registered for the U.N. shindig:
“Bali will set in motion a process that will define the structure
of the carbon markets for decades to come”
“By 2020 the global carbon market could be worth EUR 240-
450 billion”—Sir Nicholas Stern
—from 2009's "Climateer Investing on Carbon Trading and Traders".
*And from "McKinsey calculates the staggering capital spending required to reach net-zero by 2050":
You are going to have to dig deep into your pockets. Really, really deep. $275 trillion deep.And as I've said, don't look at me, I don't have that kind of money....*****....This actual cost of the transition is one of the reasons some very smart folks were calling bullshit on Sir Nicholas Stern and his eponymous Stern Review (662 page PDF) back in October 2006.By choosing to use a deceitfully low discount rate he came up with a cost for the transition that was essentially "oh, maybe a couple bucks, so cheap you won't even notice."
It didn't matter what the critics and critiques said though, Stern got a promotion from the knighthood, so now he's Baron Stern of Brentford, of Elsted in the County of West Sussex and of Wimbledon in the London Borough of Merton. Lord Stern to his friends.
He also got a vice-chairmanship at IDEAglobal, parent at carbon consultancy IDEAcarbon
Stern also has a comfy endowed chair at the LSE and is Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Some of the folks who weighed in on the Review and said he was playing fast and loose....
We have dozens/hundreds/ more posts just on the economics of global warming, much less policy and business and science and regulation finance and....
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