Now, the British Government agrees -- global warming will bring economic disaster.
Basque News and Information Channel:
"Disaster is not set to happen in some science fiction future... but in our lifetime. Unless we act now... these consequences, disastrous as they are, will be irreversible," Blair said while introducing the report.
Unchecked global warming will devastate the world economy on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression, a major British report said Monday.
Introducing the report, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said unabated climate change would 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.
Report author Sir Nicholas Stern, a senior government economist, said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about 1 percent of global GDP each year. "The evidence shows that ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth," said Stern's 700-page report, the first major effort to quantify the economic cost of climate change."
"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."
I'd add that by denying global warming, you miss out on economic gains. Fighting global climate change will create new technologies, new industries, and new markets. Denying global warming because of short term costs is incredibly foolish. Bush's assertion that signing on to Kyoto will hurt the US economy is pure freakin' idiocy.
I said it back in July and I'm still saying it now; "If you're a dick and everything has to be about money before it becomes really important, then global warming is all about money."
Tags: news politics global warming economy science disaster Bush UK
