Climate Change Costs: Stern Review Update

The costs of climate change are going up, warns Alex Bowen, the senior economist on the team that produced the seminal Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. But a global green recovery could cut those costs.

Published by the UK government in 2006, the Stern Review has been hugely influential in the climate change debate. Why was it so important?

The Stern Review brought climate change to a broader audience by analyzing the economic costs and benefits of halting climate change using measures people are familiar with.

We showed that the impact of uncontrolled climate change would be like losing up to 20 percent of world GDP now and forever in the future. We concluded that doing nothing is likely to be much more expensive than decarbonizing our economy.

Climate science has become more alarming since the Stern Review was published. Have you revised your original conclusions?

The Stern Review was based upon the science available up to 2005. Recent evidence about sea level rises, changes in water supply, and the social costs of climate change, has suggested the impacts of unrestrained climate change would be higher than 20 percent of GDP. We don