Climate chaos coming: UK

Global disaster warning

U.K. economics report calls for bold action on climate change

Raising the stakes in the global warming dispute with the United States and China, Britain issued a sweeping report yesterday warning of a calamity on the scale of the world wars and the Great Depression unless urgent action is taken.

The British government also hired former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, who has emerged as a powerful environmental spokesman since his defeat in the 2000 U.S. presidential election, to advise it on climate change, a clear indication of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s growing dissatisfaction with U.S. environmental policy.

The 700-page The Economics Of Climate Change report tries to persuade the world that environmentalism and economic growth can go hand in hand in the battle against global warming. But it also says that if no action is taken, rising sea levels, heavier floods and more intense droughts could leave 200 million people displaced by the middle of the century. The report said unabated climate change would eventually cost the world between 5 per cent and 20 per cent of global gross domestic product each year.

Blair called for “bold and decisive action” to cut carbon emissions.

The report by Nicholas Stern, a former chief World Bank economist, said that acting now to cut greenhouse gas emissions would cost about one per cent of global GDP each year.

ASSoCIATED PRESS-CANADIAN PRESS

canadian reaction

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has rejected the Kyoto emissions-cutting targets as unachievable but he has not formally pulled Canada out of the treaty endorsed by the previous Liberal government.