14 December 2011 Radio 4 Today programme, 12.12.2011

Transcript of Sarah Montague's interview with Lord Nicholas Stern on Radio 4's Today programme, 12.12.2011.

Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and the Centre of Climate Change and Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics, who  wrote the landmark report for the last Government on the cost of Climate Change – known as the Stern Report – appeared on the Today Programme and reminded us very clearly why we should be concerned about the outcome of Durban.

Presenter, Sarah Montague: They’ve reached a deal everybody seems very happy about but is it enough? And does it move quickly enough?

Lord Stern: It doesn’t move quickly enough but it’s a significant step forward. It could have been much worse if things had unravelled in Durban, we would’ve gone backwards and we would’ve been moving even slower. So it is important, it is significant, but we have to accelerate, but it could provide us with the platform for that acceleration.

Sarah Montague : Ok, now when we look at the acceleration, what is required? What we are always told is that what we do not want is temperatures to rise to 2^oC above pre-industrial levels, but this is the 1990 level. If they left it to 2015 to sign the deal that didn’t come into force until 2020, would that door be closed forever?

Lord Stern : If would be extremely difficult.  It’s 2^oC above the 19^thCentury level we are looking for.  If you go above that you run the risk of feedbacks like the collapse of the Amazon forest, the thawing of the permafrost; the former losing a very important carbon sink, and the latter, releasing lots of methane, so that’s why people talk about 2^oC.

Sarah Montague : Because its irreversible?

Lord Stern : Because it could start off processes that could become irreversible. If we got to 3^oC we would be at temperatures we haven’t seen for 3 million years on this planet. We have been around as humans, as homosapiens for 200,000 years, so it would take us right outside the range of any human experience. It probably would involve lots of people moving because of where we are, because of the rivers, the seashore, and the ports, and the weather, and climate, and so on..... it would be very dangerous to let it go beyond the 2^oC story and the trouble is we’ve already accumulating so much greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and we are continuing to add to that at a pretty rapid rate, and that’s why delay is dangerous. It’s a rachet effect.

Sarah Montague : Because we limit our room for manoeuvre?

Lord Stern : We limit our room for manoeuvre because once it is up there, the greenhouse gases are very difficult to get out, and the later your leave it, the more you locked into a high carbon capital and infrastructure, so it makes change more difficult, so delay is dangerous.

Sarah Montague : Is the difficulty, though, the politics of this; the USA and China are keen to sign up to what they’ve effectively agreed to do through negotiations. And some people think that actually, this is not the way to go;  you can spend years and years trying to get something that replaces Kyoto when actually the best thing to do is for each country to do their own thing. In a sense it’s that aggressive, bilateral approach. Britain says, “We are going to do this. What are you going to do?”

Lord Stern : This bottom up story fits with the top down of the international agreement. China took on their targets at Copenhagen and confirmed them at Cancun last year, the last such meeting before Durban. In the context of what other people were doing, now China has translated those targets into the twelfth Five Year Plan which was adopted in March of this year and they’re getting on with it.  It becomes law in China and it becomes a criteria by which the leadership is judged by the Party and the people. You see you have this two-way story. If you see international agreements moving along, however staggeringly, in a certain direction, in the direction of tightening up on greenhouse gase emissions, then the countries have more confidence that their actions will be useful because others will be moving ahead and they see the opportunities in the new low carbon revolution. They see this as a big, expanding industrial story, its industrial revolution. So the two things feed off eachother.

Sarah Montague : Five years ago you said that if we acted now about climate change, it would cost effectively 1% on global GDP;  you obviously haven’t done all the data again, do you have some sense of what it would cost now, particularly given the situation we are in, if we would try to deal with it now?

Lord Stern:

I would think about investment levels. I don’t think the cost language captures all the story but I think investment levels will probably need to be around 2% extra to embark on this ‘low carbon’ Industrial Revolution. But, they would be investments with real learning returns, you discover, you find out new things, just like you do, and we did, in past industrial revolutions and waves of technological change, and they had benefits, which in terms of energy security, cleaner, quieter, a safer way of producing and conserving and much more viable, so these investments will have to be substantial. I think I would now put them at 2% of GDP because of the delay, and because of the increased danger which society is pointing to. We should see them as investments, an exciting journey, and they will have real returns beyond simply the fundamental one of reducing the very severe, immense risks of climate change.

Sarah Montague : Lord Stern, thank you very much.