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The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity
In October 2006, Nicholas Stern, one of the greatest economists and public intellectuals of our day, made headlines around the world with his report, which reviewed the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming. The world's community has learned that it must act to mitigate global climate change, but until the Stern Review, no one knew how much it would cost, and how to do it. Now, Stern has transformed his report into a powerful narrative book for general readers. The Global Deal evaluates the economic future, and the essential steps we must take to protect growth and reduce poverty while managing climate change. The future Stern outlines is optimistic and pragmatic; he believes we have the capacity and creativity to change. But we need the will to inspire our political leaders to drive a new global strategy.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2009
About the author
Nicholas Stern
35 books12 followersSir Nicholas Stern, Head of the UK Government Economic Service, and a former Chief Economist of the World Bank.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 12, 2021
The Global Deal examines the financial costs of taking action to mitigate climate change from an economic perspective. The book was written by Nicholas Stern, a British economist and academic and Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics.
What he concludes is that the costs of taking action immediately vastly outweigh those that await should we kick the can down the road. Additionally, the switch to renewal energy will have the added benefit of spurring technical innovation and creating numerous jobs in the green energy sector. He then lays out a blueprint for action that considers the resources and needs of key global players.
This should come as no surprise. If your roof were leaking and the cost of repair was $X, you might find that amount costly but if you wait 6 months to fix it your home will likely experience severe water damage to the point where the total costs of repair would then be $10X. Or, you could wait longer still until the house was unlivable, you were suffering immeasurable hardship and the only option available is to tear it down and rebuild from scratch. Needless to say, this latter option is orders of magnitude costlier still and is not exactly an option when your ‘home’ in this metaphor is the earth.
Though not exactly a page turner, I consider The Global Deal to be the best analysis I’ve read to date regarding the economics of climate change. My only quibble is that the book was published in 2008 not long after Barack Obama was elected president of the U.S. at a time when ‘hope’ was not just a campaign slogan, but was tangibly in the air. Taking this as a cue, Stern ends on such a pollyannish note of optimism it brought tears to my eyes … because it was both laughable and depressing by turns given the actual events that were to follow in the coming dozen years.
What he concludes is that the costs of taking action immediately vastly outweigh those that await should we kick the can down the road. Additionally, the switch to renewal energy will have the added benefit of spurring technical innovation and creating numerous jobs in the green energy sector. He then lays out a blueprint for action that considers the resources and needs of key global players.
This should come as no surprise. If your roof were leaking and the cost of repair was $X, you might find that amount costly but if you wait 6 months to fix it your home will likely experience severe water damage to the point where the total costs of repair would then be $10X. Or, you could wait longer still until the house was unlivable, you were suffering immeasurable hardship and the only option available is to tear it down and rebuild from scratch. Needless to say, this latter option is orders of magnitude costlier still and is not exactly an option when your ‘home’ in this metaphor is the earth.
Though not exactly a page turner, I consider The Global Deal to be the best analysis I’ve read to date regarding the economics of climate change. My only quibble is that the book was published in 2008 not long after Barack Obama was elected president of the U.S. at a time when ‘hope’ was not just a campaign slogan, but was tangibly in the air. Taking this as a cue, Stern ends on such a pollyannish note of optimism it brought tears to my eyes … because it was both laughable and depressing by turns given the actual events that were to follow in the coming dozen years.
April 14, 2009
Review by Bill McKibben of The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity, By Nicholas Stern
Nicholas Stern is a very interesting man. A member of the British House of Lords (Baron Stern of Brentford!), he was chief economist of the World Bank and head of the British government’s economic service. In 2005, the UK leadership asked him to undertake an evaluation of the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming, and the report he produced a year or so later became one of the landmark documents in the twenty-year debate over climate change.
What Stern’s team concluded, to be very brief about it, is that the cost of doing nothing about global warming would be very high (larger than the costs of the both world wars and the Depression combined), while the cost of transforming our energy system would be relatively low. In this very lucid and well-written book, he manages to go into detail on those points, mixing in some of the latest science. And as a bonus, he provides a fascinating look at the complicated international politics of climate as we approach this December’s momentous Copenhagen global warming negotiations.
Stern begins where any account of the problem must, with a quick recapitulation of the science. Though he has the annoying habit of using a particularly arcane metric (co2-equivalent concentrations, which includes a variety of other gases and is an unnecessary and obscuring filigree when carbon dioxide is the main problem), his view is based fairly strongly on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He believes that nothing we can do will prevent us from a warming of more than three degrees Fahrenheit (so far we’ve seen about one degree) and he believes really catastrophe lies north of that number, at five or six degrees Fahrenheit. Here his science is perhaps a little out of date—the most recent data indicates that we’re already seeing enormous shifts in the planet’s climate system (the melt of Arctic sea ice and so forth). We now think that we can afford even less carbon in the atmosphere than Stern contends.
But never mind—in any event, the job of curtailing emissions is large enough no matter where you start. As Stern shows through a series of easy-to-follow calculations, U.S. industry will need to be essentially carbon-neutral by mid-century, with much of that change coming in the next decade, and even China will have to reduce the amount of energy it uses per unit of output by as much as 95 percent. That will be the largest short-term task that human beings have ever undertaken—as Stern rightly points out, it’s very much harder than landing a man on the moon. (It’s more like landing everyone on the moon).
If it’s going to happen, we’ll have to hope that all the possible technologies work. Some are clearly coming along nicely—wind is the fastest growing source of electric generation on earth. But others, not so much. Stern is very hopeful about the prospects for sequestering the carbon pouring out of the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. This is so far a techno-fantasy, in that nobody is doing it. And the infrastructure required would be mind-blowingly large—by some estimates you’d need as much piping as the whole petroleum industry has built up over the last century. Still—whether with carbon capture or some other technology—we have to at least try to get this problem under control.
And the good news, Stern insists, is that it’s affordable. It would require about 2 percent of the world’s GDP each year over the next half century, he calculates—and since economies will be growing quickly, we’ll be able to manage that. “Such a payment is not very different from the premium to insure against a small probability of a disastrous outcome,” he writes. “Another way of looking at it is to recognize that such a one-off cost would imply that the world economy would take roughly an additional six months in reaching the level of world income it would otherwise reach by 2050.”
After laying out the basic case, Stern reaches the most interesting part of the book, and the section that’s freshest. In the years since his report was published, he has traveled the globe, meeting with policy-makers and premiers. He offers here a not-very-veiled set of instructions for them to follow in the next seven months leading up to Copenhagen.
There will, he says, be four main players: the EU, the US, China, and India. The Europeans have been at the forefront so far, and doubtless will continue to push the pace. America is clearly back in the game with the election of Obama, though the Congressional politics of passing a bill (never mind confirming a treaty) are large. But if the U.S. acts on domestic legislation sometime fairly rapidly (and Rep. Henry Waxman of California has just put forth a sweeping bill), it “could unlock potential international commitments, particularly from developing countries, in the near future.” In India, the sprawling democracy leads real progress prey to demagogues who will say it balances the world’s carbon budget on the back of the poor—but increasingly Indians re realizing the danger they face from out of control climate change.
It’s China where Stern provides the most interesting analysis. Stern says he made his most recent visit in October of last year, meeting with the highest-level officials, and he is optimistic that they’re ready for a deal. Already, he notes, they’ve passed aggressive mileage legislation for cars, started shutting down inefficient factories, and begun massive reforestation campaigns. They’d like, all things being equal, to keep burning coal, because it’s the cheapest way to keep pulling people out of poverty (and maintain the stability on which Party rule depends). But they recognize their own deteriorating local environment, and more they recognize “that there will be no global deal unless China plays a very strong role: it is a potential deal-breaker. If you know you are vulnerable if a deal fails, and if you know you are a potential deal-breaker, then you have to concentrate.”
The good news, he points out, is that the country is run mostly by engineers, who are capable of engaging the U.S. directly over questions of technology transfer. The conversation will go something like this: we’re going to need our help if they’re going to kick the coal habit. In fact, the whole developing world will require assistance from the rich world—assistance that’s only just, given that we’ve spent centuries filling the atmosphere with carbon, the very act that made us rich. If they’re going to forego that strategy, we’re going to need to help them do so—and help them cope, too, with adapting to the change that’s already too late to avert.
This call for a powerful internationalism is the hallmark of Stern’s book. He points out that this is the first international negotiation in which the developing world comes to the table with leverage. If we design a new regime for controlling carbon, it can’t be run by the west alone, or even mainly. “Climate change is a subject covering the entire planet, and 8 billion of the 90 billion who will be on this planet in 2050 will be from currently developing countries. If this new institution is to work effectively, it must start with a governance structure and with rights to shape and determine decisions which reflect the whole world in an even-handed way.” A tough order of business, for the toughest of problems.
To learn more, visit The Progressive Book Club: http://www.progressivebookclub.com/bl...
Nicholas Stern is a very interesting man. A member of the British House of Lords (Baron Stern of Brentford!), he was chief economist of the World Bank and head of the British government’s economic service. In 2005, the UK leadership asked him to undertake an evaluation of the costs and benefits of dealing with global warming, and the report he produced a year or so later became one of the landmark documents in the twenty-year debate over climate change.
What Stern’s team concluded, to be very brief about it, is that the cost of doing nothing about global warming would be very high (larger than the costs of the both world wars and the Depression combined), while the cost of transforming our energy system would be relatively low. In this very lucid and well-written book, he manages to go into detail on those points, mixing in some of the latest science. And as a bonus, he provides a fascinating look at the complicated international politics of climate as we approach this December’s momentous Copenhagen global warming negotiations.
Stern begins where any account of the problem must, with a quick recapitulation of the science. Though he has the annoying habit of using a particularly arcane metric (co2-equivalent concentrations, which includes a variety of other gases and is an unnecessary and obscuring filigree when carbon dioxide is the main problem), his view is based fairly strongly on the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. He believes that nothing we can do will prevent us from a warming of more than three degrees Fahrenheit (so far we’ve seen about one degree) and he believes really catastrophe lies north of that number, at five or six degrees Fahrenheit. Here his science is perhaps a little out of date—the most recent data indicates that we’re already seeing enormous shifts in the planet’s climate system (the melt of Arctic sea ice and so forth). We now think that we can afford even less carbon in the atmosphere than Stern contends.
But never mind—in any event, the job of curtailing emissions is large enough no matter where you start. As Stern shows through a series of easy-to-follow calculations, U.S. industry will need to be essentially carbon-neutral by mid-century, with much of that change coming in the next decade, and even China will have to reduce the amount of energy it uses per unit of output by as much as 95 percent. That will be the largest short-term task that human beings have ever undertaken—as Stern rightly points out, it’s very much harder than landing a man on the moon. (It’s more like landing everyone on the moon).
If it’s going to happen, we’ll have to hope that all the possible technologies work. Some are clearly coming along nicely—wind is the fastest growing source of electric generation on earth. But others, not so much. Stern is very hopeful about the prospects for sequestering the carbon pouring out of the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants. This is so far a techno-fantasy, in that nobody is doing it. And the infrastructure required would be mind-blowingly large—by some estimates you’d need as much piping as the whole petroleum industry has built up over the last century. Still—whether with carbon capture or some other technology—we have to at least try to get this problem under control.
And the good news, Stern insists, is that it’s affordable. It would require about 2 percent of the world’s GDP each year over the next half century, he calculates—and since economies will be growing quickly, we’ll be able to manage that. “Such a payment is not very different from the premium to insure against a small probability of a disastrous outcome,” he writes. “Another way of looking at it is to recognize that such a one-off cost would imply that the world economy would take roughly an additional six months in reaching the level of world income it would otherwise reach by 2050.”
After laying out the basic case, Stern reaches the most interesting part of the book, and the section that’s freshest. In the years since his report was published, he has traveled the globe, meeting with policy-makers and premiers. He offers here a not-very-veiled set of instructions for them to follow in the next seven months leading up to Copenhagen.
There will, he says, be four main players: the EU, the US, China, and India. The Europeans have been at the forefront so far, and doubtless will continue to push the pace. America is clearly back in the game with the election of Obama, though the Congressional politics of passing a bill (never mind confirming a treaty) are large. But if the U.S. acts on domestic legislation sometime fairly rapidly (and Rep. Henry Waxman of California has just put forth a sweeping bill), it “could unlock potential international commitments, particularly from developing countries, in the near future.” In India, the sprawling democracy leads real progress prey to demagogues who will say it balances the world’s carbon budget on the back of the poor—but increasingly Indians re realizing the danger they face from out of control climate change.
It’s China where Stern provides the most interesting analysis. Stern says he made his most recent visit in October of last year, meeting with the highest-level officials, and he is optimistic that they’re ready for a deal. Already, he notes, they’ve passed aggressive mileage legislation for cars, started shutting down inefficient factories, and begun massive reforestation campaigns. They’d like, all things being equal, to keep burning coal, because it’s the cheapest way to keep pulling people out of poverty (and maintain the stability on which Party rule depends). But they recognize their own deteriorating local environment, and more they recognize “that there will be no global deal unless China plays a very strong role: it is a potential deal-breaker. If you know you are vulnerable if a deal fails, and if you know you are a potential deal-breaker, then you have to concentrate.”
The good news, he points out, is that the country is run mostly by engineers, who are capable of engaging the U.S. directly over questions of technology transfer. The conversation will go something like this: we’re going to need our help if they’re going to kick the coal habit. In fact, the whole developing world will require assistance from the rich world—assistance that’s only just, given that we’ve spent centuries filling the atmosphere with carbon, the very act that made us rich. If they’re going to forego that strategy, we’re going to need to help them do so—and help them cope, too, with adapting to the change that’s already too late to avert.
This call for a powerful internationalism is the hallmark of Stern’s book. He points out that this is the first international negotiation in which the developing world comes to the table with leverage. If we design a new regime for controlling carbon, it can’t be run by the west alone, or even mainly. “Climate change is a subject covering the entire planet, and 8 billion of the 90 billion who will be on this planet in 2050 will be from currently developing countries. If this new institution is to work effectively, it must start with a governance structure and with rights to shape and determine decisions which reflect the whole world in an even-handed way.” A tough order of business, for the toughest of problems.
To learn more, visit The Progressive Book Club: http://www.progressivebookclub.com/bl...
July 11, 2012
We've learned a bit about US politics since Mr. Stern published this hopeful book, but it seems as though the economic case has now been made (in addition to the scientific case whcih was made over a decade ago). Mr. Stern identifies many of the detailed complexities that must be ironed out before a global deal can be reached, and perhaps we have a few years of experience with regional cap & trade programs and advanced technologies to begin a renewed effort towards global consensus. Here's hoping.....
January 25, 2018
Książka napisana w zeszłej dekadzie, a więc przedstawione w niej prognozy utworzenia globalnego ładu na rzecz ochrony środowiska i przeciwdziałaniu zmianie klimatu niekoniecznie się sprawdziły. Warto jednak ją przeczytać, a szczególnie ze względu na cały ambitny plan transformacji, adaptacji i zmiany naszego społeczeństwa, jaki wyłożył w niej Stern.
Read
July 11, 2020Audiobook. Everyone should become familiar with climate change, without emotion.
May 13, 2013
A difficult read that delves into a macro-economic view of climate change. Stern as the UK's chief economist writes an evaluation on the costs of global warming. The costs are on a global scale and his financial projections span decades. Many of the economic calculations are in terms of GDP and a bit difficult to follow.
The main argument revolves around making an investment in preventing climate change rather than a global crisis investment down the road. The cost of transforming our energy system now to cleaner energy is relatively low. Stern goes on to address international discussions between China, USA and Europe.
The main argument revolves around making an investment in preventing climate change rather than a global crisis investment down the road. The cost of transforming our energy system now to cleaner energy is relatively low. Stern goes on to address international discussions between China, USA and Europe.
August 23, 2009
I can't make an honest assessment of this book, since I tried, but couldn't finish it. Pretty dry stuff, between the details of the economics and the details of the science. Stern is an economist, and he makes the case the the world would be better off making a (relatively) small investment now rather than a huge investment later. But I found it a very dry read.
May 8, 2018
Interesting overview, a lot of economics referred to. High hopes for COP19 in this book but we know it fell short. Some interesting policies in this book that have not yet been implemented. We are in a better place in 2020 though, but at the same time climate predictions have improved so the climate situation is worse despite slower emissions growth.
Decent read
Decent read
January 28, 2016
The Global Deal was recommended by The Economist and proved an excellent write-up on the urgency of tackling CO2 emissions. Only a pity I read it after Copenhagen.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews