Why are we waiting? The logic, urgency, and promise of tackling climate change, Nicholas Stern
Nicholas Stern has become an absolutely central figure in the international climate change 'scene' and this book, published before the Paris Agreement, evidences this fact clearly both because he makes a pretty good guess about what will come to be agreed at the Paris 'Conference of the Parties' (or COP 21) at the end of 2015 and because his list of acknowledgements and consultees reads like a global register of key political and economic actors, from the UN, China, India, the EU, North America and the UK. There are deep and wide ranging connections between food security and climate change, as many of the articles and book reviews in this journal have indicated. Projected climate changes will affect where crops can grow and the kinds of typical weather patterns that farmers and agribusinesses will encounter; increases in carbon dioxide are extremely likely to acidify the oceans and impact marine sustainability; and some land use policies related to greenhouse gases (such as increases in biofuels production or attempts to increase forest cover) will have a direct impact on the amount of land available for food production. Accordingly, Stern's book is of critical interest to analysts of food security even if is not a conventional contribution to the food security literature. Stern is, of course, internationally famous for being the establishment figure who made the economic argument for tackling climate change. His core achievement was to shape a compelling case that it is economically rational to act since the costs of addressing climate change are much lower than the harms that will result. Thus, even if it were to cost 2 trillion dollars to fix the issue, that would be less than 3% of total global income in any given year. This is surely a lot of money but at the same time it is not much more than the amount the world economy would grow annually on average. Thus, if we make that 'investment' soon, by 2051 we will be as rich as we would have been in 2050 on business as usual assumptions and climate change (which quite possibly would have disrupted our business as usual societies) will have been averted. Even the biggest enthusiast for economic growth can see that that's not a significant sacrifice at all; it would be money well spent. In this book he repeats his claims about this economic logic, but puts additional stress on the urgency of action because time is critical in two senses. The first is that greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere a long while. Failure to make deep cuts in emissions soon will mean that the 'stock' in the atmosphere will build up, and that will mean more warming for decades. Cutting now is much better than cutting later, both for the environment and for our economies. But there is also a societal lag. If we don't start making provision for emission cuts now, we are almost certain to carry on building more coal fired power stations, more petrol driven cars and so on; then we are likely to continue to use these items precisely because they are there and because it makes economic sense to exploit them.We have to envisage a low carbonway of living, and start to live it, right away. His latest arguments also have a very strong global implication. If humankind is to stay on a path that gives a good chance of remaining within 'only' two degrees of warming as the UN and IPCC propose then we need drastic cuts quickly. For Western Europe, Japan and North America this means getting very close to zero emissions in less than two decades. This is a very big demand and one that is not yet fully reflected even in the emissions reductions plans of countries (such as the UK) that have legally mandated carbon targets. Steven Yearley steve.yearley@ed.ac.uk
Food Security