Cutting the Cost: The economic benefits of collaborative action on climate change
- 21 September 2009
"Cutting the Cost" shows how action to cut CO2 emissions can increase both GDP and employment in all major economies, with global collaboration significantly cutting the cost of climate change mitigation.
The report builds on previous economic analysis by Lord Stern and the IPPC but, for the first time, shows that benefits of jobs and GDP growth will accrue to all countries, with carbon costs falling dramatically when there is global participation.
The findings indicate that, under a global deal involving all countries, ambitious efforts to cut emissions can:
- Create as many as 10 million new jobs in 2020
- Generate additional economic growth worth as much as the green stimulus packages recently adopted by major governments
- Enable a more than 15-fold reduction in carbon price (from $65 per tonne of CO2 to $4 per tonne of CO2).
- It also shows that adopting low carbon technologies will accelerate sustainable development in developing countries.
The economic costs of tackling climate change have long been a point of debate for academics, politicians and business leaders and have proved one of the major obstacles to more ambitious international action on climate change, explaining in large part the world's failure so far to put itself decisively on a low carbon development path.