Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon is spearheading a study sponsored by seven countries into the economics of climate change, seeking to set out the benefits of reducing carbon emissions.
Calderon’s panel aims to draw from the experience of companies and governments around the world in fighting off the ravages of storms and droughts and cutting greenhouse gases. It will also use academic research to show the costs and risks associated with climate change and efforts to stem it, publishing a report next September to guide policymakers.
The effort by a group that includes Unilever NV Chief Executive Officer Paul Polman and former leaders of Chile, New Zealand and Mozambique is designed to guide global envoys as they devise a new treaty to fight climate change in 2015. Britain, Colombia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, South Korea, Norway and Sweden are sponsoring the panel.
“For many decision makers in government and business there is a trade-off whereby combating climate change means sacrificing economic growth, job creation or business revenues,” Calderon told reporters on a conference call. “We believe that the trade-off between economic growth and fighting climate change is a false dilemma.”
The panel, called the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, also includes business leaders such as Vattenfall AB Chief Financial Officer Ingrid Bonde, China International Capital Corp. CEO Zhu Levin and officials from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
Calderon’s Cridentials
Calderon a former chairman of state oil producer Petroleos Mexicanos, was Mexico’s president for six years through December 2012. He oversaw a UN climate change conference in Cancun in 2010 and pushed through Mexico’s first climate change law in 2012.
United Nations scientists this week are putting the finishing touches on their most comprehensive report into the science of climate change, and are due to publish a summary of their findings on Sept. 27. A draft of the document seen by Bloomberg shows sea level forecasts for the end of the century are higher, and temperature-rise predictions are lower than those made in the UN’s last major assessment in 2007.
The report will build on an effort in 2006 by the U.K. government led by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern that said the impacts of global warming could cost the world as much as 20 percent of economic output, compared with the 1-percent cost of containing the problem.
Stern Report
Stern, a member of Calderon’s panel, said there’s been “a tremendous amount of experience both in what’s happened in the world and in terms of the analysis” since then.
“The whole problem looks even riskier than we described it in the Stern review,” Stern said. “Emissions are rising faster than had been anticipated and many of the things are coming through more quickly than we anticipated, an example being the Arctic ice,” which is melting faster than predicted.
The world has also seen “remarkable technological change” since 2006, with solar power prices coming down by a factor of six or seven, advances in hydraulic fracturing that’s using large amounts of water to tap new reserves of oil reserves and the recession all being events that need to be included in the new analysis, Stern said.
The research will be led by seven institutions around the world. They are: the Climate Policy Initiative in San Francisco, the Ethiopian Development Research Institute, South Korea’s Global Green Growth Institute, the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, the Stockholm Environment Institute, Tsinghua University in Beijing and the Washington-based World Resources Institute.
“We know it is possible to have economic growth and job creation while fighting climate change as part of a new kind of economy: a growing economy with ever-lower carbon emissions,” Calderon said. “If we can demonstrate that that is possible, many decision-makers and businessmen can choose more responsible environmental policies.”
