Leading Environmental Economist: ‘I Was Wrong In Climate Change’

by Stuart Shapiro

Nicholas Stern, who wrote an influential British report on climate change in 2006, has modified his views.

Stern, who heads up the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, says that the “atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly.” Some of the effects of the rising temperatures are becoming evident more quickly than initially predicted. The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change claimed there was a 75 percent chance that global temperatures would increase by two or three degrees above average. But now Stern believes the world is “on track for something like four.”

Stern listens to the data and the data says that the planet is getting warmer faster than we thought it was.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.