Sorry for the lack of updates, my life has gotten very busy in the last little while. In any case, Sir Nicholas Stern visited Canada and told the federal government that combating climate change would not ruin the economy. That’s been one of the primary arguments against aggressively tackling the issue of climate change but if one of the most respected economist says it’s ok, realistically the argument should no longer be valid.

Similar to his speech to the British government, according to Sir Nicholas the cost of inaction would cost many times more than actually acting on the threat of climate change. He estimates it would take just 1% of the world’s GDP to get green house gas emissions under control, hardly an economy killer.

“You can be green and grow,” Sir Nicholas Stern told reporters at the Toronto Stock Exchange. “I do not think it’s a horse race between growth and being responsible on climate change. Good policy can give us both.”

In fact, “most reasonable assessments … would come to the conclusion that the costs of action are far less than the costs of inaction,” said Stern, repeating the main conclusion of the major report for the British government that he presented last fall.
Source: Toronto Star

So what’s the response from the critics? As usual I suspect that they’ll “conveniently” forget what Sir Nicholas Stern has said (as well as all the facts that scientists have been relaying) or perhaps they’ll drag his reputation through the mud in an attempt to silence a top economist. After all that’s what the critics have been doing to climate scientists.