Climate change policy has been in the news a lot recently with the United Kingdom set to release its report on the economic costs of climate change today. I’ve had a chance to read the highlights and find myself increasingly convinced that we have reached a tipping point in a decades-long campaign for a more environmentally-sustainable economy.

I’ve long felt that we need to reinvent the economy around a set of policies, practices, technologies, and institutions that will bring human activity within the limits imposed by the long-term carrying capacity of the planet. Perhaps climate change will at last be the issue that forces us to reconcile our need to sustain growth and lift living standards around the world with the need to perserve the ecological systems that sustain life.

The study was led by Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist who now serves as Chancellor Gordon Brown’s right-hand man. With the moral and scientific arguments for tackling climate change surely beyond doubt at this stage, this report is distinguished by its thorough economic analysis of the consequences of climate change (If you don’t have time to read the full report, I found this shorter discussion paper particularly useful in both its presentation of the facts and its framing of the issues in standard economic analysis).

Stern’s clout in policy circles, his economic credentials, and his perceived objectivity in this debate will put climate change skeptics on the defensive. Most detratctors have argued (on economic grounds) that efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions will cost too much and deliver too few measurable benefits to justify the kind of radical economic, social, political, and technological retooling required to transition our carbon-dependent economies toward more sustainable foundations. Stern has provided the perfect counterwieght - arguing that acting now will cost as little as one fifth the amount we will be forced to pay in the future if we continue to drag our heels on climate change.

If Stern is right, the skeptic’s arguments will be exposed for what they are: short-sighted, selfish, and empirically bankrupt attempts to justify doing nothing in the face of growing evidence that global warming will disproportionately affect the world’s poorest people and almost surely compromise the standard of living enjoyed by future generations. What’s more, Stern has revealed that climate change will saddle the world’s richest nations with enormous mitigation costs and result in dire economic consequences that could rival those of the Great Depression.

Among the anticipated findings is the revelation that unabated climate change could wipe out up to 20% of global GDP, displace 200 million people, cause widespread water shortages, and render vast expanses of the planet uninhabitable. Neil Adger, an economist at the Tyndall Centre for climate change research, has pointed out that the economic costs detailed by Stern do not properly account for things that may be immensely valuable but are currently impossible to quantify (such as the extinction of species and cultures) given our existing economic tools and frameworks. It all sounds rather apocalyptic, but this is not, afterall, coming from Greenpeace, but from a internationally renown economist. Stern recommends that governments spend $1 for every $100 in national income (or 1% of GDP) over the next 50 years to curtail the worst effects of climate change.

With public concern growing, the UK is starting to get serious about climate change. A range of new green taxes (primarily on transport) are being considered and the Guardian is reporting today that the UK government has hired Al Gore to sell the case for taking action to Americans! It remains to be seen how the Bush administration will react to the report - I suspect they will dismiss it and probably even denigrate it, and we will likely have to wait until a new administration comes in before any serious happens at the federal level.

Despite that, there’s lots happening at the state and local levels, with Arnold Schwarzenegger setting an ambitious target to make California (the world’s 5th largest economy) carbon neutral and dozens of city mayors around the country joining forces to find ways to reduce the carbon imprint of their cities. It seems, as in so many other cases, that the most important actions that one can take in fighting climate change are ultimately local.

Stern’s report makes it perfectly clear that there is still a great deal of work required to fully assess how climate change — along with our efforts to mitigate it — will affect economic growth. It’s also clear, however, that the very process of adapting to a low-carbon future will create economic opportunity for companies that 1) learn how to operate more efficiently and 2) develop appropriate technologies, products, and services. To this end, there’s lots of interesting debate on climate change happening around the blogosphere. Here are a few blogs and resources I’ve been following.

Real Climate - “Climate Science from Climate Scientists” - a great source of information and debate within the climate science community.
Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) has good data and interesting interactive maps that explore the impact on climate change on the artic.
Climate Wire aggregates news from around the world.
David Suzuki Foundation - a good resource on the science of climate change and other environmental issues.
Rocky Mountain Institute is full of ideas about how to make business both sustainable and profitable.
Climate Change Action - news and views from the UK climate change advocacy community.
Climate Denial - “Explores the topic of our deep and profound denial of climate change- with observations and anecdotes about our weird and disturbed response to the problem.”
World Climate Report - for a skeptical, but responsible debate on climate change.