IT TAKES A WORLD TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE

Costs of climate change deal would drop with truly global agreement, says report; Climate Group says full collaboration between rich and poor countries would help reduce costs of reaching carbon targets
Suzanne Goldenberg, 21 September 2009 (UK Guardian)

"A truly global climate change deal — with full collaboration from the developed and developing world — would dramatically reduce the costs of dealing with global warming and moving to a clean energy economy, [according to Breaking The Climate Deadlock; Cutting the Cost - The Economic Benefits of Collaborative Climate Action from former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s] Climate Group…

"The report said a broad-based [international] agreement with ambitious targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions would amplify the potential cost savings and benefits — including job creation and rise in GDP — of dealing with climate change…[S]uch a deal could create up to 10m new jobs by 2020, stimulate additional economic growth and accelerate sustainable development in developing countries."

click to enlarge

"Costs of carbon would also drop dramatically, said the report, the more countries join a global trading agreement to help meet targets on reducing emissions…Researchers at Cambridge found that a tonne of carbon would cost $65 for the European Union — if operating alone — to cut its emissions by 30% over 1990 levels. But if the US joined an agreement, the price of carbon would fall to $28. The carbon cost could drop much lower — to about $4 a tonne — if there were a "global green new deal" involving developed and developing countries agreed at the Copenhagen climate change meeting in December, the researchers found.

"…[The] agreement would have to be carefully constructed to encourage the rapid development of cleaner cars, and more efficient power stations and buildings, the report warns. Less ambitious targets would mean lower gains in terms of GDP and job creation…[The report] used computer simulations of economic activity, energy generation and greenhouse gas emissions developed by the Cambridge centre for climate change mitigation and Cambridge Econometric to make cost estimates of a range of scenarios."

click to enlarge

"It [was] released at the start of a week…focused on climate change…[A New York] is aimed at getting industrialised countries to commit to deep cuts in carbon emissions…G20 leaders [in Pittsburgh] will take on the increasingly contentious issue of climate finance: how to fund the move to cleaner energy technology in developing countries as well as protect the poorest countries who are the most vulnerable to surging seas and extreme temperatures brought by climate change.

"…[The Cutting The Cost report] seeks to build on earlier findings from the Stern review and others that it will cost far less to act now to mitigate man-made climate change than to deal with its catastrophic consequences…The benefits of a truly global deal would arrive through the greater efficiencies of economies of scale, knowledge sharing, and expanded trade and markets in new technology…The models showed slight increases in GDP under all the scenarios — though the greatest gains were in the event of a global agreement. In that case, projected global GDP would register a 0.8% increase over GDP with no climate action in 2020…There would also be more jobs created — 10 million by 2020 under a global deal compared with 1.1 million jobs if the EU acts alone."