The World in 2030

106 The World in 2030
research and to write a report on climate Change. When
the Stern Review 206 was published in October 2006 it caused
a sensation. Addressing the United Nations Sir Nicholas’s
views were reported as follows:
Mr. Stern warned that ‘even if we are sensible about
climate change and get the emissions down, the climate
is going to change still more than it has’. While
the world was currently experiencing the effects of an
increase in global temperatures of 0.7 degrees Celsius,
he said that ‘even if we act strongly to decrease emissions,
we’ve got another 1.5 to 2.0 degrees centigrade
to come. So we’ve seen maybe a quarter or a third
of temperature increase we’re going to have to cope
with. St. Petersburg, New York, London, Cairo, Cape
Town, Shanghai, Bombay, Calcutta, Dhaka - they’re
all under threat from sea-level rise, and many parts
of the world will be under threat from hurricanes,
typhoons, droughts and floods.’
Mr. Stern also warned that the heatwaves that
killed thousands of people in Europe in 2003 ‘will
probably be standard by the time we get to 2050’,
and the Nile river, which ten countries depend on,
could drop to one half of current water levels in the
second half of this century. However, the ‘business as
usual’ scenario - where no action is taken to reduce
emissions - would lead to changes in the earth’s climate,
he said, ‘that we don’t really understand, absolutely
unprecedented and earth-transforming – the
difference between where we are now and the last
ice age.’ 207