Sir Nicholas Stern and Experts Will Discuss Economics of Climate Change at Yale

New Haven, Conn. — The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization will host a presentation and discussion of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change on February 15.

 The event, highlighting Sir Nicholas Stern, head of the Review team, and a group of climate change experts, will take place in Sprague Hall, 470 College St., from 10 to 4:30 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

The Stern Review, launched in October of 2006 under the auspices of the British government, along with the Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last Friday in Paris, together have brought new attention and intense focus to the issue of global warming. They both have concluded that the cause of the climate system’s warming is man-made and have projected the long-term effects of global warming should the international community not take action now.

The Yale event will give voice to many of the contentious issues surrounding the global warming debate.  During the morning session, Sir Nicholas along with members of his team will present the report and its findings.  Following this presentation, Chris Hope of the University of Cambridge will discuss the synthesis of information from the science and economics of climate change and the PAGE integrated assessment model that was used in the report, which he developed. Gus Speth, dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, will offer closing remarks.

The afternoon will be devoted to a discussion of the Stern Review and its findings by a group comprised of some of the most knowledgeable, distinguished and eloquent scholars active today.  Among the group are vocal critics as well as supporters of the Review’s major findings.

Afternoon participants include William Nordhaus, the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale; Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University; Robert Mendelsohn, the Edwin Weyerhaeuser Davis Professor of Forest Policy at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies; Gary Yohe, the Woodhouse/Sysco Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University; Scott Barrett, director of the International Policy Program and professor of environmental economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies; and William Cline, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and the Center for Global Development.

Moderating both the morning and afternoon sessions will be Ernesto Zedillo, director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and the former president of Mexico. The event at Yale will be the most comprehensive and rigorous discussion in the U.S. to date of the Stern Review and the only one pairing Sir Nicholas and his team with such an esteemed panel of experts.

The Stern Review, commissioned by the U.K. government, was presented to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown on October 30, 2006, generating immediate publicity and sparking intense debate about its findings and its policy proposals.

The report itself was a massive undertaking and resulted in a volume of almost 700 pages.  Under the leadership of Sir Nicholas, the former Chief Economist at the World Bank, the Stern Review was produced by a team of over 20 individuals and consultants from around the world. The team’s mandate was to bring analysis and evidence to the table for the purpose of understanding, promoting action, and shaping policy about climate change.  The first part of the report examines impacts, risks, costs and targets. The second half of the report focuses on policies.

The Yale Center for the Study of Globalization is devoted to examining the impact of our increasingly integrated world on individuals, communities and nations.  Protecting shared environmental resources is one of the Center’s core issues and was the subject of a major conference in 2005 on Global Warming: Looking Beyond Kyoto.