Stern warning

On Monday the debate over climate change enters a new phase. Sir Nicholas Stern, who heads the Government Economic Service, will publish his review of the economics of climate change, which was commissioned by the Chancellor in July 2005. At last the debate on the environment will shift definitively towards the real choices facing the country and facing the world, and — we hope — away from the token gestures and feel-good rhetoric which have held sway thus far.

Until now, economics has been conspic-uously absent from the climate change debate. We have heard a lot of science, much of it badly explained to the public. What we have not had is meaningful analysis of the economic consequences of climate change: what choices do we have to mitigate its effects and how much will these choices cost us; or, if we decide to do nothing, what will that cost us in terms of tackling sea-level rise and the spoiling of some agricultural land? On these points, debate has been conducted mostly at a banal level, guided by the weather in London.