Climate will add $100B to development costs

One World: Failure to factor climate change into the Millennium Development Goals was a major mistake, Lord Nicholas Stern told a meeting in London this week. "We mustn't make that mistake again," emphasized the former adviser to the British Government on the economics of climate change and development who also headed the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. Because a hostile climate made successful economic growth efforts more costly in developing countries, he said, the cost of achieving the global anti-poverty and healthcare goals might be $100 billion more than expected.

Climate change and development were the two most important problems of the 21st century, he told an audience of several hundred at the London School of Economics, and next year's climate negotiations in Copenhagen would be the world's most important gathering since the Second World War. Failure in tackling either climate change or development would result in failure in tackling the other: "We must have a low carbon growth path that leads to the eradication of poverty. We are talking about de-carbonizing economies."…

Nicholas Stern back in 2000.