Global warming cost: $7 trillion

LONDON: Failure by governments to take bold action against global warming in the next decade could cost the world up to 7 trillion dollars, a report warns.

Excerpts of a 700-page report to be released on Monday by Sir Nicholas Stern, a former World Bank chief economist, also show that rampant climate change could turn 200 million people into refugees amid drought or flood.

The Observer weekly, which published the excerpts it says is the first heavyweight contribution of an economist rather than a scientist on the phenomenon, also said failure to act would trigger a global recession.

“This will give us an argument to make,” said a British government source. “I think we are at a tipping point in terms of the debate, as we were at a tipping point in 2004-2005 in terms of the science.”

The Stern Review was commissioned by Britain’s cabinet office a year ago to understand better the nature of the economic challenges and how they can be met.

The Observer said the cost of climate change would amount to up to 7 trillion dollars.

Unless the world acts, it costs more than World War I, World War II and the Great Depression of the 1930s while rendering large parts of the planet uninhabitable, The Observer said.

Even if the world stopped polluting immediately, it said, the slow-growing effects of carbon already in the atmosphere would continue to warm the planet for another 30 years, with sea levels rising for a century.