The Relentless Logic of Sir Nicholas Stern

"CO₂, as a stress factor, differs in impact from all other factors we know of. It's global, it's highly damaging and it's extremely difficult to manage economically and in terms of regulation. It's a stock-flow problem. It does more damage as time passes. That's why we need to act now."

The economist Lord Stern is one of those rare people who can present a message so clearly and logically that it's almost impossible to contradict him. His calculations of the economic consequences of climate change in the so-called "Stern Review" have made him world-famous. He makes it crystal clear that the world needs to invest time and money in cutting CO₂ emissions, even during one of the most grueling recessions ever.

Why not just kick the climate debate out of the park for now and delay a global agreement until we've returned to economic growth and are able to do something about these problems?

"This isn't like the WTO, where you can fail to reach an agreement and then come back five years later and more or less catch up from where you left off. If you fail to make a climate agreement and come back in five years' time, you are in a much worse position, because the flows off greenhouse gases build up the stocks of carbon in the atmosphere each year. That's the relentless logic of science."

Monday Morning meets Lord Stern of Brentford during an international summit for climate researchers at Copenhagen's Bella Center. This will also be the venue of the U.N.'s climate summit for politicians in December and the World Business Summit on Climate Change at the end of May.

But although Stern may be on a wavelength with climatologists, he is not here for back-patting. He's is here to provoke, and to move the climate debate forward. Neither climatologists nor economists can hide from his remorseless logic.

"A lot of economists are not taking the threat of climate change seriously enough. They don't realize how fast damage is happening. One of the reasons is that you haven't explained it clearly enough," Stern chastises the 2,000 climatologists.

When Monday Morning asks Stern to explain his criticisms in an interview, it becomes obvious that not only climate researchers are in his line of fire. "I think there is still a strong challenge to science and scientists to communicate better. I don't want to sound negative, because I think they have got the story across pretty well. But the key challenge remains: To get politicians and public to recognize the magnitude of the climate risks. We must do that before COP15."

But what more is there to say about climate science and what more can climatologists say that hasn't already been said?

"Well, science can keep underlining two things: Firstly, that the risks are bigger than we thought, and – as exactly and explicitly as they can – how big those risks are. Secondly, what the corresponding opportunities are in terms of technology, food production and so on. I believe this is increasingly the direction science is taking."