IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/econjl/v132y2022i644p1259-1289..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Time for Action on Climate Change and a Time for Change in Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Nicholas Stern

Abstract

The case for action on climate change with urgency and at scale rests on the immense magnitude of climate risk, the very rapid emissions reductions which are necessary, and that there is a real opportunity to create a new and attractive form of growth and development. The analysis must be based on a dynamic approach to the economics of public policy, set in a complex, imperfect and uncertain world. The economics of climate change, and further, economics more broadly, must change to respond to the challenge of how to foster rapid transformation. It is time for economics and economists to step up.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicholas Stern, 2022. "A Time for Action on Climate Change and a Time for Change in Economics," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 132(644), pages 1259-1289.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:132:y:2022:i:644:p:1259-1289.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/ueac005
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin L. Weitzman, 2012. "GHG Targets as Insurance Against Catastrophic Climate Damages," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 14(2), pages 221-244, March.
    2. Nordhaus, William D, 1991. "To Slow or Not to Slow: The Economics of the Greenhouse Effect," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 101(407), pages 920-937, July.
    3. Ströbel, Johannes & Wurgler, Jeffrey, 2021. "What do you think about climate finance?," CEPR Discussion Papers 16622, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Lamperti, F. & Dosi, G. & Napoletano, M. & Roventini, A. & Sapio, A., 2018. "Faraway, So Close: Coupled Climate and Economic Dynamics in an Agent-based Integrated Assessment Model," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 315-339.
    5. Francesco Bosello & Carlo Carraro & Enrica De Cian, 2010. "Climate Policy And The Optimal Balance Between Mitigation, Adaptation And Unavoided Damage," Climate Change Economics (CCE), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 1(02), pages 71-92.
    6. Stern, Nicholas, 2018. "Public economics as if time matters: Climate change and the dynamics of policy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 4-17.
    7. Simon Dietz & Nicholas Stern, 2015. "Endogenous Growth, Convexity of Damage and Climate Risk: How Nordhaus' Framework Supports Deep Cuts in Carbon Emissions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 0(583), pages 574-620, March.
    8. William R. Cline, 1992. "Economics of Global Warming, The," Peterson Institute Press: All Books, Peterson Institute for International Economics, number 39, October.
    9. Marcin Czupryna & Christian Franzke & Sascha Hokamp & Jürgen Scheffran, 2020. "An Agent-Based Approach to Integrated Assessment Modelling of Climate Change," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 23(3), pages 1-7.
    10. Martin L. Weitzman, 2009. "On Modeling and Interpreting the Economics of Catastrophic Climate Change," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 91(1), pages 1-19, February.
    11. John Hassler & Per Krusell, 2012. "Economics And Climate Change: Integrated Assessment In A Multi-Region World," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(5), pages 974-1000, October.
    12. Stern, Nicholas, 2015. "Why Are We Waiting? The Logic, Urgency, and Promise of Tackling Climate Change," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262029189, December.
    13. Sir Nicholas Stern, 2006. "What is the Economics of Climate Change?," World Economics, World Economics, 1 Ivory Square, Plantation Wharf, London, United Kingdom, SW11 3UE, vol. 7(2), pages 1-10, April.
    14. Yongyang Cai & Timothy M. Lenton & Thomas S. Lontzek, 2016. "Risk of multiple interacting tipping points should encourage rapid CO2 emission reduction," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 6(5), pages 520-525, May.
    15. Arnulf Grubler & Charlie Wilson & Nuno Bento & Benigna Boza-Kiss & Volker Krey & David L. McCollum & Narasimha D. Rao & Keywan Riahi & Joeri Rogelj & Simon Stercke & Jonathan Cullen & Stefan Frank & O, 2018. "A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies," Nature Energy, Nature, vol. 3(6), pages 515-527, June.
    16. Frances C. Moore & Delavane B. Diaz, 2015. "Temperature impacts on economic growth warrant stringent mitigation policy," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 5(2), pages 127-131, February.
    17. William D. Nordhaus, 2007. "A Review of the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 45(3), pages 686-702, September.
    18. Noah Kaufman & Alexander R. Barron & Wojciech Krawczyk & Peter Marsters & Haewon McJeon, 2020. "A near-term to net zero alternative to the social cost of carbon for setting carbon prices," Nature Climate Change, Nature, vol. 10(11), pages 1010-1014, November.
    19. Dmitry Yumashev & Chris Hope & Kevin Schaefer & Kathrin Riemann-Campe & Fernando Iglesias-Suarez & Elchin Jafarov & Eleanor J. Burke & Paul J. Young & Yasin Elshorbany & Gail Whiteman, 2019. "Climate policy implications of nonlinear decline of Arctic land permafrost and other cryosphere elements," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 10(1), pages 1-11, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Eoin McLaughlin & Cristián Ducoing & Les Oxley, 2024. "Tracing Sustainability in the Long Run: Genuine Savings Estimates 1850–2018," NBER Chapters, in: Measuring and Accounting for Environmental Public Goods: A National Accounts Perspective, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. J. Doyne Farmer & John Geanakoplos & Matteo G. Richiardi & Miquel Montero & Josep Perelló & Jaume Masoliver, 2024. "Discounting the Distant Future: What Do Historical Bond Prices Imply about the Long-Term Discount Rate?," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 12(5), pages 1-25, February.
    3. Sanjit Dhami & Paolo Zeppini, 2024. "Green Technology Adoption under Uncertainty, Increasing Returns, and Complex Adaptive Dynamics," CESifo Working Paper Series 10900, CESifo.
    4. Sanjit Dhami & Narges Hajimoladarvish & Pavan Mamidi, 2023. "Climate Change Risk, and Human Behavior: Theory and Evidence," CESifo Working Paper Series 10678, CESifo.
    5. Sanjit Dhami, 2023. "Green Technology Adoption, Complexity, and the Role of Public Policy: A Simple Theoretical Model," CESifo Working Paper Series 10364, CESifo.
    6. Carlsson, Fredrik & Johansson-Stenman, Olof & Kataria, Mitesh, 2024. "How Much Liberty Should We Have? Citizens versus Experts on Regulating Externalities and Internalities," Working Papers in Economics 841, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics.
    7. Haonan Yang & Liang Chen & Huan Huang & Panyu Tang, 2022. "Measurement and Spatial-Temporal Evolution Characteristics of Low-Carbon Cities with High-Quality Development: The Case Study of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-23, August.
    8. Rushton, Michael, 2022. "The Economic Approach to Public Funding for the Arts," MPRA Paper 113405, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Jordi Solé, 2023. "Climate and Energy Crises from the Perspective of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Trade-Offs between Systemic Transition and Societal Collapse?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-15, January.
    10. Josse Delfgaauw & Otto H. Swank, 2023. "The Political Economy of Commitment to Policies," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 23-060/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    11. Zhongqi Xie & Ying Zhang & Zhiqiang Fang, 2022. "High-Quality Development Evaluation and Spatial Evolution Analysis of Urban Agglomerations in the Middle Reaches of the Yangtze River," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-16, November.
    12. Yubin Zhao & Shuguang Liu, 2023. "Effects of Climate Change on Economic Growth: A Perspective of the Heterogeneous Climate Regions in Africa," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(9), pages 1-22, April.
    13. Guimbeau, Amanda & Ji, Xinde James & Long, Zi & Menon, Nidhiya, 2023. "Ocean Salinity, Early-Life Health, and Adaptation," IZA Discussion Papers 16463, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Stern, Nicholas, 2022. "A time for action on climate change and a time for change in economics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 113456, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Stern, Nicholas, 2021. "A time for action on climate change and a time for change in economics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112802, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    3. Stern, Nicholas, 2021. "A time for action on climate change and a time for change in economics," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112808, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    4. Rising, James A. & Taylor, Charlotte & Ives, Matthew C. & Ward, Robert E.t., 2022. "Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 114941, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Rising, James A. & Taylor, Charlotte & Ives, Matthew C. & Ward, Robert E.T., 2022. "Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    6. Richard S.J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have not changed over time," Working Paper Series 0821, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    7. Richard S. J. Tol, 2021. "Estimates of the social cost of carbon have increased over time," Papers 2105.03656, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2022.
    8. Buchholz Wolfgang & Heindl Peter, 2015. "Ökonomische Herausforderungen des Klimawandels," Perspektiven der Wirtschaftspolitik, De Gruyter, vol. 16(4), pages 324-350, December.
    9. Mark Budolfson & Francis Dennig & Marc Fleurbaey & Asher Siebert & Robert H. Socolow, 2017. "The comparative importance for optimal climate policy of discounting, inequalities and catastrophes," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 145(3), pages 481-494, December.
    10. Simon Dietz & Anca N. Matei, 2013. "Is there space for agreement on climate change? A non-parametric approach to policy evaluation," GRI Working Papers 136, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    11. Kent D. Daniel & Robert B. Litterman & Gernot Wagner, 2016. "Applying Asset Pricing Theory to Calibrate the Price of Climate Risk," NBER Working Papers 22795, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Hjort, Ingrid, 2016. "Potential Climate Risks in Financial Markets: A Literature Overview," Memorandum 01/2016, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    13. Lint Barrage, 2019. "The Nobel Memorial Prize for William D. Nordhaus," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 121(3), pages 884-924, July.
    14. Marco Letta & Richard S. J. Tol, 2019. "Weather, Climate and Total Factor Productivity," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 73(1), pages 283-305, May.
    15. van der Ploeg, Frederick & ,, 2018. "Pricing Carbon Under Economic and Climactic Risks: Leading-Order Results from Asymptotic Analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 12642, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    17. Riccardo Rebonato & Riccardo Ronzani & Lionel Melin, 2023. "Robust management of climate risk damages," Risk Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 25(3), pages 1-43, September.
    18. Simon Dietz & Nicholas Stern, 2014. "Endogenous growth, convexity of damages and climate risk: how Nordhaus� framework supports deep cuts in carbon emissions," GRI Working Papers 159, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
    19. Nicholas Stern, 2013. "The Structure of Economic Modeling of the Potential Impacts of Climate Change: Grafting Gross Underestimation of Risk onto Already Narrow Science Models," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 838-859, September.
    20. Yongyang Cai & William Brock & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2023. "Climate Change Impact on Economic Growth: Regional Climate Policy under Cooperation and Noncooperation," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 10(3), pages 569-605.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:econjl:v:132:y:2022:i:644:p:1259-1289.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press or the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/resssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.