The Scope for “Green Growth” and a New Technological Revolution

There is much evidence that high-carbon growth will eventually become a contradiction in terms, or, as Lord Stern puts it, “High-carbon growth would kill itself” (Stern, 2010a). This chapter considers the implications for growth of the findings of the literature on climate change mitigation costs and then considers the additional elements to the emerging “green growth” narrative. The broad conclusion is that well-designed action against climate change could improve well-being for people in the near term as well as over the longer term. A concerted attack on market and policy failures to halt climate change would increase static efficiency and might generate higher growth in the short to medium term as well as the longer term, especially if it stimulated innovation and investment. This perspective, if sufficiently convincing to negotiators, could make reaching an international agreement post-Durban easier, reducing the emphasis on burden-sharing. But the potential size of near-term gains is highly uncertain, and it may still make sense from an ethical perspective to make greater sacrifices now to underpin sustainable development in the future.