Will Climate Change Cost the Earth? An update on the science

Nobody set out to destabilise the world’s climate. The people who built the power stations and the motor cars were not evil, they were actually the heroes of their generation. Their machines advanced human welfare and created our western civilisation. However, we have now discovered that the fossil fuels that power the machines are changing our world’s weather. To give up the machines means giving away our way of life. It’s no wonder people are frightened into inaction. I believe we can fix this problem, not by turning our backs on the industrial revolution, but by building on what it has created for us. We just need to change the way we power our machines. What we need are economic drivers that will guide our economy into the next great phase of industrial development- that will unleash the technical innovation that we require. The reasons we have been slow to act on climate change is because people are confused by the science and, until very recently, they have been conned into believing that the economy will fall into a recession and they’ll lose their job and their house if we take action to fix the problem. As a consequence, we are unable to form a balanced view of the risk we are taking. The world’s pre-eminent scientists are telling us that we could be facing (best estimate, to us