Climate change will make us pay - LSE

On the podcast of the London School of Economics (LSE public lectures and events) was a lecture by Professor Geoffrey Heal held on May 6th: Controversies in the Economics of Climate Change. In this lecture Heal goes over the economic cost climate change will cause.

His starting point is that the scientific question about Climate Change has largely been decided. There is wide consensus the climate is changing. Heal's subject is to take these established facts and evaluate, as well as possible, what the cost of these changes are. He emphasizes that these issues are still widely debated, hence the controversies of climate change, but the way he deals with them is by suggesting that only the size of the cost is debatable. There will be costs and they are enormous.

His analysis range from rather accurate like his esteem that the costs of the rising sea level will go over 1% of GDP, to completely unknown. The damages to the ocean, the warming of the climate are factors that he thinks are hard to enumerate. natural disasters and the disappearance of a multitude of species are impossible to range. On all accounts the costs are gigantic. It is not a happy lecture for the worried. Yet one, I feel, you must have heard.

On a side note. LSE also had a lecture called Urban Nomads which pays attention to the enormous stream of migration within China. The audio of this lecture is rather poor, the content is secondary (we listen in on a tape that is being played) and the subject is handled in a very anecdotal fashion. I cannot recommend this particular issue of LSE's podcast.

More LSE Events:
Nudge: decision architecture,
The EU and the Middle East,
The British Mandate in Palestine,
Iran Today,
Science and Religion.