Ten years to save the planet from mankind

The economist Sir Nicholas Stern’s report on climate change will paint an apocalyptic picture over 700 pages of where global warming could lead, arguing that, unless we act, it will cost more than two world wars and the Great Depression of the Thirties and render swaths of the planet uninhabitable. Even if the world stopped all pollution tomorrow, the slow-growing effects of carbon already pumped into the atmosphere would mean continued climate change for another 30 years – with sea levels rising for a century.

Nor, he will say, is unilateral action by one country enough: if Britain closed all its power stations tomorrow, within 13 months China would fill the gap left in global emissions. Given that the effects will be felt around the world – from the collapse of the Amazonian rainforest to the melting of Greenland’s ice sheet and changes in the Indian monsoon – the response must be global, too.
Observer