Nicholas Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford
Nicholas Herbert Stern, Baron Stern of Brentford ( born April 22, 1946 in London ) is a British economist. He is currently a professor at the London School of Economics and advises the British government on economic issues.
Background, education and academic career
Stern's father was a German socialist who fled from the Nazis to Britain in 1938 and was interned during the Second World War by the British government two years in Australia.
Nicholas Stern studied mathematics at Cambridge University and economics at Oxford University, where he received his doctorate in 1972 Philosophiae Doctor. After that, he spent over 20 years as a professor of economics at various universities: 1970-1977 at the University of Cambridge from 1978 to 1987 at the University of Warwick and from 1986 to 1993 at the London School of Economics.
Nicholas Stern is married and father of three children.
Time at the EBRD and the World Bank
From 1994 to 1999 he was chief economist of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In his work he dealt mainly with economic growth and development. Through him, and his former colleague Horst Köhler, the Bank acquired a high reputation among financial experts. During this time he also wrote several books about Kenya and the Green Revolution in India.
From 2000 to 2003 he was chief economist of the World Bank.
Theses on climate change
→ Main article: Stern Report
On 30 October 2006, Nicholas Stern published the Stern Review, in which he examined the economic consequences of future climate change. The report was, in particular by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, requested in July 2005 by the British government and should address the economic aspects of climate change, the challenges it brings to the economy and how to meet them, both in the UK and around the world.
His most important statements in the report are that you must act quickly to stop global warming, because the economic costs of climate change would be much higher than the economic damage that would be caused by a rapid intervention today. According to Stern, expenditures for research on technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would have to be doubled and both rich and poor countries to work together to stop climate change.
The CO2 content of the air should be kept until the year 2050 under 550 parts per million of equivalent parts (2011: about 390 ppm before industrialization about 280 ppm). Then we could just learn to live with the consequences of another 2-3 degrees Celsius. For that we have to incur on its own model now about 1 percent of our gross national product. These costs would be far less than the expected damage by drought, flood, wind, heat or cold, and it provoked global migrations. The deceleration of the CO2 increase process would require a 60-80 percent reduction in CO2 emissions for our developed economies. We could not take the risk and hope for a technological solution such as a " CO2 vacuum cleaner ". Very important is also the positive effect of reforestation. In any case, governments would have to raise the price of CO2 emissions by means of taxes and quotas drastically to eliminate the " catastrophic market failure" that CO2 emissions currently would cost almost nothing.
2009 Stern himself called for a renunciation of meat for environmental reasons.
Honors
- Member of the British Academy (1993 )
- Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Appointment as a Knight Bachelor (2004)
- Honorary doctorate from the University of Warwick (2006)
- Honorary doctorate from the Technical University of Berlin (2009 )
- Corine - International Book Prize (2009) for The Global Deal
Publications
- The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al 2007, ISBN 0521700809th
- The Global Deal: How do we tackle climate change and create a new era of growth and prosperity. Beck, Munich 2009, ISBN 3,406,591,760th