El Informe Stern

Más del “informe Stern”, que va en camino a convertirse en una especie de “protocolo de los sabios de Sion” o “El Capital” del ambientalismo internacional. Honestamente impresiona la total ausencia de pensamiento crítico con que la prensa y gran parte del público toma estas cosas. Ya escuché a varias “talking heads” locales hablando del tema como si se tratara de la Verdad Revelada.

Este es el punto de vista de Bjorn Lomborg, el autor del "The Skeptical Environmentalist":

The report on climate change by Nicholas Stern and the U.K. government has sparked publicity and scary headlines around the world. Much attention has been devoted to Mr. Stern's core argument that the price of inaction would be extraordinary and the cost of action modest.

Unfortunately, this claim falls apart when one actually reads the 700-page tome. Despite using many good references, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is selective and its conclusion flawed. Its fear-mongering arguments have been sensationalized, which is ultimately only likely to make the world worse off.


Si siguen con ganas de leer sobre esto, les recomiendo este otro artículo en Opinion Journal:

Two scientific events of note occurred this week, but only one got any media coverage. Therein lies a story about modern politics and scientific priorities.

The report that received the headlines was Monday's 700-page jeremiad out of London on fighting climate change. Commissioned by the British government and overseen by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, the report made the intentionally shocking prediction that global warming could eliminate from 5% to 20% of world economic output "forever." Meanwhile, doing the supposedly virtuous thing and trying to forestall this catastrophe would cost merely an estimated 1% of world GDP. Thus we must act urgently and with new taxes and policies that go well beyond anything in the failed Kyoto Protocol.

The other event was a meeting at the United Nations organized by economist Bjørn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center. Ambassadors from 24 countries--including Australia, China, India and the U.S.--mulled which problems to address if the world suddenly found an extra $50 billion lying around. Mr. Lomborg's point is that, in a world with scarce resources, you need priorities. The consensus was that communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition and hunger, and education were all higher priorities than climate change.