UNEP Emissions Gap Report highlights benefits of tackling climate change

Lord Turner, a former Director General of the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), said: “This report reinforces the clear message that was delivered to policymakers in the recent IPCC report: early action to tackle climate change both reduces cost and reduces risk.

“In short, it’s cheaper and easier to deal with climate change now then to wait for it to get worse. Even delaying significant emission cuts to 2030 would put up the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by almost 50%.

“Conversely, numerous studies show that the cost of building a zero-carbon economy cannot possibly be more than a few percentage points of GDP forgone, and can even be a spur to economic growth.”

The IPCC’s Synthesis Report found that costs of mitigating climate change varied, but estimated that global economic growth would not be strongly affected. The IPCC said that, in business-as-usual scenarios, consumption, a proxy for economic growth, grows by 1.6 to 3 percent per year over the 21st century. Ambitious mitigation would reduce this by about 0.06 percentage points. The New Climate Economy report found that ambitious action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions can go hand-in-hand with economic growth.