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This [climate change] is potentially so dangerous that we have to act strongly. Do we want to play Russian roulette with two bullets or one?

Nicholas Stern

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Nicholas Stern
Age: 78
Born: 1946
Born: April 22
Economist
Politician
University Teacher
Hammersmith
London
Nicholas Stern
Nick Stern
Nicholas Herbert Stern
Bullets
Russian
Strongly
Climate
Dangerous
Two
Change
Roulette
Play
Potentially

More quotes by Nicholas Stern

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Greenhouse gas emissions: Ultimately, stabilisation - at whatever level - requires that annual emissions be brought down to more than 80% below current levels
Nicholas Stern
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Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet
Nicholas Stern
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Climate change will affect the basic elements of life for people around the world - access to water, food production, health, and the environment. Hundreds of millions of people could suffer hunger, water shortages and coastal flooding as the world warms.
Nicholas Stern
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Looking back, I underestimated the risks. The planet and the atmosphere seem to be absorbing less carbon than we expected, and emissions are rising pretty strongly. Some of the effects are coming through more quickly than we thought then.
Nicholas Stern
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The basic scientific conclusions on climate change are very robust and for good reason. The greenhouse effect is simple science: greenhouse gases trap heat, and humans are emitting ever more greenhouse gases.
Nicholas Stern
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I've never really had much of a career plan, and interesting opportunities kept cropping up.
Nicholas Stern
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The record rainfall and storm surges that have brought flooding across the UK are a clear sign that we are already experiencing the impacts of climate change.
Nicholas Stern
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I think it's important that people think about what they are doing and that includes what they are eating. I am 61 now and attitudes towards drinking and driving have changed radically since I was a student. People change their notion of what is responsible. They will increasingly ask about the carbon content of their food.
Nicholas Stern
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We run enormous risks and we know what kind of reductions of greenhouse gases are necessary to drastically reduce risks. Reducing emissions by half by 2050 is roughly in the right ballpark. It would bring us below 550 ppm.
Nicholas Stern
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The US will increasingly see the risks of being left behind, and ten years from now they would have to start worrying about being shut out of markets because their production is dirty.
Nicholas Stern
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If you look at all the serious scientists in the world, there is no big disagreement on the basics of this...it would be absolute lunacy to act as if climate change is not occurring.
Nicholas Stern
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As an undergraduate, I did maths and physics. That doesn't make me a scientist. So I try to read and understand and talk to scientists.
Nicholas Stern
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My father's generation's crisis was fighting fascism. Ours is fighting climate change. It is much harder because you can't see it, it is not an obvious threat. But the solution is in our hands.
Nicholas Stern
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How is it that, in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence, there are still some who would deny the dangers of climate change? Not surprisingly, the loudest voices are not scientific, and it is remarkable how many economists, lawyers, journalists and politicians set themselves up as experts on the science.
Nicholas Stern
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You'd see more floods like you've seen in Mozambique in 2000, you'd see more droughts like you saw in Kenya in the late 1990s, there would be a serious threat to the water flow down the Nile on which 10 countries depend.
Nicholas Stern
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Science and policy-making thrive on challenge and questioning they are vital to the health of inquiry and democracy.
Nicholas Stern
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Adaptation can efficiently reduce the costs of climate change while atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are being stabilised
Nicholas Stern
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Meat is a wasteful use of water and creates a lot of greenhouse gases. It puts enormous pressure on the world's resources. A vegetarian diet is better.
Nicholas Stern
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If coal is going to be used, the only response - because it is the dirtiest of all fuels - is that we have to learn how to do carbon capture and storage and we have to learn how to do it quickly on a commercial scale.
Nicholas Stern
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Climate change represents the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen
Nicholas Stern