Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
from Davos Notebook:
A climate deal: easier than trade?
Conventional wisdom has it that if the leaders of the world can't agree on a round of negotiations to liberalise world trade then there's no chance they will agree on measures to tackle climate change.
After all, a pact to cut greenhouse gas emissions will involve re-tooling vast swathes of industry and impact the way companies do business from Boston to Beijing.
But is that view right? British economist Nicholas Stern - author of a seminal report in 2006 on the economic fallout of global warming - thinks not.
"Actually, agreement on climate change, I think, will be easier than agreement on trade," he told reporters in Davos. "People understand climate change much better than trade."
