Stern unhinged

“Governments should increase borrowing to tackle global warming despite the dire state of public balance sheets, according to Lord Stern of Brentford, the former chief economist of the World Bank.

The author of the 2006 Stern Review on the cost of tackling climate change said he was an expert in dealing with tough budgetary constraints and acknowledged that the current public debt was “worrying”.

But he believes that the irreversible nature of climate change means that extra pressures on the public balance sheet are justified.

“What I’m saying is that we should be prudent with public finances, but if we were to ask future generations: would you rather have a desecrated earth or more debt, then the answer would be they would like to have more debt,” he told The Sunday Telegraph, after giving a speech this week. “You can get out of debt, but you can’t get out of the other. It’s one of the few cases where there’s actually an argument for more borrowing. There’s a logical justification to it.”” “Borrow to the hilt to stop global warming, says Lord Stern“