Lord Stern’s response to US presidential election result

Posted on 7 Nov 2020 in

Commenting on the outcome of the 2020 US presidential election, Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment and the ESRC Centre for Climate Change Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said:

“Biden’s victory should set America back on course to play a leading role in global efforts to fight climate change. And the rest of the world is moving, with strong commitments over the last year in Europe, China, Japan, and many countries across the world to go to net zero emissions by mid-century. However, even with America’s re-entry into the Paris Agreement and President Biden’s $1.7 trillion climate plan, we are unlikely to see global action with the urgency and scale we need over the next decade to move fast enough towards net zero to give us a good chance of limiting warming to well below 2°C, unless more countries raise their climate ambitions. The next four years are crucial, and with a US President in office who once again recognises global warming as an existential threat to humanity we have a chance, if we work together, to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. There is much work to do but President Biden’s leadership will be of profound importance.”