Nicholas Stern: 'I got it wrong on climate change – it's far, far worse'

[Nederland]

72. How many times do you have to make the same mistake?

Despite the general perception that agriculture in temperate latitudes will benefit from increased seasonal heat and supply food to deficit areas, even mid-latitude crops will likely suffer at very high temperatures in the absence of adaptation.

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen people make the same stupid assumption when it comes to almost any form of change. A person looks at what impact the given change will have, assumes that people will continue to behave exactly as they do today, and then writes up conclusions about how horrible it will be.

The problem is people don't behave that way.

They never have, they never will. When change occurs, people's behavior changes in response. The assumption that a farmer who is growing wheat will continue to grow wheat long after growing conditions have made growing wheat unproductive is idiotic. People are not stupid. If something stops working they do something different. That's why the papers that I linked to, which attempt to determine the impacts of climate change given the assumption that farmers will switch to whatever crop makes the most sense in the new conditions, give a better idea of what will happen as a result of climate change.