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NICHOLAS STERN
NICHOLAS: The world faces two very big challenges in 2009. One is the world economy, which is
slowing down and in many places quite a strong recession. We have to work on the recovery
and that means big spending and big tax cuts in quite a few countries in the world in order
to get it back going again and many of thing that it's going to be 2010 before some of
the rich countries really starts to move and grow positively once more, including, I think
the UK and then the USA. That's one of our big challenges. Second is that we have to
come to an agreement as a world on climate change and a whole global [INAUDIBLE] setting
out what we're all going to do on climate change by December 2009, December this year
in Copenhagen. And those are the two big challenges. And those two big challenges in my view are
linked. A difficult time when people need to be, need to get back to work. Is a time
when we can think about how to do things differently, and how to do them in a much greener way.
And many of the green things actually need job quickly and are more labor intensive and
energy efficiency, better insulated houses, those are clear examples of that. So we have
an opportunity as we push for our green, as we push for our recovery, to make that recovery
green. And, at the same time, lay the foundations for a very strong agreement in Copenhagen
on how to cut greenhouse emissions at the end of this year. So let's take these two
crises, the economic crisis and the politic crisis, and put them together. It would be
great to hear what you think about how we can handle these two crises and these are
the subjects [INAUDIBLE] World Economic Forum, where I am now, and they're going to be the
subjects when the G-20 gets together, that's the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the
most important countries in the world, the 20 biggest as it were countries in the world
in terms of economics. They're getting together in April 1st and 2nd in London and this is
the time when we need to grapple with those decisions and your views on how we tackle
the economic crisis and the climate crisis at the same time would be extremely valuable.