Economic forecasts predicting the potential impact of climate change have grossly underestimated the reality and delayed global recovery efforts by de

'War' footing needed to correct economists' miscalculations on climate change, says professor

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2021-05-24 13:00:04

Economic forecasts predicting the potential impact of climate change have grossly underestimated the reality and delayed global recovery efforts by decades, according to a leading professor.

Mainstream economists "deliberately and completely" ignored scientific data and instead "made up their own numbers" to suit their market models, Steve Keen, a fellow at University College London's Institute for Strategy, Resilience and Security, told CNBC on Friday.

"Fundamentally, the economists have totally misrepresented the science and ignored it where it contradicts their bias that climate change is not a big deal because, in their opinion, capitalism can handle anything," Keen told "Street Signs Asia."

Keen said the repercussions of climate change were foretold in the 1972 publication "The Limits to Growth" — a divisive report on the destructive consequences of global expansion — but economists then and since failed to heed its warnings, preferring instead to rely on market mechanisms.

"If their warnings had been taken seriously and we'd done as they'd suggested, changing our trajectory from 1975 on, we could have done it gradually using things like carbon tax and so on," he said. "Because economists have delayed it by another half century, we are, as a species, putting three to four times the pressure on the biosphere."

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