December 14, 2006 9:29AM 

# NYT Nails Stern Review 

By [Jerry Taylor](https://www.cato.org/people/jerry-taylor) 

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OK, *The New York Times per se* has not weighed in with harsh criticism, but [Prof. Hal Varian](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Varian) of U. Cal. Berkeley, a contributor for the NYT’s excellent “Economic Perspectives” column, [weighs in today](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/14/business/14scene.html) with a nice summary of the problematic assumptions made by Sir Nicholas Stern in the oft-quoted [Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change](http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/independent_reviews/stern_review_economics_climate_change/stern_review_report.cfm). For those who don’t recall, Stern argued that it makes sense to spend 1 percent of the world’s GDP to reduce greenhouse gas emissions because the costs associated with those emissions might total anywhere between 5–20% of global GDP some time down the road.

Regular readers here will notice that Prof. Varian’s arguments closely mirror those I made earlier on this page (for the curious, [here](https://www.cato.org/2006/11/28/nordhaus-vs-stern/) and [here](https://www.cato.org/2006/11/29/dasgupta-vs-stern/), with a minor correction to the latter [here](https://www.cato.org/2006/12/07/dasgupta-corrected/)).

So [it’s not just me folks](https://www.cato.org/2006/11/30/its-official-economists-think-sterns-nuts/).….

##### Related Tags 

[Energy and Environment](https://www.cato.org/research/energy-environment), [General](https://www.cato.org/general) 

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