I've almost finished Nicholas Stern's Blueprint for a Safer Planet, his (relatively) popular version of the Stern Review of 2007 on climate change, and by chance got the latest email about a couple of rather climate-change-skeptical articles in World Economics. Some economists are amongst the most consistent and articulate critics of the fundamental Stern argument that we must sacrifice 1-2% of GDP a year immediately in order to avert the irreversible catastrophic effects (including economic effects) of climate change in future.

The economists' arguments against him fall broadly into three categories:

1) The science is less certain than received wisdom believes, and the economic modelling by the IPCC is flawed, so the Stern case is greatly over-stated. David Henderson is a leading advocate of this view and is author of one of the World Economics papers. I think Stern would simply reject it, although he doesn't address it directly in the book.

2) The amount that should be spent now to avert climate change isn't as high as Stern suggests because he overlooks the fact that future generations will be richer than we are due to economic growth, and better able to afford the actions needed.  Stern's main counter-argument is that irreversible and catastrophic increases in emissions will make future generations poorer in fact than we are. He also says these critics (who include William Nordhaus) use an inappropriate discount rate to make their calculations and should turn back to Meade-style applied policies that were in much wider use in the 1970s to determine an appropriate discount rate.

3) Finally, the other World Economics Paper, based on a Marshall Institute pamphlet by Bryan Buckley and Sergey Mityakov, argues that the avoidance and abatement costs proposed in current US climate change plans imply such a high loss of welfare that we need to be certain that the costs of climate change make it worth while. They, like Stern, estimate the ball park cost of action now to be 1% of GDP. They think this is large, whereas he thinks it is small.

The fundamental question it seems to me is whether or not the climate change under way is a game-changer. Will it fundamentally change the economic geography of the planet or not? If yes, the kind of cost-benefit trade-offs in these responses are irrelevant. If no, the urgency of taking action is somewhat alleviated. My experience talking to people I know in either business or personal contexts is that the economics arguments are academic in the sense that it has become the widely accepted view that we must all try to reduce CO2 emissions. Perhaps it's still different in the Exxon boardroom but business in general is committed to assessing and reducing environmental impacts – apart from anything else, it's a good discipline for saving money and increasing productivity. But it would be a mistake to dismiss the skeptical economists too. They are serious people whose arguments deserve serious engagement. In his book, Stern is too impatient and dismissove of them, I think. They do have political traction, apart from anything else.

The book is a mixed bag. It's an excellent overview of the issues, more concise and far less technical of course than the review. However, it assumes a fair amount of climate change knowledge – too many acronyms and calculations about CO2 concentrations which are far too dense. I also found it too evangelistic. This is a serious matter & I come done on Stern's side of the argument, but a calmer tone would have been more persuasive.