The economic
constraint on environmental action can easily be seen by looking at what is widely regarded as the most far - reaching establishment attempt to date to deal with The Economics of Climate Change in the form of a massive study issued in 2007
under that title, commissioned by the UK Treasury Office.7 Subtitled the Stern Review after the report's principal author Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank, it is widely viewed as the most important, and most progressive mainstream treatment of the economics of global warming.8 The Stern Review focuses on the
target level of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) concentration in the atmosphere necessary to stabilize global average temperature at no more than 3 °C (5.4 °F) over pre-industrial levels.