The second in a three-part interview with economist Nicholas Stern on climate policy. Read the first part, in which he argued that failure to address global warming could eventually lead to World War Three.

Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s most prominent climate economists, believes that the fight against global warming will lead to the next industrial revolution.

In the second part of an exclusive interview with ThinkProgress, Stern describes the scale of the challenge to wean civilization off its dependence of unsustainable fossil fuels. Since the consequences of failure are on the almost unimaginable scale of global war, this challenge is a necessary one. Stern is actually inspired by the scope of action, recognizing that the investment to transform the global economy to be cleaner, safer, and healthier will unleash a new industrial revolution:

We essentially, if we’re to give us say any reasonable chance, call it fifty-fifty, for two degrees centigrade as the limit on the temperature increase — of course, it’s only a probability. Nothing is certain in risk management. If we were to try to do that — it’s a bit ambitious from where we are. If we were to try to do that, and I think we should, we would see emissions having to fall from close to fifty billion tons of CO2 equivalent down to below twenty over forty years, between now and 2050. If we manage ourselves sensibly as a world including our climate, of course, in other ways too, you might see world income grow by a factor of three over forty years. So you’ve got to divide emissions per unit of output by three times 2.5: by a factor of seven or eight. Divide by seven or eight.

That, by anybody’s standards, is an industrial revolution.

So, action is to promote an industrial revolution.

So that’s what we’ve got to look at to see what that means. We probably would have to invest as a world one or two percent more for some decades, maybe two, three decades. We’ll find out how many as we work our way through. You’ll probably have to invest one or two percent of GDP extra, which is quite a significant story. But a pretty minor investment to make for the kind of massive risk reduction I’ve just described.

Watch it:

Although there is growing recognition that “leadership in the new clean energy economy” is “a contest that America cannot afford to lose,” too many politicians in Washington are committed to the defense of the oil and coal industries against any change. The belief that the fight against carbon pollution is a threat to the economy is still pervasive, when the very opposite is the reality.

UPDATE2: Explosion rocks plant, officials assume partial meltdown

UPDATE:  Japanese officials, “are working under the presumption” that there have been partial meltdowns at two reactors, said Yukio Edano, the Chief Cabinet Secretary.

An explosion rocked one of Japan’s nuclear power plants, causing a portion of a building to crumble, sending white smoke billowing into the air and prompting Japanese officials to warn those in the vicinity to cover their mouths and stay indoors.

In what may become the most serious nuclear power crisis since the Chernobyl disaster, the explosion followed large tremors at the Fukushima Daiichi No. 1 reactor Saturday afternoon, injuring four workers who were struggling to get the quake-stricken unit under control.

Earlier, Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency had warned that the reactor, whose cooling system had been crippled by the giant earthquake on Friday, could be nearing a meltdown and that two radioactive substances, cesium and radioactive iodine, had already been detected nearby.

The full extent of the blast remained unclear, but footage on Japanese television showed that the walls of the building housing the reactor crumpled, leaving a skeletal metal frame, according to the Associated Press.

UPDATE:  That’s the WashPost at 8:04 AM EST Saturday.   It doesn’t appear the siting and fail-safe design of this plant was sufficiently thought out, given that Japan is situated along the Ring of Fire, “where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur.”

Here’s ABC News, which notes in its sub-hed “Nuclear Scientists Warn of ‘Very Serious’ Radioactive Event if Japanese Reactor Not Cooled”:

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Yesterday, while the House Republican controlled Energy and Power Subcommittee passed the Upton-Inhofe bill to kill greenhouse pollution rules, a commissioned report by the Navy concluded that climate change will present national security and economic challenges:

U.S. allies and their militaries will face national security challenges similar to those faced by the United States and its naval forces as a result of climate change. [...] Among the many manifestations of climate change projected for the next several decades, sea-level rise is both highly certain to occur and highly certain to come with economic costs. [...] As a result of reduced multiyear ice, the Arctic Ocean is rapidly acquiring the types of maritime activities in the summer months that normally occur elsewhere in the world’s ice-free oceans.

The Department of Defense has also found that global warming poses a threat to national security, and concluded that climate-induced crises could destabilize entire regions and increase the power of terrorist organizations.

The military, as opposed to the climate denying Republicans, have realized that respected scientific bodies across the world have unequivocally concluded that global warming is occuring. Navy Rear Admiral David Tilley, a meteorologist and Navy oceanographer, has said that global warming is real, “an issue that affects our national security,” and the “greatest challenge of the 21st century.”

-Paul Breer