[3][4] After attending Latymer Upper School,[citation needed] Stern studied the Mathematical Tripos and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in maths at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1967.

At the time, he ceased to be a second permanent secretary at the Treasury, though he retained the rank until retirement in 2007; the review team he headed was based in the Cabinet Office.

It was reported that Stern's time at the Treasury was marked by tensions with his boss, Gordon Brown:[9] ... several Whitehall sources told The Times that Mr Brown did not like some of the advice he received from Sir Nicholas, including some "home truths" about long-term trends in the economy and he never broke into the chancellor's tight-knit inner circle.

He subsequently lacked a real role and spent most of his time working on major international reports on global warming and alleviating poverty in Africa.

His doom-laden report on the risks of failing to address climate change, published in October, caused tensions within the Government by triggering a debate on environmental taxes and leading to calls for big policy changes.The Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change was produced by a team led by Stern at HM Treasury, and was released in October 2006.

The problem of climate change involves a fundamental failure of markets: those who damage others by emitting greenhouse gases generally do not pay[10]Regulation, carbon taxes and carbon trading, along with pollution permits and property rights, are recommended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Some economists support Stern's choice of discount rate (Cline, 2008;[23] Shah, 2008[18] Heal, 2008)[24] while others are critical (Yohe and Tol, 2008;[25] Nordhaus, 2007).

Writing in the Daily Telegraph newspaper, columnist Charles Moore compared the Stern Review to the UK Government's "dodgy dossier" on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

[33] In 2009, he published the non-fiction literary work, The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity.

In 2009, he also became a member of the International Advisory Council of the Chinese sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corporation.

After the successful United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris (mid-December 2015), Stern appeared optimistic, saying, "If we get this right, it will be more powerful than the Industrial Revolution.

[40] In October 2021, Stern released a working paper stating that economists had grossly undervalued young lives in relation to the climate crisis.

[45][46][47] On 18 October 2007, it was announced that Stern would receive a life peerage and was to be made a non-party political peer (i.e. would sit as a cross-bencher in the House of Lords).

He was duly created Baron Stern of Brentford, of Elsted in the County of West Sussex and of Wimbledon in the London Borough of Merton on 10 December 2007.

At the after-showing webcast panel discussion[57] was director Franny Armstrong, journalist George Monbiot, and the Met Office head of climate impacts Richard Betts.

In 2009 Nicholas Stern lent his support to the 10:10 project, a movement encouraging people to take positive action on climate change by reducing their carbon emissions.

[60] Stern was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2014[61] in recognition of his work challenging the world view on the economics of climate change.

[citation needed] "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License."