Sir Nicholas Stern, Head of the Government Economics Service for the British government, was tasked with creating a report about the effects of global warming from an economic prespective. 

The result was the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.  This is an extremely important, well-respected treatment of the topic from one of the world’s foremost economists.  The report itself is worth of distribution to the highest levels of government and industry.

Since it is a formidable work, here is a link to the four-page ‘short form’ of the Executive Summary.  This alone will wake many people if high places up to the seriousness of the threat.  Sometimes (quite often in fact) ‘less is more’.