Plenty of regular American’s don’t believe in global warming. Maybe it’s because we’ve come to define problems as those that affect our pocket books.

Well if the British government is right, we’re likely to become a nation of believers. A report out today says global warming could shrink the world’s economy by 20 percent.

The report’s author, British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, says tackling the problem now would cost about 1 percent of global gross domestic product.

Gordon Brown, Great Britain’s chancellor of the treasury and heir apparent to Prime Minister Tony Blair, says in today’s Guardian newspaper that Britain — the home of the industrial revolution, where coal smoke was known as London Fog — must convince the rest of the world that the future must be low carbon.

He said: “Now it is time to move towards a global system - as Stern challenges us to do - so we propose a long-term framework, a worldwide carbon market; not the old way of rigid regulation, but the modern way: working with the market, harnessing its power to set a global price for carbon, incentivising the most efficient and innovative ways of tackling climate change.”

Brown announced that Great Britain was entering a partnership with Brazil, Paupua New Guinea and Costa Rica to protect rain forests, which soak up carbon dioxide. And the Brits are working with China and India on clean coal burning technologies.

No mention of working with the U.S. government, although former U.S. veep and presidential candidate Al Gore has been hired as an advisor on environmental issues. Gore’s movie, An Inconvenient Truth, sounded the alarm throughout the globe, especially in this country where we’ve had a disconnect with nature in recent years. I’m glad Gore figured out that the way to a Modern American’s mind is through a DVD and surround sound.

For more, Global Warming ‘Threat to Growth’