According to some projections, 3.5 billion people globally will live in unbearable heat by 2070.Īddressing this triple crisis requires reorienting corporate governance, finance, policy, and energy systems toward a green economic transformation. Global warming will cause drinking water to degrade and enable pollution-linked respiratory diseases to thrive. The climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. Without fundamental change, climate change will worsen such problems. For example, we demand the most from “essential workers” (including nurses, supermarket workers, and delivery drivers) while paying them the least. These shortcomings reflect the distorted values underlying our priorities. These include governments’ diminishing capacity to address public-health crises, the private sector’s limited ability to withstand sustained economic disruption, and pervasive social inequality. But the three crises – and their solutions – are interconnected.ĬOVID-19 is itself a consequence of environmental degradation: one recent study dubbed it “ the disease of the Anthropocene.” Moreover, climate change will exacerbate the social and economic problems highlighted by the pandemic. Many think of the climate crisis as distinct from the health and economic crises caused by the pandemic. To avoid such a scenario, we must overhaul our economic structures and do capitalism differently. Under a “climate lockdown,” governments would limit private-vehicle use, ban consumption of red meat, and impose extreme energy-saving measures, while fossil-fuel companies would have to stop drilling. Shifting Arctic ice, raging wildfires in western US states and elsewhere, and methane leaks in the North Sea are all warning signs that we are approaching a tipping point on climate change, when protecting the future of civilization will require dramatic interventions. In the near future, the world may need to resort to lockdowns again – this time to tackle a climate emergency. Private Sector Myths, and, most recently, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism.Īs COVID-19 spread earlier this year, governments introduced lockdowns in order to prevent a public-health emergency from spinning out of control. Mariana Mazzucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, is Founding Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. She is the author of The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. This article was originally published by Project Syndicate and reposted by WBCSD Transition Roadmap for Product Use Area.Sustainable Plastics & Packaging Value chains.Policy and Global Treaty on Plastic Pollution.Policy Advocacy and Member Mobilization (PAMM).
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