The environment was prominent on the program of The Economist’s World in 2010 conference this week. Some particularly interesting points:
Joe Lockhart, Founding Partner and Managing Director, The Glover Park Group:
- The rest of world is going ahead on climate change. If the United States steps away from leading on climate change again, it will continue our slide away from global leadership in general.
Gary Lawrence, Urban Strategies Leader, Arup:
- People at the Chinese Academy of Sciences are telling him that “we’re using your debt” to create a green system “that will run the world.”
- Fifty-two percent of the US economy is located in coastal zones that would be affected by a one-meter rise in sea level.
Gawain Kripke, Director of Policy and Research, Oxfam America:
- Climate change is the single greatest threat to global poverty reduction.
Vijay Vaitheeswaram, Healthcare Editor, The Economist:
- New nuclear power will not be viable in Western, liberalized energy markets; only places like China where the cost of investment does not matter will be able to use it.
Twitter: @Geofutures
(Image courtesy Rob Brewer, Flickr)
I attended the Economist’s World in 2010 conference this week. The economic outlook was cautiously positive.
Carmen Reinhart, Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for International Economics, University of Maryland:
- A rapid V-shaped recovery is unlikely, as the conditions are not in place.
- The revenue hit inflicted by the recession will accelerate the arrival of problems associated with paying for rising health care and Baby Boom retirement costs in the US.
- There is no natural successor to the dollar in view. The dollar has Treasuries behind it, but the euro has no unified debt market.
- A “Tobin Tax” on financial transactions would have to be orchestrated globally, or it would simply push business to markets that declined to implement it.
Leo Abruzzese, Economist Editorial Director, North America:
- By the 3rd quarter of 2011, world economic growth will not be back even to 2003 levels.
- The US economy will reach its 2007 size by the 3rd quarter of 2011. It will have taken 16-17 quarters, much worse than other recessions in recent decades.
- The US banking crisis is not over, and many more small- and medium-sized banks will still get in trouble.
- In China, stock and property bubbles are forming, and are likely to pop within 2 to 3 years.
- China should overtake Japan as the world’s second largest economy in the next few months.
Twitter: @Geofutures
(Image copyright FutureAtlas.com, usable with link and attribution)
This week Brendan Borrell suggested in the New York Times that it was time to reconsider the status of Antarctica.
Antarctica is now effectively an international, stateless, demilitarized zone, on the basis of the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Many countries have land claims, but they effectively put them aside when they sign the treaty, as most powers have.
Borrell advocates dropping the treaty and letting nations claim pieces of Antarctica, as he thinks that national interests would drive stronger environmental protection. This could lead to significant downsides, however:
- Opening up national claims could expand environmental abuses, both in the fisheries that concern Borrell and on land. Do we really want Chinese and Russian companies to have free rein in parts of the continent?
- Abandoning the treaty would mean stepping away from a system that has been remarkably successful in fostering cooperation and non-militarization, even at the height of the Cold War. Borrell himself notes the British and Argentines exchanged gunfire in Antarctica before the treaty.
- Letting the treaty lapse would open up Antarctica to competition just as climate change may make exploitation of polar resources more plausible, setting the state for more conflict.
Perhaps instead the treaty could be strengthened, especially those aspects dealing with marine conservation?
(Image courtesy Eli Duke, Flickr)