It’s essentially a clarion call for government being heavily involved in the private sector. What is that called, again? Whatever it is, the World Economic Forum is super enthused to push it
Globalization 4.0 will help us tackle climate change. Here’s how
Climate change – arguably humanity’s most existential challenge – requires urgent global action.
As the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report 2019 will show only too clearly, environmental crises – notably a failure to tackle climate change – are among the likeliest and highest-impact risks that the world faces over the next decade. Indeed, 2018 saw record levels of costs due to extreme weather events.
The crisis was given much sharper focus in 2018 by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming at 1.5°C, published in October 2018, says we have just 12 years to act if dangerous climate change is to be avoided. (snip)
This means we also require leadership on climate change from others. We cannot expect governments alone to fix the climate crisis, given the range of competing issues they have to contend with in today’s complex world. Nor should we. It is now well-recognized that it will take an unprecedented level of collaboration and innovation, involving many outside the public sector, to trigger the big, systemic transitions required in industry, technology and the design of consumer goods and services to keep warming to less than 1.5°C. The good news is that many studies, such as the New Climate Economy and the Energy Transitions Commission, note that these shifts in our economy are not only possible, but will also create jobs and secure better growth for the future.
However, to make this transition happen, a new combination of action is required. This will include, for example, building new forms of alliances within and between the private and public sectors; forging new clubs of like-minded governments, cities, states and provinces; and building new leadership platforms for policy experimentation and public-private action, each targeted to suit different industrial, national and regional agendas. There are many good examples of such significant collaboration already emerging, such as the Alliance of CEO Climate Leaders. This group of CEOs, with collective company revenues of more than $1.5 trillion, have already reduced their collective emissions by 9% since 2015 and are committed to do more.
Reading between the lines, you can see how government is meant to become intrinsically involved in how the economy works
Then there is the question of speed. Given that the IPPC suggests we have just 12 years to act, can an adequate amount of different actions be mobilized in time? Again, this is where additional public-private approaches can play an important role. With the rapid technological advances of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we will also be able to harness new means of monitoring, verifying and reporting the progress (or lack thereof) of global, regional and industry actions on climate, potentially through radical new forms of distributed information transparency and real-time disclosures. This will likely have major implications in the coming years on how effective climate action is perceived to be compared to the scale of the challenge, especially among the young. Increased transparency will boost awareness and simply heighten the pressure to act.
And what happens when the private sector does not hit their targets? More government.
To succeed in line with the IPCC guidance, the international community must embrace this new agenda for climate action – focused overall on keeping global warming within 1.5°C, but encouraging multiple different approaches, collaborations and initiatives to support, buttress and accelerate government ambitions to meet, or exceed, the Paris Climate Agreement.
By “must” they mean forced to comply.
Meeting the climate challenge in today’s world can perhaps be viewed as building a global public-private “platform†for action.
Funny how this so-called science always seems to require more and more dominating government.
