The world's ability to manage global crises such as climate change depends on our ability to achieve broad-based economic prosperity and stability. Unfortunately, there is overwhelming evidence to suggest that policymakers and the economists on whom they rely have completely misread current macroeconomic trends.
AUSTIN – Two great specters loom over humankind. One is rapid extinction following a full-scale nuclear war, or a poisoned planet following a more limited one – a point made by the great physicist Andrei Sakharov in his day. The other specter is the slower extinction that would follow from runaway global warming. Getting ahead of that threat requires the largest effort of planning, investment, public education, and social insurance in human history – the mother of all New Deals. And yet efforts to confront it have been frustrated by mainstream economists.
AUSTIN – Two great specters loom over humankind. One is rapid extinction following a full-scale nuclear war, or a poisoned planet following a more limited one – a point made by the great physicist Andrei Sakharov in his day. The other specter is the slower extinction that would follow from runaway global warming. Getting ahead of that threat requires the largest effort of planning, investment, public education, and social insurance in human history – the mother of all New Deals. And yet efforts to confront it have been frustrated by mainstream economists.