Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Living with limits: growth, resources and climate change

"The affluent economy enjoyed until recently by just a small proportion of the world's human population is now becoming global. Billions of hitherto poor people not only aspire to the standards of living of the advanced countries, but expect to achieve them within their lifetimes. But such a leap will, on anything like current trends, impose vastly greater demands on the planet's resources and threaten profound changes in the global environment. Is this tension between human aspirations and natural limits manageable technologically, economically, socially and politically? A way must be found to combine economic dynamism with respect for natural limits. This, in turn, will demand profound changes not just in the economy, but in governance at all levels. Of all these challenges, climate change is the most intractable. This is the most difficult collective action problem in all of human history - inherently global, extremely long term, technologically demanding and replete with deep distributional questions. The lecture will ask whether humanity has any hope of addressing these challenges successfully."

The Grantham Institute for Climate Change Annual Lecture 2011 by Martin Wolf of the FT on the 3rd November in London.

Full information HERE.

(HT: JT)

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