Kim Won-soo
The man-made climate crisis is worsening at an exponential rate, threatening the very survival of humanity. Despite the growing number of voices calling for immediate and united global action, the latest string of reports from the scientific and policy community only indicates the opposite. United Nations Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell recently warned that we are headed for about 2.7 degrees Celsius of global heating, well above the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold set by the Paris climate accord. Accordingly, he urged swifter climate action. But unfortunately, nations are falling far short of the goal set at the U.N. climate talks last year to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030, according to a recent report by the International Energy Agency.
At a meeting with the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute earlier this week, climate and environmental unsustainability was identified as the most serious existential threat, since the solution requires truly transformative action. Short of such action, humanity is on an irreversible path to collective suicide. Nuclear winter also poses a grave threat, but we have a reasonable chance of avoiding it if rational judgment prevails.
The most crucial area of climate action is climate financing. Two renowned economists, Dani Rodrik and Joseph Stiglitz, argue in a recent co-authored piece that emerging........