Transcript

COMM 1

The first decade of the twenty-first century saw three worldwide crises that threatened the global economy. Financial markets collapsed, precipitating a massive recession; there were sudden spikes in food prices leading to widespread hunger and riots in developing countries; and the projected environmental impact of climate change left no room for doubt that urgent action was needed on carbon emissions.

ANDREW SIMMS

Each one of these independently is enough to cause a scale of upheaval the likes of which, to see some sort of comparison, we’d have to look back to the Great Depression of the 1930s. What we’re worried about is that the combination of all three happening simultaneously may represent a challenge to our social and economic systems which we have never seen before, and the consequences of which are extremely hard to predict, other than to say that they will be major, they will be destructive and they will threaten the operating systems upon which we depend – our environmental operating systems and our social operating systems.