A circular economy to break the cycle of crisis

 

The G7 summit last week showed the dangers of short-term thinking: the leaders of the richest countries in the world produced quick fixes, messy compromises and mixed messages. Yet during the same week, several parts of the world hit their highest temperatures ever, well before the height of summer, and others experienced heavy flooding.

Dr Heather Grabbe, Open Society Foundations.

These are ominous signals that climate change is not a problem for our great-great-great-great grandchildren. It is a problem for us, the current humans. This is already the hottest year on record, but we may remember it as one of the cooler summers in our lives as extreme weather becomes normal.

More crises are speeding towards us: food shortages, inflation, water stress. Short-termist reactions to each crisis – with politicized decisions made imperfectly under heavy urgency and uncertainty – don’t address the underlying drivers and thereby threaten catastrophic future scenarios Take agriculture, where farming lobbies used the shortage of grain resulting from Putin’s blockage of shipments from Ukraine as an argument to use more pesticides and fertiliser, postponing the green measures proposed by the European Commission. But the resulting deaths of insect pollinators and pollution of rivers jeopardise the eco-systems needed for food production long term. (...)