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How can the world build back better public health after COVID?
Every year, over ten million people globally die from high blood pressure, more than all infectious diseases combined. Dr. Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control, is tackling this massive problem in public health, among many others, as CEO of Resolve to Save Lives.
He told GZERO’s Tony Maciulis that ensuring easy access to three drugs — amlodipine for blood pressure, metformin for blood sugar, and atorvastatin for cholesterol — could save tens of millions of lives over the next quarter century for just a penny per pill.
It’s part of a set of goals Frieden calls the three Rs: Renaissance in public health, robust primary healthcare and resilient populations. But as the developing world takes on more and more public debt, where will the money come from?
See more from Global Stage.
“Health is a human right”: How the world can make up progress lost to COVID
The state of public health in the developing world bears some deep scars from the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past three years, immunization rates have dropped to levels not seen in three decades. 2 billion people are facing "catastrophic or impoverishing" health spending worldwide according to the World Health Organization. And governments in the Global South are taking on more and more debt at the expense of investment in health and social services.
Kate Dodson, the Vice President of Global Health Strategy at the UN Foundation, is on the frontlines of the fight to give the most vulnerable people in the world access to proper healthcare. She works to connect experts and innovators with the UN, and find resources to support their work.
She’s calling on governments to invest in basic elements of public health, including primary care access, and properly remunerating healthcare workers — the majority of whom are women, worldwide. And more fundamentally, she wants leaders to treat health as a human right that all deserve to enjoy.
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What’s next for the WHO?
As the World Health Organization celebrates its 75th anniversary on April 7, it is preparing to put the COVID-19 pandemic behind it by declaring an end to the public health emergency sometime later this year. Yet it won’t be easy for the UN agency to rehabilitate its reputation after the criticism received for its handling of the world’s worst health crisis in 100 years.
We asked Eurasia Group public health expert Laura Yasaitis to provide some perspective on the WHO’s long history and where it goes after COVID.
As it turns 75, what are the WHO's main accomplishments?
Probably the most outstanding was the complete eradication of smallpox, a remarkable example of international coordination to achieve a public health goal. WHO officials worked with countries to encourage widespread vaccination, as well as donations of the vaccine, and the US and the Soviet Union were both major donors. WHO consultants were dispatched around the world to identify and respond to outbreaks quickly, even in war-torn and poverty-stricken locations such as Somalia, which saw the last natural case in 1977.
The WHO’s efforts to improve childhood vaccination around the globe have also brought about the near eradication of polio, while efforts to prevent and treat malaria have helped dramatically reduce the range of the disease and improve outcomes for those infected.
And failures?
As the organization has grown and taken on an expanded mission, it has become overstretched and overly bureaucratic. These shortcomings were blamed for the slow response to the Ebola outbreak that began in West Africa in 2014 and lasted until 2016.
Yet many of the organization’s perceived failures can be traced to the constraints within which it operates. Only 16% of its budget comes in the form of dues. The rest comes from large donors and is earmarked for specific causes, which means the WHO is limited in pursuing its own priorities. Furthermore, it relies on the goodwill of countries to follow its recommendations; even the legally binding International Health Regulations, which require reporting of specific diseases and public health events, are essentially unenforceable.
What did the WHO do well during the pandemic?
The WHO helped coordinate data sharing among countries, providing invaluable information that helped experts to track and better understand the novel virus. Without a central source of trusted scientific information, it may have taken the world far longer to understand what it was up against. The WHO also co-led COVAX, which aimed to equitably distribute COVID vaccines to all countries, rich or poor. While the group fell far short of this goal – largely because wealthy nations hoarded the initial production of most vaccines – the framework it established may provide a model for future pandemics.
What did it not do so well?
The WHO has been faulted – including by an independent committee it established to review its response – for waiting an extra week before declaring a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, the highest level of emergency. Much of the delay was attributed to its regulations on reporting of public health incidents, which forced slow consideration of the data. These regulations also recommend against declarations that could hurt a country’s economic activity. Furthermore, the organization’s messaging – it does not officially define the term “pandemic” and didn’t use the term until two months after a PHEIC was declared – was faulted for its lack of urgency. That may have contributed to inconsistent and ineffective responses at the national level.
What about its relationship with China?
The WHO was accused of unwarranted deference to China early in the pandemic, both in delaying its PHEIC declaration, and in the public praise lavished on the country for its initial response. The most prominent criticism came from Donald Trump, who in July 2020 declared that the US would withdraw from the organization (though US President Joe Biden reversed the decision when he took office). The WHO-China relationship soured somewhat after the first phase of an investigation into the virus’s origins, which included the lab leak theory, even if “extremely unlikely”; China vehemently opposed any mention of the possibility. Then, earlier this year, China refused to release data revealing the scale of a massive outbreak, despite its legally binding commitments to do so. Yet WHO officials praised the limited releases of data, and largely avoided criticizing the country despite what international experts asserted were highly inaccurate official infection and mortality rates.
Will we ever know where the virus came from?
At this point, it’s unlikely, at least with enough certainty to convince the vast majority of skeptics given that the science has become highly politicized. China has stonewalled further WHO-led investigations after the lab-leak theory was included in the phase one report, forcing the WHO to quietly abandon plans for additional study. Other independent research continues; for example, data released last month supported animal-human transmission as the original source. However, given the length of time that has passed, and the many people who have made up their minds on both sides, it’s far more likely that the issue will continue to be a political football.
In light of all this, how is the WHO reforming itself?
There have been many calls for reforming the WHO and its powers to grant it more authority to investigate and respond to disease outbreaks. However, given the importance of assuring member states’ sovereignty, and the political and economic implications of being named the source of a major disease outbreak, establishing an independent, powerful, WHO remains an uphill battle. Nonetheless, some reforms are being pursued that will allow increased independence. It was recently announced that sources of the organization’s funding would shift over time to be at least 50% comprised of membership dues by 2030-2031.
What is the WHO doing to ensure it's better prepared for the next pandemic?
The WHO is trying to learn from the mistakes of the past few years. The most ambitious effort may come in the form of a new legally binding pandemic prevention, preparedness, and response treaty. A draft presented in February lays out a framework to ensure equitable distribution of vaccines and treatments and provide incentives for poor countries to participate in the data sharing that is needed. However, a big question is whether the provisions will be backed by adequate enforcement mechanisms. The WHO’s authority and credibility has been badly damaged by the pandemic, a situation that will need to be rectified if it is to lead a global health response to the next pandemic.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor, Eurasia Group.
Russia cutting Nord Stream 1 gas to undermine European leaders
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60:
Is Russia waging a gas war with Europe?
They certainly are. You have Nord Stream 1 back online after scheduled maintenance, and first was 40%, now 20% of normal volumes. Technical problem, that's what the Russians say. But of course, in reality it is because they know that the Europeans are moving to diversify away from Russian energy as fast as possible and the Russians are not letting them do it on their timeframe. Winter's coming and Russia's best opportunity to undermine European leaders and get a whole bunch of Europeans saying, "What are you doing? Why are you sanctioning the Russians, you're hurting us. We are the ones that are facing the economic pain as a consequence. We don't want you to." A bigger peace movement is if they make life impossible for the Europeans during winter this year. So, I mean, frankly, I'd be surprised if you have any Russian gas go into Germany, come winter this year. The Germans are aware of that possibility and they are very concerned about it. By the way, if the worse comes to worst you're talking about a 2a to 3% contraction of the EU economy. It's a big deal, but it's not a disaster. Next year will be easier for the Europeans.
Is the world prepared to combat the growing global monkeypox outbreak?
I wish we weren't talking about another major outbreak. We're talking about tens of thousands of cases already around the world, and we don't have enough vaccines, even though we do have vaccines for it. We don't have enough monitoring, even though we've just been through a global pandemic. The good news is the vaccine works. The good news is it's very rarely lethal, and it's not leading to huge numbers of hospitalization. So I'm not anywhere close to as worried about monkeypox as we have been about COVID. But still this is absolutely a serious disease and it is not one we are anywhere close to containing, hence the World Health Organization's statement over this week.
How is the UK race going to become the next prime minister?
Well, I mean, it's going in orderly fashion. No one is going to claim that it was rigged or that it's unfair or that you should stop the steal. No, one's saying that in the United Kingdom; no one said that in France during parliament elections. No one said that in Germany, when Scholz became chancellor. Only the United States among advanced industrial democracies; maybe we should learn something from that. But more importantly, we've got two serious contenders, Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Rishi kind of more the technocrat and Liz Truss more the populist. She certainly would not be the favorite in terms of EU-UK relations, though she does have more of the conservative base on her side. Look, it's going to be a closely run event. Could go either way from my perspective at this point. But what we do know is that Boris Johnson very soon will be no more.
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Birdsong and stolen cherries: Lockdown life in Shanghai
Yang Shen has lived in Shanghai for more than 10 years, but it wasn’t until recently that the 36-year-old writer noticed something very particular about the city: the birds.
While they sing freely outside Shen’s window, Shanghai’s 26 million human residents are still cooped up in their homes, part of the world’s largest COVID lockdown.
Most governments around the world have already relaxed their pandemic restrictions, but China has doubled down on its zero-COVID policy, using harsh lockdowns and quarantines to stifle even the smallest outbreaks. Dozens of Chinese cities are now under lockdown as omicron variants circulate. By some estimates, nearly half of China’s GDP is currently affected by some form of restriction.
That has sent shockwaves through the global economy, further tangling snarled global supply chains. But the effects are felt most keenly in China itself.
In Shanghai, the recent lockdown began in early April. At first Shen was optimistic.
“As a writer you have to stay at home and focus,” she says, “you need isolation. But it turns out there's a big difference between ‘I don't wanna go out’ and ‘I can't go out’.”
Most Shanghainese are permitted to leave their homes these days only for mandatory COVID tests, and those who test positive are whisked off to quarantine centers. Throughout China’s most populous city, residents compete for deliveries of food and other staples via wholesaler apps that only serve groups of 50 households or more.
The local economy, meanwhile, has been crushed. By one measure in April, a grand total of zero cars were sold — more than 26,000 fewer than in the same month last year. Across China, retail sales have plummeted, and factories have ground to a halt.
After more than six weeks of this, Shen says she and her husband’s biggest fear is something worse than getting sick.
“We're not scared of COVID, we're scared of starvation.”
That concern is shared by millions across the city, particularly in poorer neighborhoods that can’t compete with large residential compounds like Shen’s to buy food in bulk.
Even Shen and her husband have had to cut back on daily meals, and they’ve gone to daring lengths just to find little variety in what they eat. Every few days, Shen says, they steal down to the courtyard of their residential complex at dawn to swipe cherries from the trees in the garden. They use them to make bread and jams.
But flouting lockdown rules can cause trouble with nosy neighbors and the local Communist Party committees.
Birdsong and Stolen Cherries: Lockdown Life in Shanghai | GZERO Worldyoutu.be
Camilo Cadena, 33, a Colombian-American artist who has lived in Shanghai with his partner for the past five years, recently took a stroll in his compound’s courtyard during a brief period of looser restrictions. Within minutes, a neighbor had sent his partner a grainy photograph of him from a high-rise balcony, with a message: “Isn’t this your fiancé?”
Cadena, who works as a consultant for public art projects in Shanghai, has decided to leave the city. Doing so requires signing a pledge that he will not return to the compound where he lives. It also means saying goodbye to close friends remotely.
“There is a bit of survivor’s guilt,” he says, “knowing that leaving is not an option for many people.”
That’s because the government has recently banned foreign travel for most Chinese nationals in a bid to control the spread of the virus.
Public health experts question whether zero-COVID can even work. World Health Organization chief Tedros Ghebreyesus recently said the policy simply isn’t sustainable given how contagious omicron is.
So why is the Chinese government sticking to it, despite such immense social and economic costs?
Public health is one part of the story. Vaccination rates among the elderly — the most vulnerable to the disease — are low. Fewer than half of Chinese over the age of 70 have been fully vaccinated and boosted. And even for those who have, there are doubts about the effectiveness of China’s homegrown vaccines, which are the only option for most people.
A recent study in the journal Naturewarned that without any restrictions in place, China could run the risk of more than 1.5 million COVID deaths in the coming months.
So far, the government reports a grand total of fewer than 15,000 for the entire pandemic. That’s certainly an undercount, but it’s still far below the death rates in most Western countries.
But politics are also at play, according to Yanzhong Huang, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He says that President Xi Jinping has a personal stake in ensuring the success of zero-COVID, especially as he prepares to be elected to an unprecedented third term as Communist Party boss this fall. That means local and regional officials all the way down the chain of command have an incentive to follow suit as well.
To back away from zero-COVID now, says Huang, “would be admitting policy failure” not only at home but globally. Beijing’s authoritarian approach is meant to compare favorably with the more disjointed strategies of Western democracies.
In recent days, Shanghai officials have said they aim to end the lockdown by June, now that the official case count has fallen to zero outside of the official quarantine centers.
It’s anyone’s guess whether the city will be able to hit that target, as even a brief resurgence of cases could lead to fresh lockdowns.
But for Shen Yang and her fellow Shanghainese, June can’t come soon enough.
“Every time I post anything on my social media, I say something like, ‘Okay, summer is coming. When can I get out of this prison?’"
Additional reporting by Sarah Kneezle.
China is in a tough spot
This week, the head of the World Health Organization warned that China’s “zero-COVID” policy, which has left tens of millions of people locked inside their homes, is not “sustainable.” The Omicron variant is too transmissible to effectively isolate, and the cost of China’s lockdown strategy, for the country’s economy and the mental health of its people, is too high, warns the WHO.
But … also this week, a report from the peer-reviewed international scientific journal Nature Medicine warned that lifting the zero-COVID policy without taking a series of specific steps to mitigate the damage could create a COVID emergency on a scale the world hasn’t yet seen. More than 1.5 million would die within six months, according to the study, and demand for intensive care would be nearly 16 times greater than China’s hospitals can handle.
Limiting damage from a lifting of restrictions, according to the report, would demand the widespread availability of recently approved antivirals, more accurate testing, a lot more booster doses, and the vaccination of many more elderly people.
Analysts say a change in approach is highly unlikely. According to Michael Hirson, a China expert at Eurasia Group, China isn’t likely to take any major step away from a “dynamic zero-COVID” strategy of mass testing and strict quarantines to contain any outbreak of the virus. “For now, they’re more likely to tighten than to loosen,” says Hirson.
The stakes are growing, and not just for China. The uncertainty weighing on the entire global economy has many sources. Post-COVID damage to global supply chains and the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine on food and fuel prices are major contributors. But the effect of COVID lockdowns on the world’s second-largest economy, including on the more than 26 million people who live in Shanghai, the world’s busiest port, is also depressing growth expectations and stoking global inflation. By one estimate, dozens of cities responsible for about 30% of China’s economic output and a combined 290 million people (88% of the total US population) are currently under full or partial lockdown.
When measured strictly by the number of COVID deaths, China’s policy has been a big success. It has reported fewer than 14,000 COVID-related deaths. Even if the true number is significantly higher, that compares very well with the one million deaths that have now been reported in the US, a country with less than a quarter of China’s population. But the speed with which Omicron can move through a society that has no access to the world’s most effective vaccines and boosters – and little of the immunity that comes with much greater exposure to the virus – could generate an unprecedented emergency inside China over the next few months.
The economic, mental health, and potential political downside to sticking with an uncompromising lockdown strategy, however, comes at a cost. China’s government is encouraging already deeply indebted companies to continue borrowing to boost sagging economic growth, compounding a problem that can inflict long-lasting damage to China’s economy. The stresses of isolation are flooding mental health hotlines with calls. Angry messages are lighting up Chinese social media.
It’s all happening at a moment of historic political sensitivity in China. This fall, President Xi Jinping hopes to choreograph a Communist Party Congress that will set aside practices of the past to grant him an unprecedented third term as China’s leader. This week’s warnings make clear that Xi faces tough choices: stick with a policy that imposes pain on tens of millions of people and takes a large bite out of China’s economy or publicly shift course and adopt an uncertain new strategy.
China’s president is well aware that neither choice can guarantee that China avoids a health and economic crisis at the worst possible political moment.
A GZERO pandemic
This week, the World Health Organization’s governing body agreed to begin multinational negotiations on an agreement that would boost global preparedness to deal with future pandemics. The WHO hopes that its 194 member countries will sign a treaty that helps ensure that the global response to the next pandemic is better coordinated and fairer.
The specifics remain to be negotiated over the coming months – and maybe longer – but the stated goal of those who back this plan is a treaty that will commit member countries to share information, virus samples, and new technologies, and to ensure that poorer countries have much better access than they do now to vaccines and related technologies.
Crucially, backers of the treaty insist it must be “legally binding.”
Let’s start with the most obvious obstacles to success. While many European governments support this effort, the US and China will want to weaken its provisions, though for different reasons.
In Washington, ratification of any treaty depends on a vote of the US Senate, a body historically unsympathetic to any plan that requires a surrender of US sovereignty to an international body like the WHO.
In Beijing, China’s tense relations with the WHO over access to COVID-related information suggests that officials won’t commit to provide outsiders with unfettered access to suspected sites of outbreaks, to politically sensitive information, or to the Chinese citizens who have that information.
Neither government wants to look like THE obstacle to progress on pandemic preparedness, so both will participate. But Washington and Beijing will each work to produce an agreement that lacks the “teeth” that proponents insist a treaty will need.
Even if the US and China were to agree to a document that’s legally binding, how much confidence can anyone have that rules will be observed in an actual emergency or that those who resist can be held to account?
This problem surely sounds familiar. We live in a GZERO world, one in which the most powerful states don’t share political values or priorities.
Everyone can agree that cyber security is a common problem, but the major powers won’t accept a truly binding set of rules on the use of cyber-weapons.
Governments of the world’s leading economies agree on the need to reduce carbon emissions to “net zero” as quickly as possible, but the US, EU, China, India and others don’t agree on how to share the sacrifices needed to reach that common goal.
Add the historically large and growing number of refugees crossing boundaries in every region of the world. Few governments are willing to shoulder the economic costs and domestic political risks that come with accepting responsibility for their fate. The inability to manage borderless problems like climate change and global inequality of opportunity means the number of migrants will continue to grow in coming years.
Unfortunately, every country now faces these urgent threats that aren’t bound by borders.
None of this means that pandemic conventions and climate summits are a waste of time. Incremental progress toward multinational problem-solving is far better than none at all, and today’s failures can point governments toward more effective, and easier-to-reach, solutions next year.
These gatherings themselves add public pressure on governments to take actions they might not otherwise take. They also bring together private-sector leaders, scientists, activists and others who can offer solutions in some areas that governments won’t go.
The bottom-line: We should never expect grandiose political promises to be kept, but nor should we ignore the reality that incremental progress and new ideas can take on a life of their own.Failure to act on vaccine equity, climate is “suicide” for the world, warns UN chief
World leaders are gathering this week in New York for the 76th UN General Assembly (UNGA) and Climate Week. This is the first time many leaders are seeing each other face-to-face since the Covid-19 pandemic began more than 18 months ago.
Top of the agenda is halting the spread of the pandemic amid rampant vaccine inequity as well as accelerating action to curb climate change, just six weeks before watershed climate negotiations are set to begin at COP26 in Glasgow—a summit described as the world’s “last chance” to avert climate catastrophe.
But while leaders are surely happy to travel and meet in person again (me too!), this year’s meetings are likely to be a wash. The challenges facing the world are daunting, with all signs pointing to continued deadlock on the most important fronts. As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has noted:
The pandemic has demonstrated our collective failure to come together and make joint decisions for the common good, even in the face of an immediate, life-threatening global emergency. This paralysis extends far beyond COVID-19. From the climate crisis to our suicidal war on nature and the collapse of biodiversity, our global response has been too little, too late.
Ahead of this week’s convenings, I sat down with my good friend Antonio to discuss the state of the world for GZERO World. While he is hopeful for a renewal of global solidarity before it’s too late, he warned that countries are “sleepwalking” into an abyss when it comes to climate.
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“In our biggest shared test since the Second World War, humanity faces a stark and urgent choice: a breakdown or a breakthrough,” he wrote. But judging by the (lack of) response to vaccine inequality, we may have already chosen—and not wisely.
Challenges cut from the same cloth
What does vaccination against Covid-19 have in common with greenhouse gas emission cuts?
Both help the whole world regardless of where they happen. Economists call these policies "global public goods." All countries are better off when every country does more, and the global benefits far outweigh the costs. No country can succeed on its own.
In the case of vaccines, because the virus knows no borders, immunization anywhere reduces the risk that dangerous vaccine-resistant variants will threaten even vaccinated populations everywhere. The world is only as safe from Covid as the least vaccinated country is. But many countries, mostly poorer ones, are unable to secure enough doses to vaccinate their populations.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres arrives at the podium to address the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly. (Eduardo Munoz-Pool/Getty Images)
In the case of climate, no country can be excluded from the mitigation benefits of other countries’ emissions reductions, and no one country can limit climate change alone. This gives rise to a "free-rider problem": every country has an incentive to free-ride on other countries’ mitigation efforts, reaping the benefits without incurring the costs. And also from the standpoint of each individual country, doing more may only make sense only if all others are doing more, because its effort may be wasted otherwise. This results in a chronic undersupply of mitigation that leaves everyone worse off.
When it comes to vaccines, the solution is straightforward: rich countries can donate excess doses and money to countries that need them, making the world safer for everyone (including themselves). The IMF estimates that this would cost only $50 billion (less than 0.3 percent of US GDP), in exchange for roughly $9 trillion in benefits.
Climate change mitigation is trickier, because it depends on all major emitters being willing and able to change their own domestic practices, policies, laws, regulations, and investments. According to Guterres, it used to be that the US could solve most issues by itself, but that is not the case for climate change. Because of the growing share of emissions of China and emerging economies, US engagement is necessary but is no longer sufficient to solve the problem.While rich countries can afford to decarbonize and their emissions are actually declining, most developing nations (which account for two-thirds of global emissions but only responsible for about 20 percent of historical emissions) lack the fiscal space and access to long-term finance needed to meet the upfront costs of decarbonization.
The only solution is for rich countries to subsidize the transition to net-zero carbon in developing countries. This is not only mutually beneficial, but also fundamentally fair: since developed nations grew wealthy by polluting the world, why should they ask poorer countries to suppress their living standards to clean up a mess they created—and are still actively contributing to—without compensating them for their trouble. As Guterres told me, “We need [developing countries] to make an extra effort; but for that extra effort to be possible, we must have a lot of support from the developed world.”
Bottom line: The world can’t curb climate change without the help of developing countries, and developing countries can’t—and shouldn’t have to—do it without unprecedented financing from advanced economies.
Vaccine nationalism is a harbinger
Guterres called for increased “solidarity” to spur decisive action, and I agree that more solidarity would be great. But I’ll settle for enlightened self-interest. Paraphrasing Adam Smith, it is not from the benevolence of the G7 that we should expect climate action, but from their own self-interest.
But if something as immediate and catastrophic as a deadly pandemic couldn’t get countries to take the long view for their own sake, what makes us think climate change will? After all, while decarbonizing the world is also a win-win for everyone, the immediate costs will be much larger than the $50 billion required to vaccinate developing countries—and we haven’t been willing to shell out even that.
The latest IPCC report stated that there’s still time to avoid the worst consequences of climate change if the world gets its act together immediately, but there’s little indication that the richest countries are willing to do what it takes. The United States still subsidizes its coal industry and continues to expand offshore drilling. China promised to stop building coal-fired power plants abroad but is still doing it at home. Perhaps most importantly, industrialized nations have thus far failed to deliver on their pledge to commit $100 billion a year for climate action in developing countries—itself an insufficient target. Despite Joe Biden's promise to double the US contribution, Boris Johnson puts the odds of meeting this promise by COP26 at 60 percent.
Biden and Guterres meet on the sidelines of #UNGA76.(Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
Deep down, though, the binding constraint is not money. Studies show that rather than hurt growth and jobs, decarbonization would yield tens of trillions of dollars in direct economic gains. Amid exceptionally low interest rates, rich countries are able to tap into abundant pools of cheap long-term savings and channel them to productive investments. If they don’t, it’s not because they can’t.
Politics, politics, politics
So why do we keep shooting ourselves in the foot?
Guterres chalked it up to a “lack of trust” between developed and developing countries. Certainly, mistrust doesn’t help. But I disagree that this is the main culprit.
Rather, the hurdle is baked into the way our democracies work. Voters are short-sighted creatures who reward their leaders for immediate gains and punish them for immediate losses, ignoring the long-term net consequences of decisions—and indecision. Global policymaking is shaped by this incentive structure: world leaders intent on re-election choose climate inaction because the costs of mitigation are more immediate than the benefits, even when the latter are much larger. By the time the consequences of inaction materialize, they will be long gone from office.
As long as politicians optimize for re-election and human beings are, well, human, this problem will remain intractable. But leaders can alleviate it by frontloading the benefits of decarbonization (green jobs, shiny new infrastructure!), while ensuring the few but loud losers of a green transition are compensated (in the case of fossil fuel workers) or isolated politically (in the case of oil companies).
Only once large majorities of the public in rich countries buy into climate action will leaders have political capital to pay for “solidarity” abroad. Until then, we’ll keep sleepwalking (to the sweet sound of BTS).
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