“Our planet is facing two fundamental changes over the next two decades which will determine whether the next 100 years will be the best or the worst of centuries,” climate economist, Lord Stern, told TED@Unilever in New York.
Speaking just before the UN Climate Summit, Stern outlined how the basic structure of the world’s economies and societies – both rich and poor – will change with profound implications for energy use, the availability of land and water and the planet’s forests.
“Now, the first of these transformations is going to happen anyway,” he said. “We have to decide whether to do it well or badly, the economic, or structural, transformation. But the second of the transformations, the climate transformations, we have to decide to do. Those two transformations face us in the next two decades. The next two decades are decisive for what we have to do.”
However, these transformations also bring huge opportunities for how we design our cities, where we get our energy from and how way we manage our land if we take action and make good decisions now.
Stern said: “We need political pressure to build. We need leaders to step up. We can have better growth, better climate, a better world. We can make, by managing those two transformations well, the next 100 years the best of centuries.”
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