Transcription
Let me spend just a few minutes talking about the situation in the world right now because the last couple of days have been dramatic. Now, there is no guarantee that we avoid catastrophe because the world's not well led, uh, and, uh, the world is in a very unstable, uh, situation because of all the things that we've been discussing. Uh, of course, the climate crisis, all of the upheavals in the world economy, even aside from the interventions of, uh, uh, leaders, than than I. So this is, uh, something, um, quite dramatic.
But another thing that's very dramatic is the geopolitical changes that are underway. They are remarkable. They're very dangerous, but on the whole, not bad. Actually, what's happening is that a familiar world, led so-called by the United States and Europe, is no longer led by the United States and Europe. Uh, it was presumptuous to be led by the United States and Europe to begin with. Uh, it's actually the end of a very long cycle that dates back to 1492, uh, and onward, because it started with a, uh, voyage that was a little bit, uh, went arai and changed the world, uh, fundamentally. Um, and they say that, how do you know that, uh, Christopher Columbus was an economist, by the way? Uh, he didn't know where he was going. He didn't know where he was when he got there, and it was all on a government grant. Uh, so this is part for the course.
But, um, the world became a European-led world with a, a lot of cruelty and a lot of inequality and a lot of domination. Um, and with a lot of remarkable technological development, uh, that came along with it, but that was utilized as a form of power and oppression as well. And the United States dominated the world for about a half a century after 1945. Now, we're in a very different world, and, um, the, uh, voices of other parts of the world are really important and, um, growing. And that means that in the media and in the political life in the Western world, there's a lot more anxiety, actually, than there is in China, for example, or in India, where it's not pessimistic. It's not feeling that the world's falling apart. It's feeling that the world is changing in the right direction, actually. And I would say, if you look at opinion surveys in Africa, there's a tremendous amount of optimism, actually. Africa is the most optimistic single continent, uh, in the world, uh, if you look at opinion surveys. So the world's changing, and it leads to a lot of anxiety, and the anxiety is highest in the United States because nobody likes to be pushed off the perch. Uh, but the fact of the matter is, um, the world's becoming a lot more interesting, diverse, interconnected.
You're a very diverse group, but not quite diverse enough. There aren't, are there any Chinese faces here? No. We have somebody from Hong Kong. Okay, good. Hong Kong, we were just there. It's wonderful. Uh, and, uh, India. Great. Okay. So between the two, you're 40% of the world population, but not, not exactly 40% of this room. So it's just to say, we don't have to have a complete demographic equality, but you're a very diverse group, which is extremely important, very important. Uh, and, um, the world's even more diverse, if I could put it that way. So we need to strive for, uh, for that. And viewed in that perspective, my own view is, I'll say a grim statement and then an optimistic statement. If we don't blow things up, which is possible, then things are going to be okay. Uh, and by that, I mean the world that is taking shape will be more equal, more open, actually benefiting from a lot of the breakthroughs in technology.
The real worry I have is just disaster in the in the short term because my country is the worst led that it's ever been, and our political system has collapsed. So we have one-person rule, which is not exactly the way to run a, a society of 335 million people and $30 trillion of output, but that's what, what we have for the moment. But if we can avoid the catastrophes, we actually, not just rhetorically and not just optimistically, we really have a lot of solutions in this world for food production, for sustainable energy, for, uh, better education and healthcare systems, for all sorts of things that are completely wonderful. They're not, they're getting discovered. They're getting developed. You're pioneering many of them. They're not getting undertaken at any, at the scale that they need and the pace that they need by any means, but they could be because there's no fundamental shortfall of resources or know-how. We're not running out of particular minerals so that we can't do this. We're not running out of land so that we're in a struggle for who eats and who doesn't eat. We're not running out of energy because solar radiation is about 5,000 times our power usage on the planet. So if we deploy, uh, solar power, which is now cheaper than any other kind of power, we're, we're not in an energy shortage as well. We're not in a know-how shortage, but we are in a fairness shortage. We're in a niceness shortage. We're in a calmness shortage. Uh, we're in a geopolitical crisis. And we are with a lot of instability from all of the upheavals of climate, which are going to get worse for the next 50 years, almost no matter what we do. Because underlying our physical reality is a lot of warming built into the system and a lot of shocks that will come from that. That doesn't mean that the impacts necessarily get worse because things can get buffered. We can become more resilient. We can become adapted. But the climate itself is going to become more dangerous shortly. So this is our state of affairs.
Now, what specifically happened yesterday was the US declared itself outside of the world trade system. Two weeks ago, the US declared itself outside of the climate challenge. Uh, three weeks ago, the US declared itself out of the sustainability challenge. Four weeks ago, the US declared itself outside of the WH. All right. Honestly, it doesn't get dumber than this, really. But the US is 4.1% of the world population. And as I said, the other 95% I don't see things diminishing in intensity of purpose, but rather increasing. And there are a lot of very good things that are happening, even because of the United States' strangeness of behavior right now. For example, China and India, which have been at loggerheads for 60 years, for more than that, for almost 80 years, for a complicated reason that the British drew an an arbitrary borderline in the Himalayas. Uh, and that has meant border dispute and conflict between China and India since India gained independence in 1947 and the People's Republic of China was formed in 1949. And they're still fighting over a line that a guy named McMahon drew arbitrarily in 1880, never having been up to the Himalayas where he drew the line. And there is, by the way, a theorem that I kind of subscribe to that all problems in the world go back to the British. Um, so that's true in the Middle East. It's true in the Himalayas. It's true in m, much, much of the world. Yes, it's true all over Africa. It is actually a very good rule of thumb. It's not, it's not quite a proven theorem, but it's a very good rule of thumb.
Um, in any event, the Indian and Chinese foreign ministers got together and said, "What are we fighting about? Uh, we should trade more. We should invest more." And then very positive statements came from Prime Minister Modi and from President Xi. Then, uh, last week, three other countries that are at loggerheads for no reason in the world, honestly. China, Korea, and Japan. They are divided because the United States says you're on our side, and they're the enemy. Uh, to China and Japan, and I mean to Korea and Japan, visa v China. The three got together because they see the US not such a great, you know, protector of their interests, and they said, "We need to improve relations with each other." This is very, very good. And if you think about Iran and Saudi Arabia, for example, which was defined by the US to be the, you know, the, the fundamental schism of Shia and Sunni, and so much of US policy was playing the Sunnis against Shia, Iran, and so forth. They made a rapprochement last year, which China helped to broker in a very wise way. The United States would never have done it and never even have thought about it. But, uh, China was very helpful. So truly, I'm not so pessimistic at all. I just see the world changing. And I can understand the pessimism in the newspapers that I happen to read in the US because they're all geared around the idea of the US as number one. And if you put that aside, I like a world in which China's playing a much larger role, and India is playing a much larger role, and the African Union's playing a much larger role, and Saudi Arabia is playing a much larger role. To me, this is a great world. It's, it's a world of diversity, much better food, uh, much better conversation, much better places to visit, much more fun, uh, in, uh, conferences and meetings and problem-solving, and all the rest. Uh, but if you just happen to be a US strategist, it looks very grim and dangerous and so forth. So I don't buy into the danger part. I do buy into, well, I do buy into the danger part for the reasons I said, but I don't buy into the inevitability of crisis.
So what I would really like you guys to do is to stay on the the networking course and the practical course and the problem-solving course, and I want us to help you to do that. Uh, so, and just to be very clear, you know, SDSN Youth is not to empower youth per se. It's to help solve global problems, of which you have a lot of solutions. So that's a little bit different. Uh, we have a little more access than you do to some places, uh, being older and gray-haired, but you, uh, know how to fix our phones and computers a lot better than we do. Uh, and what's going on with the the latest apps and how to use them and so forth. And that's actually unique knowledge in our world right now. Um, and so it's really important that you're at the table. It's true, you should be at the table for two reasons. One, to protect the interests of your generation against, uh, uh, 78-year-old US presidents that don't know how to think ahead. So, that's true, but I don't think that's the main reason you should be at the table. The main reason you should be at the table is you can help move this agenda forward in a very significant way. So I had good experience when I was young. I luckily thrust into places where I could do something at an early stage of my career. And, um, thank God it worked, 'cause otherwise that would have been the end of it. Uh, but in any event, um, you can do a lot, but I also know, um, we can help you, uh, too, because you learn, you learn a lot, actually, along the way as well. Um, every day I learn something that I say, I cannot believe I didn't know that for the last 50 years of trying to know what I know, and pretty fundamental stuff, every day, which is weird to me, actually, 'cause by now it should be kind of rote, but it's not rote at all. There's just so much to learn, and I kind of walk around my whole life with a book in my hand, or now with an ebook or on my phone or something, reading, reading, reading every day and learning pretty basic things, actually, which is annoying, uh, really annoying, because it should have been done already, uh, but it's not. So all of that is to say, we can help you, uh, and I can help you, and I can help you network, and I can help you learn things. So don't presume you know everything, but don't presume that you don't know what you're seeing with your own eyes about things that can be done. So that's really the balance that's extremely important.
Now, what's going to happen after 2030? Let me say a few words about that, 'cause you're going to play a big role in that. Um, obviously, we're not going to achieve what we set out to achieve in 20, 2015, September 25th, 2015, when Pope Francis ushered in the Sustainable Development Goals at the UN. The agenda was pretty optimistic beforehand. At the time, it was very stretch goals. It would have required a lot of capacity and working together to make them happen. Um, of course, we just didn't get the major powers to work very hard on any of this. Uh, the only one that made a major effort, in my view, was China. Actually, uh, Europe said a few things at the beginning, but Europe got caught in this Ukraine war, which to my mind was a just a disastrous mistake because the United States doesn't know how to make peace. Uh, and, uh, blew the chance after 1991 to help in help create a true collective security arrangement in Europe. Instead, it expanded NATO. But I don't want to go there, just to say the US didn't try, Europe didn't try very much. China launched the Belt and Road Initiative, which is a very big and positive thing. Uh, Africa launched the African Continental Free Trade Area, which is a very important thing, uh, and a very positive development. But the world as a whole, for the major powers, didn't try very hard. So we're reaching, and I don't want to go into it, but my view is, uh, the US at the University of North Carolina concocted something called SARS-CoV-2 and made a pandemic. That's another long story. Uh, but, um, we just lost a lot of time.
So what are we going to do? My hope personally, and this is something we can discuss longer, is that we continue under the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals. And the reason is, it's taken 10 years to have governments understand a bit about how to make such a complicated, multi-dimensional programming process, because it's not simple to do this, to plan for 17 major objectives, long-term planning strategy, and so forth. Now, the goals won't stay exactly the same, but I don't want to redo everything to have a new set of goals and, uh, a new framework because, honestly, to my mind, it would be, it may be constructive in bringing new voices in, to be sure. So I don't want to rule out deliberations which will take place, but I don't think we should throw out everything because it just would be a major loss in time sync. And in our world today, the US will walk away from the table anyway, and it just may be very hard to get a framework, other framework. So I'm hoping we continue under this broad rubric, resetting, adding, no doubt, something about artificial intelligence as SDG-18, or repackaging, repackaging some of the, uh, objectives, and so on, but to keep this framework to mid-century, because the next period, to my mind, is to 2050, is to mid-century, and that's in fact what we need to decarbonize the energy system. It's what we need to transform agriculture. It's what we need to create a workable digital society in which good things rather than bad things happen with these new technologies and so forth. So that's what I think we will be, what I am going to be aiming for in the next few years. This will probably be decided more or less around 27 or 2027 or 2028. So there will be a UN process. Uh, the next Secretary-General will assign a commission, probably. There'll be deliberations. You'll be involved in national level and global processes and youth ambassadors, and many ways. And we should really strategize together about this, and you should make further outreach to other groups, uh, in order to do this.
One basic point is that what makes all of this very hard is thinking ahead on a time horizon and a complexity longer than governments know how to do. So if you want to change the energy system, it's not a one-year or a five-year or a ten-year process. You really have to be able to think about 25 years or 30 years and basic changes of technology and learn how to put that into a real political process and so forth. And this is what I find most governments don't know how to do effectively. Again, China is better at planning in this way than any other government that I know among the major governments. Europe's not bad at setting goals, but it then doesn't necessarily actually create the, uh, the planning to deliver them very effectively. I'll say also, I have huge hopes, expectations, and demands of the African Union in the coming years. There's a new AU Commission that just came into office on March 15th, and Africa needs to make a breakthrough in the next 30 years. It can't go on like this with many conflicts, with kids not in school, with the systems not working, with electricity not reaching still hundreds of millions of people. And that's what we were discussing in the Financing for Development workshop that we had earlier this week. How to make those breakthroughs. So, one thing I'm asking of you is helping to instill the idea of really basic transformation, uh, in your countries, regions, and since we're going to do it together at a, at a world scale, that yes, we really can create a better future. And it's not only wish fulfillment, it's actually very practical work.
Very, for me, by the way, I, I caught, who had a slide that I think Chened about the importance of education as being fun, absolutely fundamental. Was that you, Chenade? Yeah. In any event, okay, there are probably 300 million kids not even in school right now, and we have to absolutely say no. Are you kidding? Not another school year like this. This is crazy. And the reason they're not in school in some places is because of conflict and displacement. But for at least 200, 250 million kids, it's because the governments don't have the funds to hire teachers, to have the schools, and so forth. And I want to have a fit together with you to the powers that be that this cannot go on any longer. You cannot leave kids out of school in this world. They cannot have a future that way. This is the most basic point of everything that we're trying to do. Everything. Every one of you had the fortune, and you probably had a lot of struggles, twists and turns, good luck, parents that helped, friends that helped, family that helped somehow, that you could get an education. But I think that's the first thing we really need to do is to put our foot down and say no more faking it to any to the host countries, but they don't have the money, to the IMF, to the World Bank, to China, to anyone else. You got to help make sure that all the kids are in school, period. And then there are all the other issues that we're dealing with. I won't, uh, belabor the point any longer because I know the time is, time is short, but let's, you guys are really important in this process. And to add to your importance, connect with others that you think we need to bring into this process because this is a very powerful group that can really make a huge difference. And can really, by the way, you can help the older ministers in the government, the presidents, and so forth, understand this is no joke. This is real for your societies. This really can be done. You can tell them Professor Sachs said so, and that they got to get on with it, and that we're here to help, and we're going to get the financing that they need. That was, we really are going to get the financing that governments need, but you need to help lay out the plans, the ideas, very operational. The one.