Here’s an absolutely staggering number to take with you: four trillion dollars per annum
That’s what it takes to turn the entire world sustainable. That’s an awful lot of money but also it’s not that much more than things like military expenditures or the assets of a handful of billionaires.
As Tooze says:
Rather than shrinking away from the $ 4 trillion in shock the really striking thing about it, is that it is far from utopian. If we take the Songwe, Stern, Bhattacharya figures at face value then the explosive conclusion is that sustainable development for the entire planet is within reach. All the more egregious and inexcusable will be our failure, if we do not. It is one thing to fail grandly in the face of an impossible challenge, it is quite another not to do something of immense important that is, in fact, manageable.
We can leave it at that.
Sustainable development is totally possible and it’s being blocked by a minority elite who stand to lose a bunch of assets and revenues if we would do this.
