MacroscopeA climate disaster must be averted at all costs. Not so a financial meltdown

Name: IMF projects stronger 2021 growth for US and China amid pandemic rebound
Uploaded: 2021-04-18T09:45:07.000Z
Duration: 2 min 5 s
Description: IMF projects stronger 2021 growth for US and China amid pandemic rebound

The coronavirus pandemic and climate emergency are true existential threats, but another economic crisis isn’t

Our economic problems can be traced to an unwillingness to confront the consequences of financial excess. By trying to force a return to business as usual, we risk mortgaging our future

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A model of the globe with a face mask left on the ground by the children who were playing with it in Guangzhou, China, on World Earth Day on April 22, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE

Anthony Rowley

Published: 5:45pm, 18 Apr 2021Updated: 5:45pm, 18 Apr 2021

T.S. Eliot once asked: “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?” Where indeed? We seem to have a severe information overload nowadays while knowledge scrambles to keep up and wisdom is left far behind.

This was clear during the recent spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank where spoken and printed words flowed in great profusion, keeping a global (but virtual) audience busy downloading briefs, webinars and data with little time to take in what this deluge of information all meant.

The principal takeaway was a feeling of overindulgence in facts and figures without time to digest them. But where to begin – the pandemic’s progress, the climate change crisis, the global debt debacle, fiscal stability scares, financial market fears or intimations of inflation?

Perhaps we need to step back from the fact-fest and take a longer look. Have we taken a wrong path, and is it time to retrace our steps? Such an argument can be made in respect of many current social, economic and financial ills, which are much analysed but rarely viewed holistically.

The pandemic and climate change have their roots in the acceleration of economic development, which has pushed the polluting and environment-changing presence of civilisation deeper into the natural habitat. This may not be a “wrong” path but it is one we have taken unthinkingly.

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IMF projects stronger 2021 growth for US and China amid pandemic rebound

And what about the specific economic and financial problems that we face in abundance now; is there a common origin there too? It is possible to trace their roots to an unwillingness to confront the consequences of financial excess, and then to counter this with restraint rather than with further abandon.