The world is entering an age of unprecedented environmental breakdown
that could see an economic collapse like the 2008 financial crisis, a thinktank
warned on Tuesday.
According to a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research
(IPPR), climate change is just one of many environmental threats which, when
combined, threatens social stability. It said that natural systems were now
being destabilized so quickly by human activity that dangerous tipping points
would soon be reached.
Rising global temperatures would have consequences which threatened
major economic, social and political disruption, according to the report –
including increasing weather extremes, large-scale migration, conflict, and
famine.
Economic
fallout
The IPPR said the world must act urgently to prevent some of the worst
possibilities being realized.
Among those possibilities was a potential fiscal catastrophe, with the
report warning that human impact on the environment was now so great it risked
generating significant economic instability.
"In the extreme, environmental breakdown could trigger
catastrophic breakdown of human systems, driving a rapid process of 'runaway
collapse' in which economic, social and political shocks cascade through the
globally linked system – in much the same way as occurred in the wake of the
global financial crisis of 2007/08," the IPPR said.
The report also warned that investors in fossil fuels may be exposed
to a rapid decline in the value of carbon assets, which must occur if carbon
budgets – annual limits on nations' carbon emissions – were to be met.
It also highlighted that poorer countries were more vulnerable to the
consequences of environmental breakdown but were less able to prepare for or
respond to them.
New
mindsets needed
"Policymakers and politicians are not adequately recognising, let
alone responding to the catastrophic threat posed by environmental
change," the report's authors said.
Three shifts in understanding were needed to reverse this, they added,
urging those in power to reassess their knowledge of the scale and pace of
environmental breakdown, the implications this would have on societies, and the
need for transformative change.
The report also warned that vested interests and a rapidly changing
economy were also standing in the way of progress.
"Elite interests in countries across the world, including
industries whose business model depends on continued environmental degradation,
use their considerable power and wealth to influence political debates and
policy decisions on environmental breakdown, with many instances of groups
blocking or reversing progress," the report said.
"It is estimated that 100 companies are responsible for the
emission of 71 percent of industrial greenhouse gases since 1988."
CNBC