Global Risks 2014 is an analysis of a survey of over 700 world leaders and top businessmen from the World Economic Forum's global multi-stakeholder community. From the report, growing "global risks" arise from demographic trends, societal issues, technological developments, environmental concerns, and economic mismanagement.
Environmental concerns include "water crises, extreme weather events, natural catastrophes, man-made environmental catastrophes and climate change." Says the report, climate change in particular is both "a key economic risk in itself and a multiplier of other risks." In its 5th Assessment (released in late 2013), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states "that warming of the climate system is unequivocal and that each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850." The Global Risks 2014 report notes, "The increased frequency of extreme weather events, such as storm surges and droughts, is consistent with the latest IPCC modelling. The damage to economic assets, such as city and industrial infrastructure, agriculture and key global supply chains, caused by such extreme weather events is becoming more evident, as is the fragility of the global logistics and mobility systems." Well, super typhoon Yolanda demonstrated this quite emphatically.
Actually, it has to be questioned whether the economists who run national economies really possess the ability to craft the right economic policies. What can be observed is that most of the economists who formulate national economic policies seem firmly bound to conventional economic thinking and, consequently, restricted to inside-the-box prescriptions. For example, none seem able to abandon the cherished Keynesian belief that more spending (and more consumption) is always better than less or prepared to scuttle the long-held policy goal of striving for the greatest possible increases in GDP growth rates.
In any case, taking its theme as "The Reshaping of the World," the World Economic Forum's just-concluded annual meeting at Davos sought "to develop the insights, initiatives and actions necessary to respond to current and emerging challenges." Obviously, there was explicit recognition that "profound political, social and, above all, technological forces are transforming our lives, communities and institutions." Beyond that recognition, however, little else, in terms of concrete solutions, programs, and agreements, was accomplished at the conference.
And so how about our country? How will we deal with these growing global risks? These, note, are interconnected, interdependent, and, hence, complex. Not being blessed with competent and "strategically driven" leadership, maybe all we can really do is pray to whatever gods are out there.