Confronting a perfect long storm
The world must face up to the gravity of the challenges it faces and organise itself more effectively to address them
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Tharman Shanmugaratnam
The pandemic, war in Ukraine, the threat to food security and the resurgence of global poverty. Heatwaves, droughts and other extreme weather events. These are not random shocks. Nor are they a perfect storm in the conventional sense, a one-off conjuncture of bad events. We face instead a confluence of lasting structural insecurities - geopolitical, economic and existential - each reinforcing the other. We have entered a perfect long storm.
We cannot wish away these insecurities. We can only restore optimism by recognising the gravity and collective nature of the threats we face and organising ourselves more effectively to address them.