By Bono and Lawrence H. Summers, The Washington Post
Bono is the co-founder of ONE, a global campaign to end extreme poverty and preventable disease, and the lead singer of the rock band U2. Lawrence H. Summers, a professor and past president at Harvard University, was U.S. treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001 and an economic adviser to President Barack Obama from 2009 through 2010.
Wildfires of all kinds.
This has been the hottest summer, not just in both of our lives, but possibly in 120,000 years, according to leading scientists. Yet it is likely to be the coolest we’ll experience for the rest of our lives. It’s a startling thought and one to stop on before checking the exits — if we can find any.
That means more heat, more drought and more wildfires like this summer’s devastating blazes in Maui and the Mediterranean basin. But it also means more pressure on a global economy already feeling the strain.
Because the climate crisis unaddressed will become development in reverse, undoing decades of social and economic progress in regions that did nothing to cause it.
This is a time to plan, not panic. To organize, not agonize. There are strategies we can adopt before the next time we hear someone shout “Fire!,” and we realize it’s the global economy itself that has gone up in flames. READ THE FULL WASHINGTON POST COLUMN