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0:00
My name is Graciela
Chichilnisky,
I am a professor of Economics and
Mathematics at Columbia University,
and a visiting professor
at Stanford University.
I'm going to talk about Avoiding
Extinction: 21st Century Economics.
The topic of this presentation,
Avoiding Extinction:
21st Century Economics,
is new thinking about the economic
challenges we face in the implementation
and design of programs that
can stabilize the climate.
0:40
The first observation that
should be relatively
easy to agree on
is that we're living in a world
that is dominated by human beings,
a human dominated world.
But what's interesting
is that humans are
the largest geological
force in the planet
because we are changing
the planet's atmosphere,
its body of waters,
and the complex web of species
that makes life on Earth.
This leads us to the orange point
in the bottom of this slide,
which is the crucial
issue of climate change.
1:14
This leads to global
risks that we are facing,
as we said, one is potentially
catastrophic climate change.
The other one is, equally potentially
catastrophic, biodiversity extinction,
as well as the scarcity of
clean water on the planet,
and the fact that life in
the oceans is going extinct.
The word extinct there has
a particular significance,
and ties with the title of this
presentation about avoiding extinction.
