Author: Mark Randall
The current situation is a once in a century event, in terms of its impact in the resetting of social, economic and political order. This means huge opportunity for positive change as well as risk.
Always after catastrophe the human egocentricity has a sense of reflection ‘what did we do wrong to cause this?’
From the early days of civilisation, when the world was seen as a stage on which the psycho-drama of life is played out and the gods watch: humans have extremely large egos where each universal event is caused by our behaviour and morality. It is manifest in mythology, religious text and modern-day literature that we pushed the world too hard. So now there will be a period of retreat from hubris; probably in treading carefully as ‘repentance’ in the form of sustainability.
There will be a central government and regionally coordinated economic stimulus such as ‘Marshal Plan’ -last seen post Second World War. The targets for the stimulus will be both practical and political. Key to this is; with the mortality rate of older generations being very high, the mean age will lower so politically the important demographic will be younger with millennials having considerably more influence. The single globally uniting philosophy of millennials is climate change. As such there will almost certainly be significant economic stimulus in matters relating to climate change-such as renewables.
The focus now, for the low carbon sector, is to influence, where we can, establish how this is organised and at the very least ensure we are positioned at the front of the tide of investment, in order to help rebuild as effectively as possible.