Page 26 - Rockefeller Lockstep Document

CLEVER TOGETHER

A world in which highly coordinated and successful

strategies emerge for addressing both urgent and entrenched

worldwide issues

The recession of 2008-10 did not turn into the and expansion largely ignored the very
decades-long global economic slide that many real environmental consequences of their
had feared. In fact, quite the opposite: strong unrestricted growth. Undeniably, the planet’s
global growth returned in force, with the world climate was becoming increasingly unstable.
headed once again toward the demographic Sea levels were rising fast, even as countries
and economic projections forecasted before the continued to build-out coastal mega-cities. In
Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development Mega-cities like Sao Paulo and Jakarta expanded World Trade Center site into a three-foot-deep
2014, the Hudson River overflowed into New
downturn. India and China were on track to see
York City during a storm surge, turning the
their middle classes explode to 1 billion by 2020.
lake. The image of motorboats navigating
at a blistering pace as millions poured in from
through lower Manhattan jarred the world’s
rural areas. Countries raced to industrialize
by whatever means necessary; the global
most powerful nations into realizing that climate
change was not just a developing-world problem.
marketplace bustled.
That same year, new measurements showing that
But two big problems loomed. First, not all

precipitously created new urgency and pressure
return to globalized growth: all boats were
for governments (really, for everyone) to do
rising, but some were clearly rising more.
26 people and places benefited equally from this atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were climbing
something fast.
Second, those hell-bent on development