October 3, 2020 — From early on in this pandemic, a common reaction has been “at least, maybe now we will get serious about addressing climate change.” One can see the logic. The terrible toll taken by Covid-19 should remind us of the importance of three things: the need for science, the role for public policy, and the usefulness of international cooperation. With these three revelations firmly in mind, we can see that we also need them to respond to the problem of climate change.
March 30, 2020 — Events like the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, the US housing crash of 2007-09, and the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, are called “black swans”: in each case, few people were able to predict them reliably, at least not with precision. But they were known unknowns, not unknown unknowns. That is, in each case, knowledgeable analysts were fully aware that such a thing could happen, even that it was likely to happen eventually. They could not predict that the event would happen with high probability in any given year. But the consequences of each of these events were severe, and predictably so. Thus, policymakers should have listened to the warnings and should have taken steps in advance. They could have helped avert or mitigate disaster if they had done so.
January 1, 2020 — An interview question from Chosun Ilbo (the #1 Korean newspaper) for the New Year: Which political event of 2020 should concern us the most? (E.g., the U.S. presidential election, the geopolitical crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Brexit…?)
My response:
Perhaps I am too US-centric. But out of all events in 2020, I see November’s presidential election in the United States as warranting the greatest concern, not just for my home country but for the world.
The global system