Major economic challenges: Climate change

In early 2020, Emmanuel Macron established a commission of renowned international experts to analyse the major economic challenges facing France and other similar economies. The commission recently published their report, "The Major Future Economic Challenges", outlining key recommendations that would allow countries to respond more effectively to these challenges. The chairs of the commission, Professors Jean Tirole and Olivier Blanchard, presented the commission's report at an IFS event in July.

At this event, our presenters focused in more detail on one of the long term structural economic challenges identified by the report: climate change.

"Climate change poses an existential threat. It will generate tremendous economic costs, jeopardize ecosystems and biodiversity, bring about social unrest, provoke wide scale migration, and create a resentment from poor and middle-income countries that might trigger wars or other forms of conflict. We have little time left to act."

-The Major Future Economic Challenges

The authors of the climate change chapter of the report, Mar Reguant, Associate Professor of Economics at Northwestern University, Illinois, and Christian Gollier, Professor and Director General of the Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), presented their findings from the report, focusing on the urgency of addressing the existential threat of climate change and making proposals to accelerate the achievement of our climate goals, particularly on the European level.