Executive Summary
As a follow on to the original “Race of Our Lives” as part of the GMO Quarterly Letter from April 2013, Jeremy Grantham provides a detailed discussion of the long-term, slow-burning problems that threaten us today: climate change, population growth, increasing environmental toxicity. The piece focuses on the impact of all these three on the future ability to feed the 11 billion people projected for 2100, and highlights the severe implications of these issues if they are not resolved. One material advantage in addressing these issues is in the accelerating burst of green technologies, which may in the future be able to offset much of the accelerating damage from climate change and other problems. Yet despite these surprising technological advances, we have still been losing ground for the last few decades, particularly in the last few years. Somehow or other we must find a way to do better. We will need all the leadership, all the science and engineering, all the effort, and all the luck we can muster to win this race. It really is the race of our lives.
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