10 - Do It Now: Five Points of Leverage

Summary

This chapter describes five “action areas” in which politically achievable changes over the coming two decades could render humankind a lot safer than it is today. For climate change, these include urgent measures for rapid decarbonization, coupled with ramped-up research on technologies for carbon removal and for solar radiation management; new international pacts among small groups of nations for emissions reductions with mutual accountability and incentives; and pre-adaptation measures for dealing effectively with unavoidable harms caused by global warming. For nuclear weapons, these include preparing contingency plans for major or limited nuclear wars, as well as risk-reduction measures than can be implemented today. For pandemics, experts point to four sensible and affordable measures that would greatly reduce the harms of future pandemics. For AI, an immediate challenge will be to prepare for chronic mass unemployment due to rising levels of automation. Finally, the chapter proposes the creation of a new federal agency, the Office for Emerging Biotechnology, to oversee and regulate cutting-edge developments in this field.