Some Reflections on Climate Change in a Keynesian Spirit

Over the next few decades humanity and countries around the world will be facing three major challenges. First, artificial intelligence will fundamentally reshape work and greatly impact employment and labor markets. Second, varying national and regional demographic trends will reshape global population, creating migration pressures. Third, progressing climate change threatens to become an increasingly disruptive force in the global economy. The paper treats the climate challenge as the most essential – perhaps existential – global challenge facing humanity, with the AI and demographic challenges substantially complicating the situation, but with
varying national and regional connotations. While a looming climate crisis was clearly not on Keynes’s radar in 1936, The General Theory, and Keynes’s thought more generally, may still provide guidance to help countries coping with the triad of challenges as they unfold.