SOME readers might remember the 1985 movie Brewsterâs Millions. Richard Pryorâs character has to spend $30 million in 30 days in order to inherit a $300 million fortune. This week, we update the conceit, inflating the sum to a cool $1 trillion, and set a few ground rules: the money has to be spent on projects to improve human welfare, to restore the environment and to advance science.
It is the premise of , a new book by 51¶ŻÂțâs podcast editor Rowan Hooper that takes 10 megaprojects and costs them out. It is a timely exercise, with US president Joe Biden pushing a $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package through Congress, with a $2 trillion climate plan waiting in the wings. What could be achieved, if money were no object?
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To take the examples we focus on this week â solving world poverty, improving public health across the globe and preventing catastrophic climate change â the answer is quite a lot. So much could be achieved for what is, globally speaking, a small sum, that you have to wonder why we donât just get on with it.
One reason, of course, is that there is no âweâ endowed to act internationally with this level of investment. Maybe there should be. It would be no bad thing if this book encourages greater public pressure for action on many issues, and if it helps to show that even big problems are soluble.
Sadly, Hooper doesnât tell us how to get our hands on a trillion dollars. But by assessing what it would take to tackle the worldâs biggest problems, he finds that solving them is limited not by technology, but by the availability of cash, and most of all by a lack of political will. So much might already be obvious, but the situation makes little sense: again and again financial analyses find that even huge investments pay for themselves many times over.
In that sense, it really is like a new version of Brewsterâs Millions: spend now, win later, with more jobs, better health and, crucially, a better functioning biosphere. Spending imaginary money is one thing, however. Now comes the task of getting politicians and the ultra-rich to make it happen.
