This text is from a particular report on the Athens Democracy Forum, which gathered specialists final week within the Greek capital to debate world points.
The summer time of 2023 was a devastating one for Greece.
The biggest wildfire on report within the European Union ravaged its northeastern areas in August, killing greater than 20 individuals. Weeks later, floods ripping by way of central Greece left 16 individuals useless.
These episodes “show greater than ever that the local weather disaster is the best safety problem of our century,” stated President Katerina Sakellaropoulou of Greece in her opening handle final week to the Athens Democracy Discussion board, a convention established in 2013 and held yearly in affiliation with The New York Instances.
Democracies all over the world are “below extreme stress” on account of the disaster, she stated, due to the impression on meals safety, migration, water availability, biodiversity and pure disasters.
“If no drastic response is offered,” she warned, “our democracy can be weakened, and the way forward for the subsequent generations can be severely undermined.”
The worldwide local weather emergency and its threats to democracy dominated the conversations at this 12 months’s discussion board, a three-day gathering of policymakers, enterprise leaders, lawmakers, activists, lecturers and college students.
The opposite potential risk that was singled out: synthetic intelligence, with remarks by executives from expertise giants, together with Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of world affairs.
Whereas the discussions have been principally thematic, talks have been additionally devoted to particular continents (Africa, South America) and international locations (China, Ukraine), though no discussions targeted on pro-democracy protests in Iran led by ladies, which broke out a 12 months in the past and are ongoing.
Greece’s catastrophic summer time got here up in a video handle by John Kerry, the previous United States secretary of state and now President Biden’s particular envoy for local weather (Mr. Kerry was unable to attend in particular person). He famous that Greece had been “decimated by floods and historic wildfires,” and that one specific blaze was “so highly effective, it grew 4 instances the dimensions of New York Metropolis.”
“These disasters and the local weather disaster aren’t simply more and more threatening our surroundings. They’re a check of the very manner wherein we govern, and in some circumstances don’t,” he stated. “The stakes have actually by no means been larger.”
He famous that yearly, air air pollution alone killed greater than 7 million individuals, or one particular person each 5 seconds. And since 2000, local weather disasters inflicting $1 billion in harm occurred someplace on the planet each 18 days.
On the similar time, “unhealthy actors” have been jeopardizing democracy by concentrating on environmental defenders and Indigenous communities, and fascinating in local weather misinformation and disinformation, particularly when it got here to scientific details, he stated. “This science must be on the entrance web page, my mates, not censored.”
Main lecturers additional hammered dwelling the magnitude of the local weather disaster.
Michael Oppenheimer, a professor and director of the Heart for Coverage Analysis on Vitality and the Atmosphere at Princeton, stated that the interval between excessive occasions — akin to extreme warmth waves, hurricanes or coastal flooding — was shrinking.
“It means we’ve much less and fewer time to adapt,” he added, warning that by 2050, “lots of locations on this planet are going to see what was once a 100-year flood yearly.”
Ann Florini, a professor at Arizona State College, stated individuals needed to “cease trying on the central governments on a regular basis” for options, as a result of “there isn’t a manner for any central authority to have the ability to cope.”
Native communities ought to handle their very own sources with out central authorities management, she stated, noting that when the U.S. authorities handed the Inflation Discount Act — the largest local weather funding within the nation’s historical past — 40 % of the advantages have been required to go to frontline communities that have been hardest hit by the local weather disaster.
Finally, she suggested, human beings needed to withstand their powerlessness within the face of local weather occasions. “Mom Nature doesn’t really negotiate,” she stated. “She at all times has the final phrase.”
In a separate panel on the ultimate day of the discussion board, individuals illustrated the impression of local weather change on people.
Fatou Jeng, the founding father of Clear Earth Gambia, a nonprofit devoted to elevating environmental consciousness, stated in a video trade that Gambia’s 2.6 million individuals survived on farming and agriculture. And yearly since 2020, the wet season has had a “large” impression on them: “With the flooding, lots of households really have been displaced, resulting in them shedding their homes and their principal supply of earnings.”
In international locations like Niger and Nigeria, she stated, clashes had damaged out between farmers and herders, and conflicts have been flaring up in different methods, as a result of “the principle sources of earnings of persons are being misplaced.”
The convention additionally examined considerations round A.I., together with the concern that superintelligent machines may sooner or later not solely eradicate human jobs, however human beings themselves.
Mr. Clegg of Meta, Britain’s former deputy premier, tried to allay fears by noting that governments had the ability to manage A.I. and cease it from getting used for manipulation, disinformation and the endangerment of the human race. He suggested the general public to “proceed to order judgment till we see how issues play out.”
He stated that expertise might be used “for good and for unhealthy functions,” and that innovations starting from the bicycle and the automotive to radio and the web had all, at one level, triggered the “pure human intuition to concern the worst.” The current launch of ChatGPT, the free A.I. device, had led collective considerations to run “fairly far forward of the expertise.”
“This concept of A.I.s growing an autonomy and an company of their very own, a demonic want to destroy humanity and switch us all into paper clips,” he stated, was “not but the case,” as a result of “these are methods that don’t know something. They don’t have any actual significant company or autonomy.”
He stated cross-industry requirements on watermarking, transparency and stress testing may hold A.I. in verify.
One other panel examined A.I.’s impression on schooling.
Royal Hansen, Google’s vp of privateness, security and safety engineering, stated his 13-year-old son, a long-Covid sufferer, hadn’t been to highschool in three years, and “stays at grade stage in no small half due to the sources he has on-line, A.I. being one factor.”
“If he have been going to highschool each day and enjoying baseball like regular youngsters, I might say let’s work on the limiting” of time spent on-line, Mr. Hansen stated. “Because it stands, that’s his window to the world. He lives in his bed room.”
He stated that although A.I. as a expertise was “comparatively new,” it rested on a few a long time of studying and expertise, notably associated to cybersecurity, privateness controls and time administration, and that Google had launched one thing known as the Safe A.I. Framework as a approach to speak about these points.
“Step one is, let’s not throw out the teachings of the final couple of a long time as we chase one thing brand-new,” he stated. “It’s this steadiness between embracing one thing new however profiting from the controls or accountability we’ve discovered up to now.”
Additionally on the panel was Irina Bokova, the previous director-general of UNESCO, the United Nations physique that focuses on schooling and tradition. She stated college was “the place values are being instilled,” and schooling was “an act of social interplay.” She expressed worries that human interplay can be misplaced if education was led by synthetic intelligence and by computer systems alone.
On the subject of A.I., she stated, “suppose with your individual minds,” and “be forward of it,” somewhat than “run after it.”
Because the delegates have been debating the hazards of synthetic intelligence and the long run impression of local weather change, Ukraine confronted the on a regular basis actuality of struggle. According to U.S. officials, near 500,000 Ukrainian and Russian troops have been killed or wounded since Ukraine was invaded 18 months in the past.
Showing on the discussion board, Sergii Shutenko, Ukraine’s ambassador to Greece, made an impassioned plea for his nation to be supported by the West.
“It isn’t the time now to desert Ukraine,” he stated, including that the battle is at a “decisive second” that may decide whether or not Ukraine would “proceed, or be destroyed and eradicated.”
His plea was supported by one of many many younger individuals within the convention: Victoria Portnaya, a 20-year-old Ukrainian democracy and human rights advocate. “If we enable Ukraine to lose,” she warned, “we’ll lose democracy, peace and safety.”
Serge Schmemann, a member of The New York Instances editorial board who was additionally on the panel, stated “we actually don’t know what comes subsequent” in Ukraine, and the “wholesale destruction” happening wanted to finish.
“The one potential answer is a few sort of frozen battle,” he stated. Ready for an all-out victory by Ukraine was unfeasible, as was anticipating the toppling of Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, as a result of, “I might concern that in the event that they did overthrow him, it will be within the title of someone worse.”
Talking after the panel, he stated the best choice for the West within the struggle was to “proceed to assist Ukraine to the hilt” by sending shells and artillery methods and to “be certain that it ends in circumstances favorable to Ukraine.”
“We’ve got to ensure they’ve a robust hand on the desk” when the phrases of a cease-fire are negotiated, he stated. “We can’t abandon Ukraine.”
