[aeturnum]

I think a lot of folks here are missing the forest for the trees about this report. This is urging people to take a disaster studies inspired approach[1]. We need are in danger of over-optimizing; of accepting too many disruptions from foreseeable problems. There is nothing here about how many risks we should take - it's talking about the fact that we can model expected disruptions and that we are not using that knowledge to prepare for those disruptions which will, of course, make them worse.

Nearly all disasters are foreseeable and mitigable. We will do better if we prepare ahead of time. Investing a comparatively small amount of resources will have returns down the line - but you have to do the investment and plan accordingly. A laser focus on investing all resources in "progress" will end up forseeably disrupted.

[1] The work of Scott Gabriel Knowles is probably a good intro if people are not familiar.

[carapace]

The metaphor that comes to mind is "Pacific Rim": we're being attacked by invisible kaiju but we're not building giant robots to fight them because they're invisible. They're saying "let's use radar to locate the monsters and build robots to be ready to fight them".

But the "monsters" are things like floods, wildfires, tsunamis, etc.

> the Hazard Definition and Classification Review, ... outlined over 300 hazard types that can contribute to disasters (UNDRR, 2020a). They include common events such as storms and floods and also less-frequent events such as pandemics and chemical accidents.

https://www.undrr.org/publication/global-assessment-report-d...

And the giant robots are things like better communication, insurance, and paying a little attention.

[aeturnum]

Exactly - though I think I would go even further with the metaphor and say this report is pointing out that we can see the Kaiju on the radar right now but we are choosing not to build the robots! So it is warning that, given the Kaiju we can foresee, the projected output of our industry is going to dip into the negative.