'Eat and have a job': Moldovan youth advisor lays out economic basis for climate action

(Reuters, 8 Feb 2021) Young economist Vladislav Kaim, who advises the UN chief, worries his generation will face a huge burden of debt from COVID-19 spending, lack of jobs and growing climate threats.

While many young climate activists aim to cool an overheating planet and protect nature, Vladislav Kaim worries about another threat in a warming world: debt-laden economies with few jobs for his generation and workers trapped in dying industries.

"Of course we want to save our planet. It is in everyone's enlightened self-interest," said the 25-year-old Moldovan, one of a group of youth advisors to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on climate change and sustainability.

"But we also want to eat and have a job and have a guarantee our children will live better than we do," said Kaim, who earned an economics degree in Moscow and is now working on a master's at Sweden's Lund University.

Kaim has a better view than many young activists of the economic threats of climate change - and the risks of wresting the global economy onto a low-carbon path that leaves old-industry workers behind.

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Reuters, 8 Feb 2021: 'Eat and have a job': Moldovan youth advisor lays out economic basis for climate action

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