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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Damian Carrington Environment editor

Economics has failed on the climate crisis. This complexity scientist has a mind-blowing plan to fix that

Doyne Farmer speaking at an event
Prof Doyne Farmer says his team want to ‘do for economic planning what Google Maps did for traffic planning’. Photograph: Ian Wallman/Ian Wallman/Institute for New Economic Thinking

It’s a mind-blowing idea: an economic model of the world in which every company is individually represented, making realistic decisions that change as the economy changes. From this astonishing complexity would emerge forecasts of unprecedented clarity. These would be transformative: no more flying blind into global financial crashes, no more climate policies that fail to shift the dial.

This super simulator could be built for what Prof Doyne Farmer calls the bargain price of $100m, thanks to advances in complexity science and computing power.

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