38 | New Scientist | 27 February 2021
A trillion
dollars to fix
the world
Let’s imagine you have
inherited a fortune and
want to solve humanity’s
most pressing problems.
What is the best way to
make a difference, asks
Rowan Hooper
ANDREA
UCINIFeatures
M
OST of us have had that
conversation: what would you do
if you won the lottery? Pay off the
mortgage, quit your job, maybe start a small
business doing something you have always
dreamed of. But what if you acquired a truly
vast fortune – not just a few million but a
trillion dollars? And what if you had to spend
it on making the world a better place?
I know, a trillion dollars – a thousand billion
dollars – sounds like a vast amount of money,
especially during the twin crises of recession
and pandemic. But in the grand scheme of
things, it isn’t. A trillion dollars is about 1 per
cent of world GDP. It is what Jeff Bezos, the
founder of Amazon, is on course to be worth
by 2026. The world’s richest 1 per cent together
own $162 trillion in assets. And it’s just one-
twelfth of what governments around the world
found in 2020 alone for economic stimulus
packages in response to the new coronavirus.
What could you do with such a relatively
modest sum, if charged to spend it on the
world’s biggest challenges? This is the central
question of my book, How to Spend a Trillion
Dollars, in which I choose 10 megaprojects
(all things scientists are working on now)
and explore what could be achieved if
we showered them with money. Here we
examine three of the most urgent of those
challenges: solving world poverty, halting
runaway climate change and curing all disease.