45 - The concept of circular economy is gaining momentum

 It is clear that humanity uses too many resources. In 2022, the ‘overshoot day’ was July 28, which means that to regenerate what humanity consumes today, we would need the equivalent of “1.75 Earths” in terms of area. As a result, the concept of circular economy, which was first pushed by environmental activists, is spreading more and more widely in society and in particular among political authorities: for example, the European Commission presented in 2022 two new packages of specific proposals, particularly with regard to packaging waste and on the generalization of the design of sustainable products.  

 A true reference, the World Energy Outlook of the International Energy Agency (IEA) provides an overview of global energy markets. The current context makes this edition particularly interesting, the
IEA qualifying the current crisis as the "first global energy crisis" that the world has known.  

Issues related to cybersecurity become more critical in the current context. The European Commission has just unveiled its Cyber Resilience Act. 

The United Nations has just published its World population prospects 2022 report, which is really a reference document and gives us the opportunity to take stock of the major demographic trends. 

 The United States adopted the Inflation Reduction Act this summer, a major climate and energy bill. Democrats are touting it as the law with the largest climate investments in the country's history. This law includes many distinct spending items and it is important to
analyze it in detail to appreciate the extent of progress.  

The oceans play a very big role in the global economy, given that more than 90% of global trade is transported by sea. Recent works have shown that tightening of environmental regulation of cargo ships can lead to spectacular gains in terms of public health.  In the years to come, additional efforts will be made to drastically reduce the sector's greenhouse gas emissions, very likely with the implementation of new technologies, such as the use of hydrogen.  

It is now well established that global warming increases the probability of violent flooding episodes. A recent study focusing on 9,500 cities in 175 countries measured the local economic impact of floods and shows that adaptation measures greatly mitigate this negative impact. The subject of adaptation and resilience to climate disasters will arise more and more and should take an increasingly important place in public policies.  

Everybody has the intuition that because of remote work, a certain number of people
have left the big cities to go live in smaller cities and that this has propelled housing prices out of the big cities. A recent study shows that this phenomenon may explain more than half of the increase of house prices over the past two years.