As FOW’s Awards highlight, innovation is one of the most powerful and distinctive of human characteristics. As the Copenhagen summit approaches, the world must have confidence in that power, stop hiding from climate change, and dare to go out and solve the problem. Derivative markets will have a part to play.
Modern financial markets are one field in which the human capacity to innovate is displayed in a way that would have astonished our forebears.
As the last two years have reminded us, innovation can cause damage as well as progress. That idea ought to be obvious to everyone who has heard of nuclear weapons – but somehow, in different fields from time to time, it keeps getting forgotten.
Technical advances pose new moral challenges, and if we fail to make the right choices, we are likely to find new tools causing nasty surprises.
Yet what should not be doubted...