Chandran Nair, Founder and CEO of the Global Institute For Tomorrow (GIFT), an independent pan-Asian think tank and author of the book “The Sustainable State,” argues passionately about the global vulnerabilities that need to be tackled urgently. He begins by highlighting a few myths and fallacies that have been exposed by the events of the past year.  He stresses that the public sector and civil society should be central to solving our generational problems like climate change and inequality, as they simply cannot be solved by the private sector. He advocates policies that improve the quality of people’s lives in a sustainable and equitable manner, urging less reliance on GDP growth as a development target. He points out that pricing nonrenewable resources to align incentives toward conservation and devoting state spending to public and common good are the call of the hour. We discuss the need to rethink consumption-based growth models, and the danger of expecting technology to solve everything. We also cover the imperatives for China, Singapore, and the US.