Jeffrey Sachs: I would say this is the challenge that defines our generation – sustainable development.
Jeffrey Sachs is director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute. He’s talking about meeting the human demands of the present – basic needs like food and water – without compromising the ability of future generations to meet those same needs.
Jeffrey Sachs: The world is bursting at the seams. We have nearly 7 billion people, and they’re on the search for enough food, water, energy to meet their needs, to make economic progress. But when you add it all up, we are already a globally unsustainable world society.
Sachs has led many initiatives to help study and alleviate hunger, poverty, and disease across the globe. He said that he remembers the words of John F. Kennedy:
Jeffrey Sachs: He said, some people feel we are doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. He said, our problems are man-made, and they can be solved by man. I subscribe to that view.
As an example, Sachs brought up our global water shortage. He said we can make global water use sustainable if we examine the different ways the resource is used across the world, and strategically invest in and implement water technologies.
Jeffrey Sachs: It’s a chance to use our knowledge and our new global, societal reach to do wonderful things for the future.
Dr. Sachs spoke of mounting global challenges, adding that focused, organized political action on these issues – some of which he called crises – has not yet occurred. But he said the challenges are being taken seriously. He underscored the complexity of the global systems driving humans’ great and competing needs, and admitted that there’s no simple fix.
Jeffrey Sachs: I was at the G20 meeting recently, and found it a very sober meeting. The leaders of the G20 spoke in earnest; they spoke knowledgeably. It gave me hope there are venues of serious discussion right now. I have no illusion of thinking that that translates into immediate action. But it does give me hope that we’re not just out on a lark, but can start bear down and pay attention to what is, after all, the biggest challenge of humanity.
He said the quality of our lives – and our children’s lives – depends on making the human population on the planet more sustainable.
Jeffrey Sachs: I would like everybody to be involved in the challenge of sustainable development. That means helping the poorest of the poor make their way out of extreme poverty, and helping the rich and the poor together to find a sustainable pathway to the future.
But Sachs admitted that not everyone understands what’s at stake.
Jeffrey Sachs: These problems are huge. And the gap between the scientific knowledge and the public knowledge is very large right now and needs to be closed, dramatically.
As an elementary school teacher, I often had to follow district policies with which I did not agree. I know that anyone who has worked for any organization has been in that position. And while I often felt uncomfortable about arguing too vehemently against said policies, parents often didn\’t have any reservations about speaking up. Many times my fellow teachers and I would silently cheer when a group of parents protested against some policy and actually got it changed. It\’s a little like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, \”The Emperor\’s New Clothes\”.
I sense the same situation is true here. Dr. Sachs hints at the root cause of the problem, too many people on the planet, but doesn\’t say it directly. For example in the above article the following quotes appear,\”The world is bursting at the seams.\”, \”But when you add it all up, we are already a globally unsustainable world society.\”
I do realize that those who are in positions of influence and responsibility must temper their words if they are to remain a viable part of the discussion and solution. However, there are lots of us who aren\’t as directly involved in the global sustainability discussion, and therefore can speak more directly to the issue and say things that are blunt and uncomfortable. Both groups serve a purpose.
So, in my opinion, the Emperor has no clothes, and there are too many people on the planet.
If Mr Sachs means about sustainability that as much energy go in as comes out. The problem with that is that it violates the 2 nd law of Theromodynamics.
People are not speaking out loudly and clearly about the colossal threat that is posed to humanity by the skyrocketing growth of human population numbers on Earth.
Despite the unfortunate, inhumane ways a “ONE CHILD PER FAMILY” policy was implemented in China, the policy could be vital for the future of humankind and life as we know it in our planetary home. The immediate, free, universal and compassionate implementation of a voluntary “one child per family” policy could decisively limit adverse, human-driven impacts on Earth’s body and its environs, and do so more powerfully than any other conceivable human intervention.
Given the already visible, converging global threats to human wellbeing and environmental health that are presented to the family of humanity in our time, the humane implementation of one child per family could be an indispensible centerpiece of a set of adequately designed, actionable programs that serve to actually rescue a good enough future for the children and coming generations.
If a root cause of the global threats on humanity’s horizon now is the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers, our willful denial of this primary cause could make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the children to reasonably address and sensibly overcome these threats. Then the children are likely being directed down a “primrose path” to confront some unimaginable kind of ecological wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen. The children will not understand why the catastrophe is occurring. Because their elders refused to acknowledge the best available scientific evidence of human population dynamics and, therewith, adequately “diagnose” the distinctly human-induced global predicament all of us face now, the children will not know what hit them, why it is happening, and what is required of them so as not to commit the same mistakes made by the elders.
This is only a guess but please note the likelihood that history will not be kind to the woefully inadequate leaders in my not-so-great generation of arrogant, extremely foolish and avaricious elders.
China should be thanked and applauded for its hard headed approach to population control, not denigrated. The Catholic Church and other so-called religions urging women to breed unlimited numbers of humans should be condemned, loudly and unremittingly. But, our society is based on consumerism and more bodies equal more profits equal more power.
Perhaps you are unaware that Catholic countries Spain and Italy have brought their fertility rates down (1.46 and 1.4) far below replacement, despite the dictums of the Catholic church. And that there are many countries in the lesser developed world that have brought their fertility rates down to 2 or below, Iran and Thailand included, all with voluntary family planning. China has no interference from religion, yet has had to struggle enforcing the one-child policy. It is experimenting with voluntary family planning.
Perhaps it is because of the stigma of ‘population control’ that Jeffrey Sachs and others are afraid to say more about population. ‘Population control’ backfired in India in the 1970s, and the stigma still persists there today.
hi
Thank you, very interesting. Actually,I was born in Thailand in 1975 but my mother and I fled the country and came here in Britain. Truthfully, I didnt really care much about my Thai past until my mum died last month, now I’ve been trying to find out as much as I can. Seemed like food was as good a place as any to start ! Anyway, I found a thai food recipe site here that other readers might be interested in .