Saturday, May 31, 2008

Jeffrey Sachs: Love him or Hate him- his new book



Here is a video of him talking about his new book. Some hiss at him others sing his praise. He was instrumental is spreading the "shock therapy" in Bolivia and Russia. You can read about him on Wikipedia. He also is much spoken about in Daniel Yergin's book/PBS series, "Commanding Heights." In layman's terms: Jeffrey Sachs use to promote on a global stage the Milton Friedman, neo-liberal, free markets will solve all problems if left alone by governments doctrine, etc. He was a true believer. I don't know if he still believes parts of this ideology, but he is definitely taking a different stance now and seems to favor a modified approach to solving our world's problems. He now has become an eco-economic advocate for government interventions that will stop us from destroying our habitat and our planet. He is practical, not an alarmist, but looking for solutions.

I just ordered his book from Amazon, so I'm looking forward to reading it, understanding that there are many critics of Mr. Sachs. Should be an interesting read though.
Here are his points in his video: What we need to do as soon as Bush is out of office and he prays McCain will not be elected.

1. Get out of Iraq $200 billion
2. End Bush tax cuts $250 billion dollars
3.Invest in sustainable technology- New National Institute for Sustainable Technology $30 billion: battery, biomass, solar, food supply needs R & D
4. Global Commons: Need a cooperative framework
Ratify: Kyoto reach agreement on post Kyoto framework
Ratify: Convention on Biological Diversity
Ratify: UN Convention of the Law of the Sea
5. Honor: Geneva Convention
6. Stop corn to ethanol program - $6 to $7 billion No corn based ethanol. Corn needs to be used for food. It makes not sense because it still produces green house gases and it drives up food price. It is a profound blunder. $6.5 billion dollars wasted
7. Invite world leaders of Dry-land regions to a world conference and discuss water conservation.
8. Reinstate giving money to United Nations’ population fund to help control world growth.
9. Rebuild competence in Washington: cabinet level-Department for Sustainable Development. Interlink climate, food, water production—Cabinet Level Department
10. The Millennium Development Goals put into practice in policy.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Okay – so everyone knows that some pretty scary stuff is happening to our world from war and economic crisis to global warming and climate change. But nobody seems to know how to stop these things from happening. Its like we all want to do better in our day-to-day life and be more responsible, but does it really make a difference?
It does.
I just finished reading James Ray’s new book called Harmonic Wealth and then attended a teleseminar with James about how we can spread Harmonic Wealth around the world. James really hit the nail on the head with this one idea. He talked about PHASE TRANSITION – it’s a scientific term that describes how when a critical mass of something (like a certain number of molecules) is met, then a shift in the entire structure occurs. It’s what they use to describe a liquid turning to gas at a certain temperature and that sort of thing.
James used it to explain how WE CAN CHANGE THE WORLD. Seriously. If it makes sense at a molecular level, than it makes sense on a global scale, too. If enough of us make those changes happen in our own lives (get the Hybrid, recycle, go carbon neutral, vote against war, etc.), at a certain point we will hit critical mass and the change will happen for everyone! You can feel it happening already and I certainly want to be a part of it.
Check out his book at the Harmonic Wealth website: harmonicwealth.com/read

Martie said...

Thanks for the tip. I'll check it out. Sounds interesting

nltnjnns said...

Hi Martie -

Thanks for the article, and for the video.

Your bullet points are a great reference.

Regards,
Nalton

Martie said...

:-)