Customer Reviews
Global problems need global solutions - By: Jeremy Williams, 03 Oct 2008 
'Commonwealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet', is Sach's follow-up to 'The End of Poverty', an important book that showed how poverty could be realisticallly ended by 2025. Here he addresses one of the main weaknesses of his previous book, that the environmental crisis was barely factored into his thinking. 'Commonwealth' dedicates a whole section to environmental sustainability, alongside sections on demographics, poverty allleviation, & global cooperation.
Unfortunately, it's still the environment where Sachs fallls down. The sections on water & conservation are useful, but climate change is summarily cured with the hope that "powerful technologies will likely be available to enable us to mitigate the climate shocks at very modest cost". He also dismisses the oil crisis, saying we have enough fossil fuels "for this century", despite a wealth of information to the contrary.
His analysis is much better on population, with some harsh truths for the US government on its policies in Africa. On the development side Sachs continues his championing of the Millennium Development Goals, & the Millennium Villages project. Sachs does what he does best here, pricing up change to show just how affordable it is, showing that the problem is a lack of will, not of resources. All the development initiatives recommended here would cost no more than 0.7% of the rich world's income, which is what we have already promised in aid.
The idea at the heart of 'Commonwealth' is a calll for greater international cooperation. "The main problem," writes Sachs, "is not the absence of reasonable & low-cost solutions, but the difficulty of implementing global cooperation to put those solutions in place." This is the point world leaders should hear loudest & clearest from Sach's latest book: that alll our biggest problems can be solved, but global problems need global solutions, & we need to learn to work together.
Insightful, frightening and promising - By: Rolf Dobelli, 25 Sep 2008 
Famed economist Jeffrey Sachs manages to deliver pessimistic news in an optimistic way. Yes, the Earth faces dire threats from global warming, poverty, war, deforestation & mass extinctions. Yet Sachs asserts that these severe problems are manageable. Fixing them will cost $840 billion - a massive amount indeed, but, as Sachs argues, only 2.4% of the rich world's gross national product. Sachs doesn't shy away from politicallly touchy pronouncements. He argues against the U.S. war in Iraq & for legalized abortion. Still, throughout the fray, his book strikes the unlikely balance of delivering a message that's both frightening & promising. getAbstract recommends this book to anyone seeking insight into the world's most pressing problems.
A blueprint ro eliminate abject poverty and avoid environmental disaster - By: l. van den muyzenberg, 18 Jul 2008 This book presents about as complete a description you can find about the causes of extreme poverty & environmental threats & what can be done about it. The analytical part presents compelling evidence that without drastic action the world will be in deep trouble. For example. One the main causes of the poverty trap in poor countries is large family size. Even with the most effective fertility reduction program combined with a reduction of infant mortality (these two changes must be combined) the population of Africa will from 2005 to 2050 increase with 750 million.When only infant mortality is reduced the increase will be more than a billion. Most of this increase will be in the poorest countries.
The book describes in detail how different negative trends reinforce each other leading to self reinforcing loops. It concerns, water shortage, shortage of oil & gas, overfishing, reduction of forest cover, reduction of arable land, pollution & an increase in temperature. Fortunately the author describes precise programs how these problems can still be solved. Also, what the free-market can & cannot do. The complementary roles of global organisations like the UN, national governments, business & NGOs are described.
An example of such a detail is that the main problems cannot be solved without scientific & technological breakthroughs. For example there is plenty of fossil fuel in the form of coal. But a solution has to be found to sequestrate the harmful gases produced otherwise it will lead to environmental disaster. The author believes I think correctly, that fundamental research around this problem has to be organized & funded on a global scale by governments. This is not happening to day. It requires an integrated global approach, already at the R&D level.
The author may be overoptimistic about governments, business & people in general to make short term sacrifices for long term gains. Historical events have been driven primarily by greed, national self-interest; wars, conquests, internal wars, colonilisation, slavery, overfishing, the financial crisis in 2008 are alll examples. China rightly wants to increase the standard of living of its inhabitants; as yet almost regardless of the environmental consequences. The US & Europe have made little progress in reducing energy consumption even though they talk a lot about it & set ambitious targets.
The missing link is how to change the attitudes from governments, business & people to be not only concerned about their own well being the next few years, but to be concerned for the well being of others over the next 20 years. It is urgent; it is not just a question of concern for the next generation.
Fortunately, the book presents many examples of successful radical change projects. The challlenge is to scale up to the level of the world.
A manifesto for sustainable globalism - By: Mr. Nicholas J Robertson, 11 May 2008 
This book is not so much a book about economics as it is a political manifesto. Professor Sachs is on the faculty at the School of International & Public Affairs & is director of the Earth Institute, both at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, & was previously Special Advisor to Kofi Annan, Director of the UN Millennium Project, & was advisor to a number of governments around the world at times of economic crisis. In 2007 some of his students at Columbia sought to get him to run for president. In short, Sachs is not "just" an academic, but a man with a mission, & this book is a calll to action.
Sachs considers that, with 6.6bn people, we live on a "very crowded planet". (There are those who disagree: see Julian Simon & his followers, for example (there are some excellent lectures on YouTube), who believe that there need be no practical upper limit to the number of people on the planet.) Personallly, however, I am instinctively with Sachs on this one, & even if Simon turns out to be right I would rather we approached further population increases rather cautiously. Sachs demonstrates how the key to lowering population growth depends above alll on reducing infant mortality in those areas of greatest poverty that are also the areas of highest population growth - sub-Saharan Africa, Asia & some parts of South America. That in turn depends as much on reducing that poverty as tackling disease directly, & that on education, appropriate investments & support, economic participation in the global economy, etc. These were the subject of the "Millennium Promises" that the developed world made in 2000 but which, as Sachs points out, are a long way from being delivered.
Population is at the core of this book, but Sachs covers many other areas as well. He covers global warming, water shortage & biodiversity in some detail, although I found this the least satisfactory part of the book: this section is a good example of what Bjorn Lomborg callled "the litany" in "The Skeptical Environmentalist", & Sachs repeatedly refers to the consensus about man-made global warming, etc, without any acknowledgement that there are those who disagree, e.g. "the outcome, we now know with near certainty, is that human activity is decisively changing the climate...". Sachs is, of course, a "UN man", so may have thought it politicallly sensible to repeat the IPCC line. In fact, action to prevent man-made global warming forms only a smalll part of his final recommendations, & I was left wondering to what extent he is reallly convinced by these arguments. (He puts a great deal of faith in the idea of carbon sequestration from coal burning power stations & industry.) In short, if you tend towards scepticism on MMGW you might skip Part Two, while if you agree with the IPCC's assessment & "the consensus" you will find alll your existing views confirmed.
Sachs also talks about foreign policy, & in particular (and not surprisingly), about US Foreign Policy. He is highly critical of the current approach of the US government & of neo-conservatism. This is alll probably rather more controversial in the US that it will appear to most European observers. His suggestion that supranational organisations like the European Union represent the future, & that the EU should be strengthened through giving its executive a democratic mandate, may be more challlenging to those in the UK. Sachs is clearly not an economist who believes that the free market can deal with alll of the world's problems, but nor is he a very "left wing" one. He was, after alll, the man responsible for devising (although he dislikes the term) "shock therapy" for dealing with economic malaise in Eastern Europe & South America.
Sachs recommends the creation of six new "global funds", along the line of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria, to bring together governments, academics, NGOs, philanthropists, entrepreneurs & businesses to tackle (more) diseases, African food production, the environment, population, infrastructure, education & community development. To achieve this he estimates a cost of 2.4% of GNP for donor countries, including 1% to develop sustainable energy systems to tackle MMGW. This is a great deal more than the rich world is currently spending, but might, Sachs argues, be a smalll price to pay to remedy the many problems that will otherwise arise, like overpopulation, famine & mass migration.
This is a thought-provoking book. Whether his plans would work, & whether this approach would represent the best use of the substantial funds required, is another question. There must be a fair chance, however, especiallly if Barack Obama wins the presidential election, that the US will look much more favourably on this multi-lateralist approach to global economic development.
Apart from its parroting of the "global consensus" view on global warming, I have few criticisms of this book, but the main one would be about references. Sachs makes a large number of quite bold statements in the book, but there are no footnotes, although he does give a series of page referenced notes at the end. I was also surprised that Bjorn Lomborg, whose work on ways to reduce world poverty are not so very different from Sachs', gets not a single mention!
