The Monell Auditorium at Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, where some of the world’s leading scientists study geology, oceans, freshwater systems, climate and atmosphere, was host to many of the events at Lamont’s Open House Day on October 2, 2011. The auditorium, anticipating a possibly controversial but certainly entertaining speech from Jeffrey D. Sachs, was filled to the walls and beyond with Columbia students and a sprinkling of the public as well.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015.
Sachs is also an engaging, ubiquitous, and reflective speaker.
At the event, Sachs discovered that virtually everyone in the audience was a student. He extolled Columbia’s campus-wide, cross disciplinary participation in discussions of international climate control. He said he would like to think that this was an optimistic sign as he prepares for the next Rio Conference on Sustainable Development, 20 years after the first one in 1992.
Sachs, who has been engaged in development issues for three decades, said that as he works to deal with the huge issue of globalization, he welcomes student energy and new methods of communicating that energy. He pointed out that Columbia students now interact in discussions on globalization each week in live designated international classrooms communicating from New York to Beijing.
Sachs told the audience that despite positive experiences like the global classroom, the overall news relating to the bio-system is very grave. In fact ,the system, he said, is broken, completely collapsed. And he named as the villain corporate greed, generally American corporate greed.
He acknowledged that not all the news was bad. There are some promising new techniques for fighting poverty globally. A technique developed in one part of the world, say, India, can be transferred rapidly to another areas. A good example: high energy, low smoke wood stoves that do not injure the health of children who sit around them and inhale the smoke and that also use less fuel and thus do not contribute to deforestation.
A good idea, he pointed out, has legs. The last time Sachs talked to a class about low smoke wood stoves he was astonished to find that 20 of the students had already engaged in “clean cook stove” projects around the world.. This experience, teaching students who came to class already engaged in practical experiments, was something new and wonderful for Sachs. He assigned the 20 students the project of writing a paper together.
But to return to the central subject—the broken bio-system. He tracks to its source American corporate greed. In Sachs’ recently published book, The Place of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity, he writes: “My book describes why America needs a `mixed economy,’ one where a more effective federal government regulates business and invests alongside the business sector. …: [M]y book describes how we can restore politics to the true mainstream of American values, rescuing democracy from the clutches of corporate power…. “
During the Summit on Sustainable Development held in Rio in 1992, twenty years ago, Sachs, said that the atmosphere was completely different. One conservative senator said, for example, “Call me crazy but I believe in evolution and I believe in climate change.”
At the Rio Summit in 1992 three agreements were ratified and George Bush Senior signed them.
Rio Declaration on Environment and Development
Sachs and other critics, however, point out that no action has been taken since that time in regard to the agreements made in Rio, especially for those issues pertaining to poverty and cleaning up the environment. “What has been done?” Sachs asked. “Nothing at all.”
With some real anguish Sachs told the audience : “We will be going to the Summit at Rio twenty years after the first conference and will have to report that nothing at all has been done to address the three issues.”
What’s happening now? According to Sachs, there is bitter political infighting in Washington. Sachs said that Obama wants no international agreements because he does not want America to be conspicuous.
And what would Sachs want the U.S. To say?
The planet is under unprecedented stress. That’s why Lamont was originally invented—to deal with this stress. Lamonters may help to resolve it.
The world ecosystem is paralyzed by Western interests. Change must be made.
Our hope may be in the younger generation, which appears to “get it.”
In a separate but related speech Sachs outlined his further, broader suggestions for forward movement.
We need agreements on global ethics. Raw power is pushing us over the cliff.
We need a technological road map. In the U.S., politics and the oil lobby prevent a discussion.
We need a global carbon levy of the wealthier nations, money to help poor countries who adopt new carbon systems.
Re: this levy—at Rio the wealthier nations already pledged $100 billion dollars by 2020, but, Sachs said, try to find these monies. He charged that Congress, for example, doesn’t want to pay to assist any other country.
But we need levy and it must be mandatory, he said, assessed country by country. It can’t be voluntary. People affected by radical climate change will start dying. Food and water will begin to evaporate. Paper wealth won’t save them.
We need regional cooperation. Europe is the best role model on the planet—it has plans for financing. We need regional scale infrastructure for low carbon and sustainable technology.
Sachs ended his speech with an impassioned plea to listen and help him take action. “My job is to help facilitate this. Without action we’re doomed. The juggernaut of climate change will do us in.”
To buy Sach’s books, go to Amazon:
The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity
