The world really is unsustainable right now and steps should be taken rapidly by governments responsibly to reduce population growth and to work together to make the technological progress needed to keep climate change and other environmental problems from sooner or later causing immense human catastrophe. This was the message of Professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world´s eminent economists.
We're on a trajectory that is absolutely unsustainable and profoundly dangerous,
Jeffrey Sachs in address on Globalization in the Era of Environmental Crisis
Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs, giving the 14th in a series of Prebisch lectures at UNCTAD, said current international attempts to respond to climate change are off track. Likening the approach to a high-stakes poker game in which negotiators hold their cards close to their chests, he said "We don't need global negotiations right now as much as we need global brainstorming, global problem solving.. . the climate-change problem is not a trade negotiation. It is simply the most complex engineering, economic, and social problem humanity has ever faced."
Prof. Sachs called for a massive, coordinated public-private effort with a great deal of input by experts to determine what can be done to allow substantial economic growth to raise living standards for hundreds of millions of poor while coping with environmental problems that already are unsustainable --- highlighted by, but not limited to, climate change.
See full Press Release.
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