Jeffrey Sachs - Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet

PENGUIN BOOKS

Sachs corrals the facts into clear and compelling arguments that will leave you keen to sign up to his grand plan and be part of bringing it about. The result is a truly inspirational book

Robert Matthews, BBC Focus

Never has the challenge of saving the world felt as simple

Edmund Conway, Daily Telegraph

Lively, provocative and readable will make the world a better place

Tim Congdon, Spectator

Genuinely impressive Sachs stands in the great tradition of campaigning intellectuals and has been an effective advocate of urgent policy action

Diane Coyle, Independent

A manifesto for securing a bright future for Earth

Michael Sargent, Nature

Packed with statistics and carefully worded arguments

Economist

A vital read Common Wealth is full of big ideas and is written by a star in the constellation of gurus a serious book that deserves to be widely read and debated Management Today

One of Americas most prominent economists Noel Malcolm,

Sunday Telegraph

Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces Despite the rearguard opposition of some vested interests, policies to help the worlds poor and the global environment are in fact the very best economic bargains on the planet

Al Gore

Jeffrey D. Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute and Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University, and the global bestselling author of The End of Poverty. He is internationally renowned for his work as an economic adviser to governments around the world and is a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals. He was the BBCs Reith Lecturer for 2007 and presented some of the ideas in this book to a worldwide radio audience during those lectures.

Economics for a Crowded Planet

PENGUIN BOOKS

PENGUIN BOOKS

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First published in the United States of America by The Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. 2008
First published in Great Britain by Allen Lane 2008
Published in Penguin Books 2009

Copyright Jeffrey D. Sachs, 2008

The moral right of the author has been asserted

All rights reserved
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book

ISBN: 978-0-14-191931-7

For Lisa, Adam, and Hannah,
my three best reasons for hope

D RAWING FROM HIS UNEXCELLED EXPERIENCE and knowledge, Jeffrey D. Sachs has written a state of the world report of immediate and enormous practical value. Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet delivers what the title promises: a crystal-clear analysis, a synthesis, a reference work, a field manual, a guidebook, a forecast, and an executive summary of recommendations fundamental to human welfare. It says to those responsible for Earths 6.6 billion people: Just look at the numbers. The world has changed radically in the past several decades; it is going to change more, faster and faster. In spite of all we have accomplished through science and technologyindeed because of itwe will soon run out of margin. Now is the time to grasp exactly what is happening. The evidence is compelling: we need to redesign our social and economic policies before we wreck this planet. At stake is humankinds one shot at a permanently bright future.

Modern humanity was born, so to speak, about ten thousand years ago with the invention of agriculture and the villages and political hierarchies that soon followed. Up to that point our species had perfected hunter technology enough to wipe out a large part of Earths largest mammals and birdsthe megafaunabut it left most of the vegetated land surface and all of the oceans intact. The economic history that followed can be summarized very succinctly as follows: people used every means they could devise to convert the resources of Earth into wealth. The result was steady population growth accompanied by expansion in geographic range, sustained until virtually every habitable parcel of land was occupied, to as much a level of density as technology and disease resistance permitted. By 1500 the exponential form of the surge was obvious. By 2000 it had produced a global population dangerously close to the limit of Earths available resources. The key trait of human economic advance has always been exponential growth: that is, with each increase, that same amount of increase is next attained sooner. The simple command humanity has followed is biological in nature: be fruitful and multiplyin every way try to be exponential. More precisely, the growth is logistic: it is exponential until it slows and tapers off because of restraints imposed by the environment.

As the large mass of data summarized in Common Wealth shows with sobering clarity, we have arrived at a narrow window of opportunity. Humanity has consumed or transformed enough of Earths irreplaceable resources to be in better shape than ever before. We are smart enough and now, one hopes, well informed enough to achieve self-understanding as a unified species. If we choose sustainable development, we can secure our gains while averting disasters that appear increasingly imminent.

Please look at the numbers, then, in Common Wealth. Extrapolate a bit. We still can correct the course, but we do not have much time left to do it.

Almost all of the crises that afflict the world economy are ultimately environmental in origin: they prominently include climatic change, pollution, water shortage, defaunation, decline of arable soil, depletion of marine fisheries, tightening of petroleum sources, persistent pockets of severe poverty, the threat of pandemics, and a dangerous disparity of resource appropriation within and between nations.

Unfortunately, while each of these problems is understood to some degree by decision makers, they typically continue to be addressed as separate issues. Yet the world has little chance to solve any one, Sachs shows, until we understand how all of them connect by cause and effect. We will be wise to look upon ourselves as a species and devise more realistic and pragmatic approaches to all the problems as a whole.