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Common Wealth

A load of hot air

Jeffrey Sachs
Allen Lane, 386pp, £22,

Tim Congdon

Tuesday, 8th April 2008

Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the New York based Earth Institute, has established a formidable reputation as someone who thinks hard, and worries even harder, about the future of the planet.

Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the New York based Earth Institute, has established a formidable reputation as someone who thinks hard, and worries even harder, about the future of the planet. His latest book, Common Wealth, like its predecessor, The End of Poverty, reviews the major issues of international economic development in the early 21st century. But Common Wealth tries to go further than The End of Poverty, and raises the argument to a higher level of moral concern and practical difficulty.

The defeat of poverty would be challenging in the best of circumstances, but global conditions in the early 21st century will be particularly hostile. Sachs identifies a conjunction of new problems, most of them arising from mankind’s pressure on the earth’s limited resources. Indeed, one of these problems — the much-publicised threat to the climate from greenhouse gas emissions — would be easier to tackle if economic growth were to halt or go into reverse. The world needs development, but it must be ‘sustainable development’ (to use the term that Sachs emphasises) that leaves a viable biosphere for future generations.

Sachs’s interests and sympathies are remarkable in their range. The threats to future well-being identified in Common Wealth include the depletion of natural resources, global warming, the ageing of populations in the developed world, and the reduced availability of water in many developing countries. It is difficult to think of any other single-volume work where this multiplicity of threats is discussed with such coherence, humanity and passion. Moreover, Sachs knows that ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ don’t sell books, and that too much use of ‘maybe’ and ‘perhaps’ does not impress policy-makers. He is a skilful writer, who adroitly uses short sentences to make big assertions and give strong recommendations.

But can humanity and passion become too much of a good thing? When Sachs sets out an agenda (as he often does), it is urgent, ambitious, large-scale and announced with a fanfare. The final pages propose eight ‘actions that each of us can take to fulfil the hopes of a generation in building a world of peace and sustainable development’. The eighth such action is to ‘live according to the standards of the Millenium Promises’, by acting ‘honorably’ as consumers and citizens. The book’s last paragraph quotes from President Kennedy’s inaugural address, on the uniqueness of the present generation, and declaims on ‘exciting opportunities’, the harnessing of science for ‘a new ethic of global cooperation’ and so forth.