Rav Casley Gera

Ah, St. Paul’s Cathedral! Icon of old London, shrine to the survival of the human spirit, blah blah. What better place to hear Jeffrey Sachs, celebrity economist, brain of the Make Poverty History campaign, and all-round Bringer of Solutions to Difficult Problems (oh yes, and Chairman of Columbia University’s Earth Institute), explain to us the route to a sustainable future?

Except, of course, it’s actually a crap place. Because the same incredible size that gives it its majesty and overwhelming sense of solidity and timelessness also makes it a bloody echo chamber, and Jeffrey Sachs has a surprisingly booming voice.

Still, once I’d tuned my ears to pick out the words from the echoes, it made for an interesting evening. In addition to the surprising baritone, Sachs is taller than I expected, and generally less mild-looking. And his words, too, were surprisingly muscular.

Much of his 30-odd minute talk was taken up with recounting his polished summary of modern economic growth, with emphasis on the staggering increase in economic activity since the Industrial Revolution. In The End of Poverty, he talks about a 49-fold increase in total economic throughput since 1800. Tonight, he mentions 100-fold. I suspect that’s a slightly different measure, rather than new evidence having increased the figure. But who knows?

He quickly moves on to the central concern of, well, me, and I’m sure much of the audience. Is “sustainable development” really at all possible? Meeting the rich world’s current needs sustainably is looking nigh-impossible at the moment. Once Sach’s plans to plug the poorest countries into the engine of economic development takes off, surely there’s no hope?

Sachs tackles the issue with his tried and tested approach: just crunch the numbers. If the poor catch up to a large extent with us, in terms of economic throughput, and we stay roughly the same, that will mean a four-fold increase in total economic activity. Couple that with the predicted 50% increase in world population, and you’re looking at a six-fold increase in economic activity by mid-century - from a base that is already too high.

Well, that’s fairly depressing. But Sachs has no truck with the doom-and-gloom tone that tends to dominate debate about climate change. “It is possible,” he insists. “We’ve got to this point purely by absent-mindedness.” If we actually apply ourselves to the problem, he argues, there’s every chance of a solution. It’s clear he sees technology, rather than some of the lifestyle changes proposed by the traditional green movement, as the answer - he namechecks carbon sequestration and nuclear as two of twenty possible technological solutions currently being worked on.

What’s lacking, Sachs argues, is the political will. And it’s here that the muscular part comes in. Sachs rips into the War on Terror, calling it a distraction from the real issues at hand. “The War on Terror is about 27th on my list of international priorities,” he asserts, and argues that our response to 9/11 missed the opportunity to spur progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. He more than once calls the Iraq war “stupid,” and takes a potshot at George W. Bush, explaining,

right now we’re driving towards a cliff… but it’s not too late to grab the wheel and turn the car around. Right now, President Bush’s hand is on the steering wheel, so, yes, I’m worried. But we can turn the wheel around ourselves.¹

Some slightly off-topic questions from his debate partner, Nicholas Sagovsky, give us a chance to tease out some more of Sach’s politics. He expresses a strong disdain for the arms trade, and praises the reductions in military spending that took place in the Clinton Administration.

He’s then pressed to outline his views on inequality. This is a useful indicator of a person’s political instincts - liberals tend to say they don’t mind how rich the rich are, as long as the poor have a decent standard of living; social democrats tend to say excessive inequality is harmful for society, and extreme wealth should be heavily taxed and redistributed. Sachs offers a bit of a fudge: saying that fundamentally, his concern is just the living standards of the poor, but also noting the disadvantages and costs of excessive income gaps and condemning the quest for ever-greater wealth - “the desire of the man with a 300-ft yacht to get a 350-ft one” - for much of our sustainability problems. It may be this apparent confusion stems from his desire to stay “on topic” - while he probably does prefer inequality to be minimised, he’s aware that in areas where the poor are dying in their thousands, nothing can distract from the core task of raising their living standards. He goes on to endorse the “Nordic model” of rich-country economics, with its high taxation and top-class social services. But he observes that one enabling factor for that system is the ethnic homogeneity of those countries, and that ethnic and religious differences tend to undermine public support for heavy taxation, a deeply depressing thought that I don’t doubt is true.

More and more, it’s becoming obvious to me that Sachs’ politics are those of the honourable tradition of American liberalism. He’s unapologetic in his support for free markets, but also clear in the need for strong governmental action - both in rich and poor countries - to ensure the benefits of markets reach everyone, and do so safely. In his idealism, his combination of moral fervour with maximum information, and his giddy enthusiasm for technology, he could have stepped straight out of the Kennedy Administration. He’s probably also a blueprint for how the Democrats could reclaim the political impetus in America, if only they had the guts.