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Common Wealth |
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| Book: Hardcover | 6.14 x 9.25in | 400 pages | ISBN 9781594201271 | 18 Mar 2008 | The Penguin Press | 18 - AND UP |
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From one of the world's greatest economic minds, author of The New York Times bestseller The End of Poverty, a clear and vivid map of the road to sustainable and equitable global prosperity and an augury of the global economic collapse that lies ahead if we don't follow it
The global economic system now faces a sustainability crisis, Jeffrey Sachs argues, that will overturn many of our basic assumptions about economic life. The changes will be deeper than a rebalancing of economics and politics among different parts of the world; the very idea of competing nation-states scrambling for power, resources, and markets will, in some crucial respects, become passˇ. The only question is how bad it will have to get before we face the unavoidable. We will have to learn on a global scale some of the hard lessons that successful societies have gradually and grudgingly learned within national borders: that there must be common ground between rich and poor, among competing ethnic groups, and between society and nature.
The central theme of Jeffrey Sachs's new book is that we need a new economic paradigm-global, inclusive, cooperative, environmentally aware, science based- because we are running up against the realities of a crowded planet. The alternative is a worldwide economic collapse of unprecedented severity. Prosperity will have to be sustained through more cooperative processes, relying as much on public policy as on market forces to spread technology, address the needs of the poor, and to husband threatened resources of water, air, energy, land, and biodiversity. The "soft issues" of the environment, public health, and population will become the hard issues of geopolitics. New forms of global politics will in important ways replace capital-city-dominated national diplomacy and intrigue. National governments, even the United States, will become much weaker actors as scientific networks and socially responsible investors and foundations become the more powerful actors.
If we do the right things, there is room for all on the planet. We can achieve the four key goals of a global society: prosperity for all, the end of extreme poverty, stabilization of the global population, and environmental sustainability. These are not utopian goals or pipe dreams, yet they are far from automatic. Indeed, we are not on a successful trajectory now to achieve these goals. Common Wealth points the way to the course correction we must embrace for the sake of our common future.
Common Wealth
Foreword by Edward O. Wilson
Part One. New Economics for the Twenty-first Century
1. Common Challenges, Common Wealth
2. Our Crowded Planet
Part Two. Environmental Sustainability
3. The Anthropocene
4. Global Solutions to Climate Change
5. Securing Our Water Needs
6. A Home for All Species
Part Three. The Demographic Challenge
7. Global Population Dynamics
8. Completing the Demographic Transition
Part Four. Prosperity for All
9. The Strategy of Economic Development
10. Ending Poverty Traps
11. Economic Security in a Changing World
Part Five. Global Problem Solving
12. Rethinking Foreign Policy
13. Achieving Global Goals
14. The Power of One
Acknowledgments
List of Acronyms
Notes
References
Index
"Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces. We can address poverty, climate change, and environmental destruction at a very modest cost today with huge benefits for shared and sustainable prosperity and peace in the future, or we can duck the issues today and risk a potentially costly reckoning in later years. Despite the rearguard opposition of some vested interests, policies to help the world's poor and the global environment are in fact the very best economic bargains on the planet."
-Al Gore, Winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and Former Vice President of the United States
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