Salisbury Forum: Planet's prognosis not good

SALISBURY — Jeffrey Sachs, an economist, and Bill Blakemore of ABC News delivered a rather gloomy assessment of the state of the planet at the opening of this season’s lectures sponsored by the Salisbury Forum Friday, Oct. 16.

The talk was held at the Salisbury School. Blakemore "interviewed" Sachs on "Four Global Crises: Money, Security, Heat, Psychology."

Sachs, director of The Earth Institute, professor at Columbia University and an advisor to the United Nations, began by responding to Blakemore’s question of the economic impact of global warming, saying that insurance companies are paying billions of dollars in climate-related claims.

But the conversation quickly branched out in several directions.

"We’re a very crowded planet now, from 3 billion in 1965 to 7 billion today," he stated. "This massive increase in population, plus the desire for a higher standard of living on a crowded, productive planet is happening very fast.

"We don’t know how to handle it."

Of the recession, Sachs said the problems are "not impossible to solve. A good brainstorming society would take up the challenge. America has been able to rally in the past."

Referring back to the environment, "the key idea is to find technologies that can keep existing living standards without the high costs to the planet. And we need a new type of economy that gives the right signals."

Sachs said he was in favor of developing not just wind and solar power, but nuclear as well.

"I don’t like not having electricity, by the way. We’d better get back to nuclear, which we suspended 30 years ago after Three-Mile Island."

Failure to do so leaves us with what he called "the inertia of coal plants, which are certainly dangerous."

On politics, Sachs was acerbic. "It’s like science fiction, watching lobbyists eat up Congress each year."

In talking with Obama administration officials, Sachs said "it’s top-to-bottom special interests.

"And there’s not a serious thought in Congress."

Sachs said he was "disgusted" at a recent briefing on the political prospects of the Cap and Trade legislation in the Senate.

"I learned what every senator is demanding as his pound of flesh. ‘The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ is wrecked right now."

Sachs advocated a wholesale change in America’s foreign policy.

"These problems are not unsolvable but they’re tough. None of them will be solved militarily. We can’t win the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. The only thing we can do is work with other countries.

"The problem isn’t that we’re doomed, the problem is to open our eyes."

The evening ended with a question from the audience about the concept of national security in an interconnected world.

Sachs said the core of most problems worldwide is hunger, lack of jobs and lack of education.

"Anybody who spends a day in a camel herder village will tell you: Don’t send the Army, send the Army Corps of Engineers."