This post was written by Hatchet reporter McKinley Kant.
Jeffrey Sachs, one of the world’s most influential economists, railed against international and U.S. leaders for failing to address climate change Monday at the Elliott School of International Affairs.
Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute and a special United Nations adviser, contended that the issue of sustainable development is a crucial challenge that won’t go away, turning up the heat on President Barack Obama to create real change in his second term.
Remarking that it has been 20 years since the U.N.’s Rio Summit, which led to the Kyoto Protocol that the U.S.did not ratify, Sachs criticized the country for failing to take necessary action.
“The world’s most important country, the United States, has done almost nothing,” he said. “It needs to be more than a gimmick or a photo-op… Good governance entails planning. We’ve lost the art and belief in planning.”
Sachs, who has penned three New York Times bestsellers in the past decade, has spearheaded the sustainable development movement, which promotes preserving the environment while narrowing the poverty gap.
He criticized both presidential candidates for failing to mention climate change during the 2012 campaign, sounding the alarm on politicians punting the issue.
“It’s a problem that is slow-moving in our daily lives but a train wreck in the blink of an eye relative to human history,” he said. “The extent of environmental degradation is beyond our imaginations.”
He underscored that not only is the world’s population going to increase significantly, but that most of that population growth will take place in impoverished regions. There, ensuring healthy development of children and practicing sustainable farming will become even more necessary.
“The world has already become a world of extreme events,” he said as he pointed to an image of floodwaters in New York City caused by Hurricane Sandy in October. “The world is not in any way, shape, or form on a sustainable trajectory.”