Thanks for this report, Michael, which is an interesting update on JS's current thinking. Jeffrey Sachs is interesting, and a much needed blast of hot air in this area of discussion. But I would prefer a breath of fresh air. I would not place him in the same league as Paul. Why not? Well, I listened with a mixture of fascination and frustration to his Reith Lectures last year and finally 'got' what was driving me crazy. As a holistic economist, I then even got halfway through an article analyzing them, but other events overtook it, and I never finished and published it.

Remember the old Einstein quote "The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of consciousness with which we created them"? My concerns about Sachs stem from the observation that, over and over again, he is recognising crucial problems, but then approaching them with the same consciousness that created them. Despite his claims to thinking new thoughts, to seeing the world in a different way, his lectures remained deeply anthropocentric, gender blind and steeped in the rhetoric and thinking of the new right. His heart is in the right place, but he is working with an entirely inapppropriate toolkit for creating a sustainable future.

As I say, he is very good at recognizing problems and, inevitably, arrives at some sustainable suggested solutions... and some deeply unsustainable ones. Even more important, they are unlikely to succeed by being partial -- in both senses of the word. Given the issues with his framework, I would personally want to look very carefully indeed at any policy proposals he puts forward for unexamined assumptions and inappropriate modes of thinking that stem from ideologies that not longer serve us (if they ever did!)

I wasn't present at the bookstore, nor have I read this latest book (yet - though I shall probably do so now!) My opinions on his work and thinking are based on the 2007 Reith Lectures and some articles and interviews since -- and so far remain the same: "two cautious cheers for brilliant rhetorician Jeffrey". But the Paul Hawken of Poverty? Sorry Michael, but no, I can't go there!