2007 Reith Lectures - Dr. Jeffrey Sachs

You can love him or hate him, but I think he's great because he brings issues to the table with innovative solutions to the world's problems and is one of the few people with influence in the world who has optimism. This year, Sachs is giving the prestigious Reith Lectures held by the BBC and I recommend anyone with free time to give it a listen or a read. It's long, but inspiring and worth thinking about.

available here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/

Here are some excerpts from his first talk...

"First examine our attitude towards peace itself. Too many of us think it is impossible, too many think it is unreal, but that is a dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable, that mankind is doomed, that we are gripped by forces we cannot control. We need not accept that view. Our problems are man-made, therefore they can be solved by man..."

"We think we can be safe when we leave a billion people to struggle literally for their daily survival, the poorest billion for whom every day is a fight to secure enough nutrients, a fight against the pathogen in the water that can kill them or their child, a fight against a mosquito bite carrying malaria or another killer disease for which no medicine is available, though the medicines exist and are low cost, thus letting malaria kill one or two million children this year."

and an example of his practicality...

"...and my little calculation has shown you that one day's Pentagon spending could cover every sleeping site in Africa for five years with anti-malaria bed nets. And yet we have not found our way to that bargain, the most amazing one of our time. We do have choices -- they are good ones if we take them."


(Unfortunately, you can only download the current lecture, but you can still listen online to the other ones or read the transcripts. If you are really insistent, I could maybe burn you a cd of the mp3s i have. So Owais, Hamza, Iman, let me know)