SENTINEL WATCH May 26, 2008 Issue

'HABITS OF A VIGOROUS MIND'

RUTH WALKER

"WHERE WE ARE right now is literally unsustainable. We can't go on doing this. This isn't a matter of conjecture; it's a matter of arithmetic."

The speaker was Jeffrey Sachs, the internationally renowned economist, whom I heard recently discuss his new book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin Press 2008). His is only one of the more impassioned voices arguing how human activity has put the natural environment under extreme stress.

For Sachs, the great need is for sustainable development—to reconcile "the felt need" for continuing economic development with the urgent need to preserve the earth from destruction.