是的，要過年了～
然後我還在減肥的迴轉木馬上面下不來啦
其實有時候心裡很不甘心
想吃的衝動控制不了
但是吃下去之後不是有罪惡感就是後悔
完全很難享受吃到一直想吃的食物那種滿足感
如果可以
我想練習在吃想吃的東西之前
先不是去想熱量的事情
而是想想那個東西是不是真的有值得我事後的罪惡感
如果我寧可不要那個罪惡感
那就停下來不要吃
如果這個食物真的好吃到我願意有罪惡感
那我想我也不會後悔了
總之就是
稍微多想一下下
才不會老是在這幾種感覺當中搖擺不定啊
目前分類：未分類文章 (19)
- Jan 23 Fri 2009 12:24
同樣的輪迴中～新年要來了耶
- Jul 25 Wed 2007 20:06
Cambridge 5 Test 3 Writing
Test 3
Task 1
The map (shows) is about a new supermarket’s two planned places in Garlsdon. There are 65,000 people live in Garlsdon. The town center is at (nearly) the middle of the town; housing is around the town center. Industries are on north and south side. There are three main roads to Hindon(population 10,000), Bransdon(population 15,000), and Cransdon(population 29,000), but there is only one railway (which) passing though this town.
The first planned place of supermarket is on (in) the northwest side of Garlsdon, and the second is on the town center. Compared these two places, the first place is on countryside which means the price of the place could be lower. (personally opinion, is that ok?) However, the first place is far from the center that it is not convenient for residents.
The traffic access to (of) the second place is easier than the first one. First, it is on town center and housing is surroundings so residents can come conveniently. Besides (that), all the main lines of transportation (communication) are passed though the second place, so that the people of Hindon, Bransdon, and Cransdon can come to use this (consume in) new supermarket without taking long time.
Task 1
Some people think that a sense of competition in children should be encouraged. Others believe that children who are taught to co-operate rather than compete become more useful adults.
Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.
The population in current society was increased rapidly, which lead to the distance between people is shorter than before and competition become severely. There are a significant number of people believed that competition is a positive influence to children. However, my opinion is that cooperate is more important than competition. My reasons and reverse side will be discussed in this essay.
First, it is widely believed that children who learn to cooperate in groups will be developed flexibility and diversity. For example, group discussion in study is effective and time saving. They also can discover different opinions from other child. Furthermore, by working together, children can avoid excessively self-centered and be more willing to give and share. To take basketball games for instance, members always have to team up with others because it is impossible to win a game by oneself. Moreover, children can obtain important communication skills by cooperation such as to deal with a conflict of argument, to negotiate with members. All of these advantages can benefit children become useful adults.
Nevertheless, some people accept that competition is obviously better than cooperation, because to expand competitiveness from one’s childhood can stimulate highly motivation of learning. For example, children take study seriously could win a better place in a competition. Besides, contention since one was very young also can provide an opportunity to express and insist their need. Although there are some advantages, competition in children still turn to worry about personally gains and losses or selfish easily.
In conclusion, because human is a social animal so it is difficulty to live independently. Learning how to work together and enjoying the process of seeking that is really accommodation in competitively society.
- Jun 21 Thu 2007 21:54
Useful Words
(1)Particular / Junction
For one thing, …For another…
To begin with…
In addition to …
Furthermore, moreover, also, likewise, in addition to, what’s more, for instance, more than that
(2)Disjunctive/ Comparison
I’m not sure I know about this question, but if I have to guess…
However, nevertheless, although, yet, in spite of, despite, otherwise, as a matter of fact, on the other hand, instead
(3)Order
Well, it’s quite simple, First, ….Second,…
First of all, then , next, after that, last, finally, and so on, before, afterward
(4)Instruction or emphasize
Well, the point I’m trying to make is that…
What I mean is that…
Oh, this is a very interested question. I think…
Well, as far as I’m concerned…
I’ll like to point out…
From my point of view, I think…
I suppose…
As I see it…
Oh’ I’m not sure. You see…
In other words, in particular, especially, that is to say, equally, I mean, more / most important
(5)Summary
As a result…
Therefore, in conclusion, consequently, so…
(6)Cause and effect
The reason why…is that…
As a result, because, since, as therefore, thus, for this reason…
Muse's part
Go with / sandals
Brands / dressing oneself in expensive
like yourself, own style, own fashion, flared trousers, the bell-bottoms, tight jeans, exaggerate hair style, out of date, casual, princess style, expose more
planting in the city, green preservation, promote, multiple media
That takes times, things won’t change immediately but it will change someday. tranquil, urban plan, appreciate,
LOHAS
LOHAS is an acronym for Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability, a market segment focused on health and fitness, the environment, personal development, sustainable living, and social justice.
- Jun 12 Tue 2007 11:58
*SPEAKING* Future Plans / Wild Animal Life / Important Things In Your Life / A Place You Would Visit
Future Plans
1. Do you have a future plan? // What are goals for your life?
My job, I want to be professor.
2. What will your life be like in ten years?
I wish I could have a stable job and family life.
3. When you retire, what do you think you will say about your career?
It was very satisfied, very thankful. Because I always take action without hesitation.
4. If you could start your life again, would you do anything different?
I will not choosing scientific group. If I can choose again, I will choose literture that will be very different.
Wild Animal Life
1. What do you think of Chinese attitudes towards animal?
depends on what animals, ordinary erature, some of tools, indifferents
2. What animal would you like to keep as a pet, and why?
dog, not keen on pets, friendly, loyalty to human, effection and emotion, the other one reason for that, take care of my flat
3. What is the role of animals in your country? // What should animals be used for?
varies, depends on their funtion to human, generally, lower leveal creature, force to do
4. Why do people like keeping pets? // What do you think of people’s keeping pets?
lonely, mainly, can be company. don't have to keep on talking, feel more security, power of contral
Talk about a thing that is very important in your life.
You should say:
what it is
what it is used for
how long you have owned it.
And explain how your life was changed by it.
mirror, use it more one year. It's very convenient.
1. What kind of things do people want to own today? // Have people always felt that way? // Will things change in the future?
computer, Internet, somthing that can provite more senstimental, mulity fountion.
Of course I think it is. For different age and generation
equepment
2. What is your understanding of “Easy come, easy go”?
That can't sustain very long.
3. What is the relationship between happiness and money?
You don't have money it's hard to satisfiy your happiness and joy. In stead of eraning money.
A Place You Would Visit
Describe where you would go if you were given the chance to travel anywhere in the world.
You should say:
the reason for your choice
the things you would see there
the things you would do
and talk about which events, if any, you would like to change.
Sweden. adventure, I will choose a place that I never been there, have no idea about that, see their city view, artitechture, live as a Sweden.
1. What are the top ten famous landmarks in Taiwan? // Why do you choose them?
101, 中正紀念堂,
2. What are general tips for traveling in your country?
familier with bus system, night mark, impitate
first, second
3. What place would you like to recommend for people from other countries to visit in Taiwan?
seashore, we have sever kind of seashore,(seashell), mountains, (temple),
4. How do you feel about traveling? // What can you benefit from traveling?
good activity, learning a lot of things, I like travel very much.
enjoy time alone
I like to read and watch TV. You can't think that important things during the day.
social activity of younger people in Taiwan
billbord / different from
Do you like to go out with friends?
Because we have to rotate / I am very busy
What you like or dislike in daily task.
Drinking coffee can wake me up.
I like to drink a cup of coffee before I start to work.
flavor / To get readness to work
after I drink a cup of coffee that can make me energetic
Do you like to arranging life?
I don't like to stick on regular life.
What would you do when you have trouble in arranging your schedule?
"rush to work" should be "hurry to go to work"
difficult to arrange schedule
- Jun 07 Thu 2007 19:13
*SPEAKING* Hometown // Education (6/7)
Hometown
- How do you like the people in your hometown?
- What do people do to make a living in your hometown?
- Would you say it's a good place to live in?
Compare the educational system in Taiwan and in Western Countries.
You should say:
in what ways they are different
in what ways they are similar
which is more suitable for you
and discuss which played a more important role in your upbringing.
- May 31 Thu 2007 23:11
*SPEAKING* School & English Learning // Hobbies & Interests (5/30)
Hobbies & Interests
1. What are some of your hobbies and interests? // How did you become interested in this hobby? // Why?
Drawing some illustrations, peaceful, happy
from the time I can remember, related with my mother, be influence by her, march band, joyful
2. Do you think hobbies are beneficial to social life?
Yes, for panting, handmade card, for friends, broad my cycle of friends, for music part, meet lots people,
3. Do you think one’s hobbies reveal a great deal about one’s personality?
Of course, indoor activity, you are not so open, outdoor activity, ex shopping, football, in the other side, become a cycle
Take myself be an example
School & English Learning
1. What was your favourite subject interesting to you?
English, interesting, teacher talk about UK or USA, learning different culture, try to imaging,
2. When did you start studying English? // Can you remember anything interesting about learning English?
Primary school, not formal education, learning without pressure, presentation
Try to read English novel, different life style, lecture work make story more valuable
3. What are the good things about college life?
Made friends in different department, regular performance, joyful, club life are colorful and satisfy.
4. What are the bad things about college life?
I don’t think there are any bad things about college life. Employment, not so stable, can adept
A Favourite TV programme
Describe your favourite TV programme.
You should say:
Who produced it
What it is about
How often you read it
And explain why it attracts you so much.
Music Station, asahi
New pop songs
Delightful,
1. What makes TV news most entertaining?
Starts news, make
2. What do you think of the violence in the news?
Contain of the program, that is not suitable for everyone,
3. What are the major characteristics of TV news programs?
Screen, vivid picture,
Learning New Things
Describe a new skill you have learned recently.
You should say:
What skill it is
How you have learned it
Why you wanted to learn this skill
And explain how much you benefit from this skill and from the learning process as well.
SPSS, software, quite difficult, master researcher, useful
1. What do you think is the best time to learn new skills? // Why?
Teenage, mature, concrete, more motivated,
2. What are the most important skills nowadays?
Cultivate searching date, how to make friends, social skills, useful information, not only in school, resource,
3. Are there any traditional skills in your country? // What are they? // Do you think it necessary to learn these skill?
Contend many meaning, cooking skills, parents will make toy for their children,
- May 30 Wed 2007 11:45
*SPEAKING* Housing & Accommodation // Work & Ideal Job // Family & Family Life
Housing & Accommodation
1. What type of housing do you live in? // Have you always lived in this kind of housing?
2. What is the area like? // What is the neighbourhood like?
3. Is it a nice area? // Has the area changed since you have lived there?
Work & Ideal Job
1. Could you tell me what you do for a living?
2. What kind of company do you work for?
3. Have you always worked for this work this company? // Do you think you will keep that job?
Family & Family Life
1. Is motherhood a career? // Would you (your wife) like to continue your (her) career or stay at home taking care of the household?
No, it isn’t. It’s not because of un-payment. In my opinion, family is taking care for each other not one of the members should takes responsibility. If I can, I will keep my career and taking care of the household as much as I can. If I can’t, I will stay at home to bring up baby about two or three years. After that, I will still go back to work.
2. Who dose the housework in your family?
The housework in my family is division. For instance, my father and mother prepare meals. My brother throws away rubbish. My sisters and I sweep the floor. I think that’s very common in modern society. Because parents have to work longer so children have to take some responsibility to share the housework.
3. Do you agree that household is never finished?
Yes! I believe it is. Household is something like that if you don’t clean the house or to launder clothes, everyone will feel uncomfortable. But when you do it, everyone considers that is normal. Housework is also very boring with too many routine task, time consuming and tiring. If you can share household with family members, that will be better.
4. Do you prefer to spend time with your family or friends?
I like to stay with my family. Because they can’t be replace by anyone and they are closer than friends. For me, the support from family and friends are different. Your family loves you no matter who you are, at your worst and your best. But friends may separate for some reasons. Besides this, I can have hearty talk without worry about clothes or place with family. So I really like to spend more time with my family.
5. Have you ever been stay away from you family for a long time?
Yes, I had once. When I was a high school student, I lived in dormitory for three years. At first, I really missed my family and got homesick. I called my family frequently. After they answered the phone I started crying and couldn’t say anything. Every time they came to see me, I couldn’t let them go. Now I plan to go abroad to work and I am missing them from now. However, I believe this is a positive effective that can force me become independence.
- May 27 Sun 2007 10:56
Festivals in their cultural context
Festivals in their cultural context
Describing festival
The Taipei Lantern Festival is held at the time of China’ traditional Lantern Festival, which falls two weeks after the Chinese New Years and features children parading about the streets at night carrying homemade lantern. Lanterns remain the focus of the festival. The most spectacular of all is the theme lantern at the Chiang Kaishek Memorial Hall.
Chinese New Year’s Day will normally fall between January 10 and February 19. It is the grandest holiday for all Chinese around the world and is celebrated in many ways during the course of the season, depending on your age, sex, and marital status. It celebrates the birth of a new year, a time for renewed hope.
Noun | Verb | Adjective |
There are big celebrations on New Year’s Day. | New Year’s Day is celebrated in many ways. The festival celebrates the New Year. | It was a public holiday and everyone was in a celebratory mood. |
The festival is a time of renewal. | Each year, the festival renews the national spirit of the people. | The success of the cancer drugs gave her renewed hope. |
The festival is held in March. [special day(s) event] The festivities go on for days. [enjoyable activities] |
| There was a festival mood in the village during the spring holiday. |
The parade in the town square was a very colorful spectacle. |
| The parade is always very spectacular. |
Many customs have their origin in pagan ceremonies. |
| A ceremonial procession is held through the streets of the city. |
excerpt from English Vocabulary in Use (Advenced)
- May 24 Thu 2007 23:32
*READING* for one more day
I read for one more day from yesterday. The author is Mitch Albom who wrote Tuesday with Morrie. These are some paragraph that I feel great and I want to share with you.
P.33
P.33
She wasn’t easy on me, don’t get me wrong. She smacked me. She scold me She punished me. But she loved me. She really did. She loved me falling off a swing set. She loved me stepping on her floors with muddy shoes. She loved me though vomit and snot and bleed knees. She loved me coming and going, at my worst and at my best. She had a bottomless will of love for me.
P.33-34
“Mom?” I whispered.
I hadn’t said it in so long. When death takes your mother, it steals that word forever.
- May 24 Thu 2007 10:44
How Much Choice Is Acceptable
Because of new, safer, and accurate prenatal tests will be offer for more pregnant women and make it possible to identify fetuses that will have mental retardation, deafness, early-onset Alzheimer’s disease and a other conditions such personal deliberations are add political debate over abortion.
A significant number of people find they are less comfortable when abortion is used by women who don’t want to have a particular baby. The challenge of prenatal tests is how much choice do you really want to give? It is a painful assessment when parents decide to terminate a pregnancy.
According to a 2006 poll conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, when there is a strong chance of serious defect in the baby, women should be able to obtain a legal abortion. However, some people consider this private decision should be make without political interference.
Studies have shown that many women choose to abort for diagnosis of Down syndrome and other, less serious conditions. And a growing number of fertile couples are using in vitro fertilization to gain greater control over the genetic makeup of their children. The question may only become murkier if testing extends to traits like homosexuality or intelligence.
“We all had our own zones of discomfort but still couldn’t quite bring ourselves to say ’Here’s line, firm and clear’ because that is the core of the pro-choice philosophy” “You can never make that decision for someone else.”
- May 24 Thu 2007 00:43
Fears about Making A Too Perfect World
This report is about broader prenatal testing that could sharply reduce the number of those born with the genetic condition. Before this year, pregnant women order than 35 will accept test to see if their fetal had the extra chromosome that cause Down syndrome. But parents can make sure the diagnosis only at birth. According to the newest suggestion from American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, doctors will offer a new, safer, screening for all pregnant women, and offer an opportunity for parents to choose.
The members of support groups believe that this can force parents to search information. However, some of they also worry about a lonelier world for those children which means lock of early medical intervention, new expertise in infant heart surgery, public schools.
Parents who have Down syndrome believe that “It isn’t about abortion politics or religion, it’s a pure ethical question.””If all these people terminate babies with Down syndrome, there won’t be programs , there won’t be acceptance or tolerance.” They still working out the best strategy solve this problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/us/09down.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=ba38bfa305a3ac0e&ex=1180065600
The members of support groups believe that this can force parents to search information. However, some of they also worry about a lonelier world for those children which means lock of early medical intervention, new expertise in infant heart surgery, public schools.
Parents who have Down syndrome believe that “It isn’t about abortion politics or religion, it’s a pure ethical question.””If all these people terminate babies with Down syndrome, there won’t be programs , there won’t be acceptance or tolerance.” They still working out the best strategy solve this problem.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/us/09down.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=ba38bfa305a3ac0e&ex=1180065600
- May 23 Wed 2007 15:26
Great Lecture from Radio 4 : Bursting at the Seams
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2007/lecture1.shtml
SUE LAWLEY: Hello and welcome to the Royal Society in London, a place where, since its foundation in 1660, great minds have gathered to discuss the important scientific issues of the day. It's a fitting place to introduce this year's Reith lecturer, a man who believes we need a new enlightenment to solve many of the world's problems. The American press has hailed him as one of the world's most influential people, a plaudit due in some measure no doubt to the fact that he's not afraid to put his theories to the test. Like one of his great heroes, John Maynard Keynes, he's moved between the academic life and politics, working successfully with governments in South America and Eastern Europe to help restore their broken economies. In this series of Reith Lectures he'll be explaining how he believes that with global co-operation our resources can be harnessed to create a more equal and harmonious world. If we cannot achieve this, he says, we will face catastrophe; we'll simply be overwhelmed by disease, hunger, pollution, and the clash of civilisations.
In this, the first of his series of five lectures, he begins by setting the scene, describing an over-populated world on the brink of devastating change, a world that, as the title of the lecture says, is bursting at the seams. Ladies and gentlemen will you please welcome the BBC's Reith Lecturer 2007 - Jeffrey Sachs.
(APPLAUSE)
JEFFREY SACHS: Thank you very much Sue, thanks to BBC, thanks to the Royal Society, and thanks to all of you, ladies and gentlemen. Sue Lawley has it right that this is a house that has assembled the world's greatest minds throughout modern history, and many of them, as I look out, are in the room tonight. What an extraordinary gathering, a unique gathering of leaders of thought and action from so many disciplines, and it is with profound humility that I speak to you, but also profound hope that maybe, by the conversation that will commence tonight, and this fabulous opportunity of the Reith Lectures to have a global conversation, we can move forward to a world that is a bit safer than the one that we are now inhabiting. This is a lecture series about choices, choices that our generation faces, choices that will determine the nature of our lives and the lives of our children, and of generations to come. We have some momentous choices to make and I hope to describe them tonight and in the future Lectures.
I want to start with my favourite speech of the modern American Presidency and I think one of the most important statements made in modern times, one that truly did change the course of history. I'm referring to John Kennedy's Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963. It was an address that helped rescue the world from a path of self-destruction. It came in the immediate wake of the Cuban missile crisis, when Kennedy and the world had peered over the abyss, and what President John Kennedy said on that day I think resonates today and is important for all of us in all parts of the world. If you'll permit me to quote from it a little bit at length, just at the beginning. I do believe it helps to set the stage.
He said:
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, and man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation, for peace is a process, a way of solving problems.
I want to talk about the challenge of our generation. Ours is not the generation that faced the challenge of Fascism, ours is not the generation to have first grappled with the nuclear demon, though we still grapple with it today. Ours is not the generation that faced the Cold War. Ours is not the generation incidentally in which the greatest problem is the war on terror, or Iran, or other ideas that are current. Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms. This is our greatest challenge: learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society and on the physical environment. As John Kennedy said, we will need to solve these problems, the ones that are unique to our generation, if we are to find peace. Obviously we are not just in a cold war, we are in a hot war right now, because we have failed to understand the challenges and we have failed to take appropriate measures to face them. We don't need to dream. I am going to talk about concrete actions, I am going to discuss, I hope, effective agreements, and most importantly I want to talk about a way of solving problems. It's a fascinating and crucial concept for us - peace as a way of solving problems. We clearly are not on a path of problem solving now with the world, we are on a path of increasing risk and increasing instability, and by all objective measures the path of increasing hatred as well. We have not yet found a way of solving problems that our generation faces now.
Most importantly for us on this crowded planet, facing the challenges of living side by side as never before, and facing a common ecological challenge, has never been upon us in human history until now. The way of solving problems requires one fundamental change, a big one, and that is learning that the challenges of our generation are not us versus them, they are not us versus Islam, us versus the terrorists, us versus Iran, they are us, all of us together on this planet against a set of shared and increasingly urgent problems. By understanding those problems, understanding them at their depth, understanding what we share with every part of this world in the need to face these challenges, we can find peace. But we are living in a cloud of confusion, where we have been told that the greatest challenge on the planet is us versus them, a throwback to a tribalism that we must escape for our own survival.
I'm going to talk about three common problems that we face. They are inter-connected, they build on each other in ways that amplify or create abrupt change, abrupt risk, and highly non-linear responses to the threats we face. The first challenge that I'll talk about is the challenge of what Paul Crutzen has magnificently called the Anthropocene. That is the idea that for the first time in history the physical systems of the planet -- chemical fluxes, the climate, habitats, biodiversity, evolutionary processes -- are to an incredible and unrecognised extent under human forcings that now dominate a large measure of the most central ecological, chemical and bio-physical processes on the planet - the hydrological cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the location and extinction of species, and basic physical habitats. Of course human forcings have always played their role. We know that the hominids already controlled fire a million or more years ago, and therefore changed landscapes, even before the rise of homo sapiens. But never has the control of such fundamental processes been determined by human forcings, and we've barely awakened to that reality.
The second common challenge is a challenge of geo-politics, a challenge that I'm going to call the Age of Convergence. In many ways it's wonderful news. It's the notion that in a world that is more connected than ever before, a world where economic development, at least for the last two hundred and fifty years, has been driven by technology, and now a world where those technologies diffuse rapidly around the world, we have the fabulous prospect for the rapid closing of economic gaps that now exist between the rich and the poor. One result is that there will be in our time a fundamental shift of economic power, and the political power that goes along with it. We started this decade with a fantasy, the fantasy of the United States as the world's sole superpower, the fantasy of the United States as the sole indispensable power, it was called, the fantasy which we should have known from history always to be wrong and dangerous, of the United States as the New Rome, being urged on to take on the imperial mantle even by some who ought to know a lot better. But it was a fantasy because just as this was being proclaimed, China, India, and other regional powers were bound to be increasing their influence and their economic weight in the world by virtue of the shared capacity to benefit from technology, which is the foundation of economic development. As an economist, I subscribe to a philosophy that was first initiated by Adam Smith in 1776, which is why I'm so happy that these Reith Lectures will take us to Edinburgh - no accident. Smith talked about how global markets and international trade can be a fundamental diffusion mechanism for these technologies, and now that is happening. But we're not ready for it.
I want to call the third of our common challenges the challenge of the weakest links. In an interconnected world, all parts of the world are affected by what happens in all other parts of the world, and sometimes surprisingly so. We cannot be surprised when events in some far off and distant place - and I'm not talking about Central Europe, I'm talking about halfway around the world in the landmass of Eurasia - can be of fundamental significance even for survival, for the spending of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars for the direction of global politics. In an interconnected world we have great need and basic responsibility, for our own survival, to attend to the weakest links. By that I mean those places in the world that suffer, those places in the world where people die because they are too poor to stay alive, those parts of the world which -- by virtue of physical geography, epidemiology, climate stress, rain-fed agriculture and drought-prone savannah climates for example -- face horrific challenges to even get onto the ladder of development. One billion people on the planet are too poor, too hungry, too disease-burdened, too bereft of the most basic infrastructure even to get on the ladder of development. The rich world seems to be believe, despite all the fine speeches (and there have been many), that this doesn't really matter, because the actions of the rich countries don't begin to address this problem. We are leaving ten million people to die every year because they are too poor to stay alive. Fine speeches will not solve that problem.
Our challenge is to understand these common problems, to see that the whole world is arrayed on the same side of them; to understand that a leader in Iran, or in Korea, or in Sudan, or in other places where we've made it a point not even to have a conversation, much less a negotiation or an attempt at peaceful solution, is facing problems of water supply, climate change, food production, poverty, and disease burden, many of which impinge directly on us. Can it be true incidentally that because we don't want to talk to Iran, H5N1 won't pass through Iran, that we won't have to deal with avian 'flu in places we don't want to speak to, where we have put pre-conditions to negotiations, because we can't see the commonality of our problems? Can it really be, ladies and gentlemen, that the solution to Darfur, one of the most urgent crises on the planet, is all about peacekeepers and troops and sanctions, when we know that in Western Darfur the rebellion started because this is just about the poorest place on the whole planet, because there is not enough water to keep people alive, the livestock have no veterinary care, there's no basic infrastructure, and the electricity grid is hundreds of miles away? Can we really think that peacekeeping troops and sanctions will solve this problem? I do think we have a fundamental re-thinking to do in each of these areas.
I'll discuss the Anthropocene in Beijing, China, which soon will be the country that is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet, and one that faces its own profound challenges of water stress, which will worsen, perhaps immeasurably, as the glaciers of the Himalayas melt and as the seasonal timing of snow melt from the Himalayas changes the river flow of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers and other rivers of Asia. The Anthropocene tells us that it's not just about one problem, as Sir Nicholas Stern, one of the intellectual leaders of our time, has brilliantly exposed in his report for the UK government. It's not only the problem of mass extinctions, or only the problem of the mass destruction of fisheries in the North Atlantic and in many other parts of the world. We are weighing so heavily on the Earth's systems, not only through carbon dioxide emissions changing climate but through carbon dioxide emissions acidifying oceans, through destruction of habitat, which is literally driving perhaps millions of species right off the planet. We are over-hunting, over-fishing, and over-gathering just about anything that grows slowly or moves slowly. If we can catch it we kill it. Our capacity in the Anthropocene is unprecedented, poorly understood, out of control, and a grave and common threat.
The illusions about geo-politics which I mentioned prevent us from solving these problems as well. The United States, my own country, has been in a fantasy of "going it alone," when our problems are so fundamentally global and shared. How do you address climate change, even if you recognised it, by yourself? The U.S. Government solved that problem temporarily by not recognising it. But when they do recognise it they're going to have to recognise it in a shared and global way.
And how can it be, ladies and gentlemen, that we think we can be safe? 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. How can this be safe? How can we choose, as we do in the United States, to have a budget request this year of $623 billion for the military - more than all the rest of the world combined - and just $4.5 billion for all assistance to Africa and think that this is prudent? One might say it is science fiction that a zoonotic disease could arise and somehow spread throughout the world, except that AIDS is exactly that. How many examples do we need to understand the linkages, and the common threats, and the recklessness of leaving people to die -- recklessness of spirit, of human heart, and of geo-political safety for us?
President Kennedy talked about a way of solving problems, and that too will be a theme of these Lectures. We are entering I believe a new politics, and potentially a hopeful politics. I'm going to call it open-source leadership. If Wikipedia and Linux can be built in an open source manner, politics can be done in that manner as well. We are going to need a new way to address and to solve global problems, but our connectivity will bring us tools unimaginable even just a few years ago. I'm going to try to explain how this can be done, how without a global government we can still get global co-operation, how initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals can be an organising principle for the world -- though there is no single implementing authority -- and how it is possible to coalesce around shared goals. I am going to explain how scientists can play a fundamental role in this, such as they do in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The world is hungry for serious knowledge, for the information from what are sometimes called epistemic communities - that is communities of expertise - that can help to bring the best information to bear on the most crucial problems that affect the survival and the livelihoods and the well-being of people around the world. I'm going to talk about how our governments can be re-organised and need to be re-organised because we are living with nineteenth and twentieth century government structures for twenty-first century problems. Our governments simply do not understand the nature of these problems. Ministries generally are like stove pipes, narrowly defined. That's often true in academia as well. But the problems I will discuss cross disciplines and areas of knowledge, and inherently require cross-disciplinary and novel thinking, whether they are problems of poverty, disease, climate change, energy systems, war and peace, or Darfur. These problems cannot be left to the normal ways of operation, but that is what we are doing. That is why we see our governments flailing about blindly. These are not just "intelligence" failures, in the sense of our spy agencies, though surely those exist and are serious. We are experiencing the deep incapacities of our government to understand these challenges. We need some fundamental re-organisation, which I'll discuss.
We need, as President Kennedy said, concrete actions. I will discuss those, because there is no sense in theory if there is not something to do, starting today. There are things to do in all of these areas that can make a difference, a life and death difference. We need -- this is the possibility of our inter-connected, socially networked internet-empowered age --involvement from all of us. We all play a role. It doesn't just go through government, and if government remains as impervious to evidence and knowledge and capacity as it is right now, we're going to have to go increasingly around government. Perhaps that's inevitable, perhaps that's just a particular failing of our immediate times, I'm not sure. But we are going to have to play unique roles in terms of corporate social responsibility, civil society, and as individuals as well.
I'm an optimist, though you might not detect it! You might not hear it in this first lecture, because I want you to sit up, with open eyes. You know many or all of the things I'm saying, and certainly if there is one introductory note it is that we must not for one moment think that we're on an acceptable course right now. I want to stress, however, that fundamentally we have choices, and we actually have some terrific choices. We have the ability to do things at much lower cost, and much greater efficacy, than almost any of us can know, unless we are lucky enough to be engaged in epistemic communities that allow us to hear the wonderful news. I'm a partisan, for example, of anti-malaria bed nets, and I'll just give you one fact. There are three hundred million sleeping sites in Africa that need protection from malaria. Anti-malaria bed nets last five years, and cost a mere five dollars - one dollar per year. Often more than one child sleeps under a net. Economists are reasonably good at multiplication, so for three hundred million sleeping sites at five dollars per net, I calculate $1.5 billion. I also am acceptably good at long division. $620 billion of military budget, divided by 365 days, tells me that we are now spending $1.7 billion per day on the Pentagon. John Kennedy said in his world changing speech, "for we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty and disease," 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.
I want to close with what President Kennedy said about that. I regard these among the most beautiful lines ever uttered by a world leader. First he said, "In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace, and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours, and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and to keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest." He uttered those words and within a few weeks the limited test ban treaty was negotiated. He changed the course of history by showing that there was a path for peace that was mutually acceptable. But then he said this, and what could be more important for the challenges of our generation?
So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests, and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity, for in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: Jeffrey Sachs, thank you very much indeed. Well with us here in the Royal Society in London for this BBC World Service Reith Lecture is a distinguished audience to explore and challenge that view of where we go from here, so let me begin with Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British Ambassador to the United States and currently Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission. Sir Christopher, your question if you would please?
SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Jeffrey Sachs, I would love to join you in your optimism, I would love to join you on this voyage to create a new politics. I would love to join you on a voyage to avoid conventional governments. But surely it's pie in the sky, because man does not change. What on earth leads you to think that this kind of human nature is ever going to change?
JEFFREY SACHS: The world does change, it changes remarkably. Many of the most important changes in the world have been led from this corner of the world. The world, as I recall, two hundred years ago to this year, was still a world of slavery, of slavery within the British Empire, but in 1807 the slave trade ended. We had rule of colonial powers. But that ended and independence, sovereignty -- which I believe is a basic part of good politics -- good governance, and hope for the future, came to the world, it's a fundamental change. We live in an age when women are empowered as never before in human history. We live in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and the end of Apartheid. We live in a world of choice. It's not right to say the world doesn't change, and even if human nature doesn't change our institutions can change. So I believe that we can create the kind of world that we want, and if it's true that human nature doesn't change, human understanding, rationality, and our institutions can all play a role to lead to changes in behaviour.
SUE LAWLEY: Let me ask Sir Christopher if he's any more persuaded that there's proof positive in there, that this is not pie in the sky.
SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: No I don't, I'm afraid I don't, I don't see any proof positive in there whatsoever. I'm not denying the notion of progress, I'm not denying the notion that people do do good things and make good changes. What I think I'm saying is that the kind of change that you want, and you've advocated it with extraordinary passion and eloquence, does require a step change in human nature which is simply not going to happen.
SUE LAWLEY: Let me just take it… Let me just… Another point, the lady there, behind, just behind, thank you very much. Tell us who you are as well.
SUE BLACKMORE: Sue Blackmore, psychologist from Bristol. I too wish your optimism were infectious, but I have not been infected with it. In fact I feel more depressed, really at… (LAUGHTER) a deep disjunct in your argument, which seems to be this. You've described the poverty, the deprivation, the people who are struggling, which shame us all, of course, and I'm sure like everyone else I feel bad about it, but you've also identified what is the root problem, which is over-population on this planet - too many people. Now if we all buy these mosquito nets, and those children live, what are they going to live for? They're going to live for not enough water, not enough food, not enough to go round. That's not a solution. We need something better than that don't we?
JEFFREY SACHS: The evidence is overwhelming that it's possible and necessary to have a rapid demographic transition on a voluntary basis to greatly reduce fertility rates in poor countries, and that by far one of the most powerful ways to achieve that is through child survival. Child survival is correlated and causally related to reduced fertility rates among poor households. You want poor households to cut their fertility and to have fewer children - assure them that the fewer children that they have will survive, they won't be carried off by a mosquito bite. So it is fundamentally the opposite that saving children somehow over-populates the world. This is a basic misunderstanding. But it's a, it's a big misunderstanding… (APPLAUSE) It's a big misunderstanding to think that you leave children to die as a solution to that.
SUE LAWLEY: Yes?
JENNY RUSSELL: Jenny Russell, I'm a Guardian journalist. I think the core problem that you're talking about here is really one of over-consumption, and I do believe that you're an optimist when you say that you feel that actually most of these problems can be solved without much sacrifice on people's part, because I simply don't see how that can be so. So what you're really saying is that people have to stop wanting to consume so much. Now I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anybody is willing to do that. You talk about governments being short-term, which they are, but we as individuals are all extremely short-term, we've got extremely poor people in this country…
SUE LAWLEY: I'm hoping for a question mark.
JENNY RUSSELL: …and no-one's willing to do anything about that. When you, when you talk about this, what is it that you're actually proposing will change, because all I can see is that everyone in the globe is going to go on wanting to consume as much as possible until it's impossible.
JEFFREY SACHS: I am not arguing the over-consumption argument - that is actually not my point. I do not believe that the solution to this problem is a massive cutback of our consumption levels or our living standards. I think the solution is smarter living. I do believe that technology is absolutely critical, and I do not believe on the evidence that I'm going to be discussing in these Lectures that the essence of the problem is that we face a zero sum that must be re-distributed. I'm going to argue that there's a way for us to use the knowledge that we have, the technology that we have, to make broad progress in material conditions, to not require or ask the rich to take sharp cuts of living standards, but rather to live with smarter technologies that are sustainable, and thereby to find a way for the rest of the world, which yearns for it, and deserves it as far as I'm concerned, to raise their own material conditions as well. The costs are much less than people think. You are making the argument that this is so costly we don't dare do it.
SUE LAWLEY: But I can ask you just, Jeff, if you would, because I want to keep getting some more people in, to address the main criticism that we're hearing here that you know the history of the second half of the twentieth century is littered with goals that have been missed, with good intentions that haven't been fulfilled, with grand plans and the kinds of words you're using tonight that people have stood up and said but haven't translated onto the ground.
JEFFREY SACHS: Yes.
SUE LAWLEY: What do you say and what are you offering that is different?
JEFFREY SACHS: People have always denied the possibilities of concrete progress. We were expected to have an Armageddon when President Kennedy gave this speech in 1963. You look at public opinion in 1963 - the overwhelming expectation was that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. And the expectation was on just about every piece of progress that it couldn't happen. The expectation was that by now India would be wracked by devastating famine year in, year out, that hundreds of millions would die, that the die was already cast. So frankly the extrapolation from the present to the future on current trends is the easiest thing in the world. The idea that there can be change perhaps is a hard thing to accept. The idea that there has been profound change should be understood by everybody. And I want to make a key message, which obviously in this first talk I can't amplify, which is that the choices are better than you think, because the cost of these solutions is much lower than is feared. And this is the most important point. Climate change is not going to end our civilisation unless we pretend that it doesn't exist or unless we are so afraid that we don't confront it. If we confront it in a timely and sensible way, we can head off the worst at quite low cost. We can end extreme poverty within our own generation if we stopped rubbing our hands in angst, or just turning our eyes away. The more people understand the real choices, the real consequences and the real power that we have, with the phenomenal technologies that we have available, the more likely it is that we make the right choices - that's why it's worth talking about these things, because they're not ...
SUE LAWLEY: Let me…
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: Let me bring in somebody who's seen how some of these plans work on the ground. She's Geri Halliwell, former Spice Girl of course, and she's currently a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Geri, your question?
GERI HALLIWELL: Hi. I'd like to say that I really support you and I think it's really wonderful to have a positive message. And I work for the UNFPA, what you talked about, and I went to Zambia last year.
SUE LAWLEY: For family planning yeah?
GERI HALLIWELL: Yeah, for family planning, health and reproductive care, highlighting Aids, and women's maternal healthcare, and what I learnt was that when we empower women through education, really taking care of their own health, everybody benefits. You know villages thrive through their economy. And you know this, this tribal leader, he was very forthright in his thinking although he was very traditional - he said when we empowered women at this very grass roots level everyone thrived, which was wonderful to hear this. So my question to you is that do you think that if we encourage more women, do you think that would have a positive effect on poverty?
SUE LAWLEY: Do you mean in the African political arena?
GERI HALLIWELL: Particularly there, but all over. You know…
SUE LAWLEY: More women.
GERI HALLIWELL: What do you think Jeffrey?
SUE LAWLEY: He's in touch with his female side!
GERI HALLIWELL: I think so!
JEFFREY SACHS: How could you argue with that? (LAUGHTER) I think it's an absolutely splendid idea and we are celebrating the election of the first woman Head of State in Africa - Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in Liberia. She is brave, she's tough, she's smart, she's caring, and she's making progress in what is one of the most difficult places in the world that went through years and years of extraordinary war. What we found in the villages where we're working, in the Millennium Villages, which I'm going to talk about in a later lecture - is that if you help with the basics, you automatically empower the women and change the communities. We're finding in one village after another that they may elect the women to be the heads of the village council because they're the best farmers, and then the men start saying maybe they can get something out of this by learning the same techniques. So we're finding exactly that this practical empowerment does work when you're specific, concrete, facing the real challenges of people in the villages.
SUE LAWLEY: What are the solutions? How do you overcome tribalism, corruption, ignorance, fanaticism? I mean you've got the President of the Gambia at the moment walking around saying that he has a cure for Aids, a herbal cure for Aids, and he's pouring it himself, anointing people with his own hands, and expelling from his country the UN worker who dares to cast aspersions about you know the efficacy of this cure. How do you overcome that kind of ignorance?
JEFFREY SACHS: You know it's a little bit funny for me, I guess I live in a political world naturally with what I do and you don't just say something and expect it to happen. This takes an effort. And when Wilberforce started in this city in the 1770s and said that slavery should end in the empire, he didn't have a talk to this group and they said. 'Oh that's very unrealistic, (LAUGHTER) there's some very powerful slave traders out there that are never going to go with it, just give up and go home.' You know it was a fight. (APPLAUSE) It was a fight for half a century. Don't be pessimistic because it doesn't happen immediately. Lots of things happen - they just take time. Let me give one example. In early 2001, based on work that I was leading for the World Health Organisation, I issued a statement with my colleagues at Harvard saying that people in Africa should be treated with anti-retroviral medicines. At the time there was a huge attack by officialdom - 'How could you do this? It's completely irresponsible.' Where are we today? Of course we now have a Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. There are billions of dollars being spent on this. There is a rapid scaling up of treatment, there is a commitment that by 2010 there should be universal access to anti-retroviral medicines for all who need them. Don't tell me things can't change, and that they can't change fast. We just need to fight for them, based on the evidence.
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: I'm going to take some comments. Comment over there from you, yes? Quick comment please.
MARK WOODALL: Yes, good evening, Mark Woodall, Climate Change Capital. In the year of the Anthropocene where the dramatic effects of climate change may not be visible in the democratic cycle, and tough decisions have to be made now, what is the role for unelected supranational bodies to make those tough decisions?
SUE LAWLEY: I'm not going to get an answer to that straightaway, I'm going to get another comment here if I can please, because we really must move towards a close. Yes?
ELIZABETH HAYDN JONES: Hi, I'm Elizabeth Haydn Jones, I'm an optimist. I just have a very simple comment, which is if we don't believe that human nature can change, then less than a hundred years ago I didn't even have a vote let alone have the chance to be in this illustrious company of predominantly white men!
JEFFREY SACHS: (LAUGHS)
SUE LAWLEY: Fine. And there's another woman here, just on your left here.
JUSTINE FRAIN: Justine Frain from GlaxoSmithKline. You referred to a coalescence around shared goals, which implies global co-operation, and an approach to attack some of the big issues such as poverty. Aside from commandeering the US military budget, how are the economics of this actually going to work in practice?
SUE LAWLEY: Well I'm not going to take an answer to that because I think it could be longer than we've got space for, (LAUGHTER) but point made. I'm going to have another comment back there, and then I'm going to set Jeff the problem of trying to give a compendium answer to these disparate comments.
ANDY ATKINS: I'm Andy Atkins from the Relief and Development Agency, TIF, and I'm on the Board of a campaign called the Market Challenge, to galvanise Christians around delivering the Millennium Development Goals. I'm an optimist, I believe we have to have faith, but I know that the battle is long. We've got seven years 'til the Millennium Development Goals are theoretically to be delivered. What for you would be the next critical steps to re-galvanise political weight around that as well as public support for them, after the high days of the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005 - one campaign? We've seen a dip, but we're only seven years out from theoretical delivery date. What would you do next?
SUE LAWLEY: Can you give us a brief answer on that?
JEFFREY SACHS: What I want is that the promises that were made at Gleneagles get put transparently into time lines and responsibilities. The rich world promised to double aid by 2010. Who's going to do it, on what time line? Which countries, which recipients? Let's get real now. And all we have to do is just live up to the commitments, and we'll make a fantastic breakthrough. It's not so hard to do. We don't even need new promises, we need the fulfilment of the ones that have been made.
SUE LAWLEY: Terry Waite I see over there. What's your comment? Just wait for the microphone.
TERRY WAITE: I would just like to go back to the first point that was made, by Christopher Meyer. The thesis seems to be based on the assumptions that human beings will so shape institutions that right choices will be made. But what is the basis, the real basis for having such faith in human nature, because I'm not entirely convinced by the empirical evidence that you've produced.
JEFFREY SACHS: I thought after such a depressing lecture, for five sixths of it, that people would not simply hone in on my unbounded optimism. I tried to explain actually. I spend my time with people who are dying. Twenty-two years ago I started to say that we needed debt cancellation for the poorest countries. (APPLAUSE) It came late, but it came. I can't give up, that we are doomed. (APPLAUSE) That's why I started this lecture as I did, that too many of us think it is impossible, too many think it is unreal, but that is a dangerous defeatist belief. That's exactly where I started. We have to believe that we can make choices if we can understand them. We have to believe that the more we analyse together and reason together, especially in this house of all places on the planet, that it's possible to sort out some of these things. No part of the whole planet has done more than this institution to change the course of history in fact. Life expectancy was twenty-five years, and it's because of what this house and what it represents has accomplished, that in the rich world we're at eighty years, and in the middle income world we're at seventy years. And when I think about how Condorcet, months before he was killed in the French Revolution, talked about how we could harness reason to grow more crops and to extend life expectancy - what right did he have to be optimistic, but he got it exactly right. So what right do we have to be so pessimistic, and blind, and not moving, when people are dying on our watch?
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: We have four more Lectures and four more debates to come, so we'll leave this one here for now. Next week we're in China, in Beijing. It's a country which stands, as you've heard, at the centre of Jeffrey Sachs' vision of our world in the twenty-first century. What happens there, what is happening there, will affect us all as we face up to the economic and environmental challenges of the future. That's Sachs over Beijing, next week. Until then from the Royal Society, goodbye.
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: Hello and welcome to the Royal Society in London, a place where, since its foundation in 1660, great minds have gathered to discuss the important scientific issues of the day. It's a fitting place to introduce this year's Reith lecturer, a man who believes we need a new enlightenment to solve many of the world's problems. The American press has hailed him as one of the world's most influential people, a plaudit due in some measure no doubt to the fact that he's not afraid to put his theories to the test. Like one of his great heroes, John Maynard Keynes, he's moved between the academic life and politics, working successfully with governments in South America and Eastern Europe to help restore their broken economies. In this series of Reith Lectures he'll be explaining how he believes that with global co-operation our resources can be harnessed to create a more equal and harmonious world. If we cannot achieve this, he says, we will face catastrophe; we'll simply be overwhelmed by disease, hunger, pollution, and the clash of civilisations.
In this, the first of his series of five lectures, he begins by setting the scene, describing an over-populated world on the brink of devastating change, a world that, as the title of the lecture says, is bursting at the seams. Ladies and gentlemen will you please welcome the BBC's Reith Lecturer 2007 - Jeffrey Sachs.
(APPLAUSE)
JEFFREY SACHS: Thank you very much Sue, thanks to BBC, thanks to the Royal Society, and thanks to all of you, ladies and gentlemen. Sue Lawley has it right that this is a house that has assembled the world's greatest minds throughout modern history, and many of them, as I look out, are in the room tonight. What an extraordinary gathering, a unique gathering of leaders of thought and action from so many disciplines, and it is with profound humility that I speak to you, but also profound hope that maybe, by the conversation that will commence tonight, and this fabulous opportunity of the Reith Lectures to have a global conversation, we can move forward to a world that is a bit safer than the one that we are now inhabiting. This is a lecture series about choices, choices that our generation faces, choices that will determine the nature of our lives and the lives of our children, and of generations to come. We have some momentous choices to make and I hope to describe them tonight and in the future Lectures.
I want to start with my favourite speech of the modern American Presidency and I think one of the most important statements made in modern times, one that truly did change the course of history. I'm referring to John Kennedy's Commencement Address at American University, June 10, 1963. It was an address that helped rescue the world from a path of self-destruction. It came in the immediate wake of the Cuban missile crisis, when Kennedy and the world had peered over the abyss, and what President John Kennedy said on that day I think resonates today and is important for all of us in all parts of the world. If you'll permit me to quote from it a little bit at length, just at the beginning. I do believe it helps to set the stage.
He said:
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, and man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again. I am not referring to the absolute infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill of which some fantasies and fanatics dream. I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead on a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements which are in the interest of all concerned. There is no single simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers. Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts. It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation, for peace is a process, a way of solving problems.
I want to talk about the challenge of our generation. Ours is not the generation that faced the challenge of Fascism, ours is not the generation to have first grappled with the nuclear demon, though we still grapple with it today. Ours is not the generation that faced the Cold War. Ours is not the generation incidentally in which the greatest problem is the war on terror, or Iran, or other ideas that are current. Our challenge, our generation's unique challenge, is learning to live peacefully and sustainably in an extraordinarily crowded world. Our planet is crowded to an unprecendented degree. It is bursting at the seams. It's bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms, and in ecological terms. This is our greatest challenge: learning to live in a crowded and interconnected world that is creating unprecedented pressures on human society and on the physical environment. As John Kennedy said, we will need to solve these problems, the ones that are unique to our generation, if we are to find peace. Obviously we are not just in a cold war, we are in a hot war right now, because we have failed to understand the challenges and we have failed to take appropriate measures to face them. We don't need to dream. I am going to talk about concrete actions, I am going to discuss, I hope, effective agreements, and most importantly I want to talk about a way of solving problems. It's a fascinating and crucial concept for us - peace as a way of solving problems. We clearly are not on a path of problem solving now with the world, we are on a path of increasing risk and increasing instability, and by all objective measures the path of increasing hatred as well. We have not yet found a way of solving problems that our generation faces now.
Most importantly for us on this crowded planet, facing the challenges of living side by side as never before, and facing a common ecological challenge, has never been upon us in human history until now. The way of solving problems requires one fundamental change, a big one, and that is learning that the challenges of our generation are not us versus them, they are not us versus Islam, us versus the terrorists, us versus Iran, they are us, all of us together on this planet against a set of shared and increasingly urgent problems. By understanding those problems, understanding them at their depth, understanding what we share with every part of this world in the need to face these challenges, we can find peace. But we are living in a cloud of confusion, where we have been told that the greatest challenge on the planet is us versus them, a throwback to a tribalism that we must escape for our own survival.
I'm going to talk about three common problems that we face. They are inter-connected, they build on each other in ways that amplify or create abrupt change, abrupt risk, and highly non-linear responses to the threats we face. The first challenge that I'll talk about is the challenge of what Paul Crutzen has magnificently called the Anthropocene. That is the idea that for the first time in history the physical systems of the planet -- chemical fluxes, the climate, habitats, biodiversity, evolutionary processes -- are to an incredible and unrecognised extent under human forcings that now dominate a large measure of the most central ecological, chemical and bio-physical processes on the planet - the hydrological cycle, the carbon cycle, the nitrogen cycle, the location and extinction of species, and basic physical habitats. Of course human forcings have always played their role. We know that the hominids already controlled fire a million or more years ago, and therefore changed landscapes, even before the rise of homo sapiens. But never has the control of such fundamental processes been determined by human forcings, and we've barely awakened to that reality.
The second common challenge is a challenge of geo-politics, a challenge that I'm going to call the Age of Convergence. In many ways it's wonderful news. It's the notion that in a world that is more connected than ever before, a world where economic development, at least for the last two hundred and fifty years, has been driven by technology, and now a world where those technologies diffuse rapidly around the world, we have the fabulous prospect for the rapid closing of economic gaps that now exist between the rich and the poor. One result is that there will be in our time a fundamental shift of economic power, and the political power that goes along with it. We started this decade with a fantasy, the fantasy of the United States as the world's sole superpower, the fantasy of the United States as the sole indispensable power, it was called, the fantasy which we should have known from history always to be wrong and dangerous, of the United States as the New Rome, being urged on to take on the imperial mantle even by some who ought to know a lot better. But it was a fantasy because just as this was being proclaimed, China, India, and other regional powers were bound to be increasing their influence and their economic weight in the world by virtue of the shared capacity to benefit from technology, which is the foundation of economic development. As an economist, I subscribe to a philosophy that was first initiated by Adam Smith in 1776, which is why I'm so happy that these Reith Lectures will take us to Edinburgh - no accident. Smith talked about how global markets and international trade can be a fundamental diffusion mechanism for these technologies, and now that is happening. But we're not ready for it.
I want to call the third of our common challenges the challenge of the weakest links. In an interconnected world, all parts of the world are affected by what happens in all other parts of the world, and sometimes surprisingly so. We cannot be surprised when events in some far off and distant place - and I'm not talking about Central Europe, I'm talking about halfway around the world in the landmass of Eurasia - can be of fundamental significance even for survival, for the spending of hundreds of billions, if not trillions, of dollars for the direction of global politics. In an interconnected world we have great need and basic responsibility, for our own survival, to attend to the weakest links. By that I mean those places in the world that suffer, those places in the world where people die because they are too poor to stay alive, those parts of the world which -- by virtue of physical geography, epidemiology, climate stress, rain-fed agriculture and drought-prone savannah climates for example -- face horrific challenges to even get onto the ladder of development. One billion people on the planet are too poor, too hungry, too disease-burdened, too bereft of the most basic infrastructure even to get on the ladder of development. The rich world seems to be believe, despite all the fine speeches (and there have been many), that this doesn't really matter, because the actions of the rich countries don't begin to address this problem. We are leaving ten million people to die every year because they are too poor to stay alive. Fine speeches will not solve that problem.
Our challenge is to understand these common problems, to see that the whole world is arrayed on the same side of them; to understand that a leader in Iran, or in Korea, or in Sudan, or in other places where we've made it a point not even to have a conversation, much less a negotiation or an attempt at peaceful solution, is facing problems of water supply, climate change, food production, poverty, and disease burden, many of which impinge directly on us. Can it be true incidentally that because we don't want to talk to Iran, H5N1 won't pass through Iran, that we won't have to deal with avian 'flu in places we don't want to speak to, where we have put pre-conditions to negotiations, because we can't see the commonality of our problems? Can it really be, ladies and gentlemen, that the solution to Darfur, one of the most urgent crises on the planet, is all about peacekeepers and troops and sanctions, when we know that in Western Darfur the rebellion started because this is just about the poorest place on the whole planet, because there is not enough water to keep people alive, the livestock have no veterinary care, there's no basic infrastructure, and the electricity grid is hundreds of miles away? Can we really think that peacekeeping troops and sanctions will solve this problem? I do think we have a fundamental re-thinking to do in each of these areas.
I'll discuss the Anthropocene in Beijing, China, which soon will be the country that is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide on the planet, and one that faces its own profound challenges of water stress, which will worsen, perhaps immeasurably, as the glaciers of the Himalayas melt and as the seasonal timing of snow melt from the Himalayas changes the river flow of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers and other rivers of Asia. The Anthropocene tells us that it's not just about one problem, as Sir Nicholas Stern, one of the intellectual leaders of our time, has brilliantly exposed in his report for the UK government. It's not only the problem of mass extinctions, or only the problem of the mass destruction of fisheries in the North Atlantic and in many other parts of the world. We are weighing so heavily on the Earth's systems, not only through carbon dioxide emissions changing climate but through carbon dioxide emissions acidifying oceans, through destruction of habitat, which is literally driving perhaps millions of species right off the planet. We are over-hunting, over-fishing, and over-gathering just about anything that grows slowly or moves slowly. If we can catch it we kill it. Our capacity in the Anthropocene is unprecedented, poorly understood, out of control, and a grave and common threat.
The illusions about geo-politics which I mentioned prevent us from solving these problems as well. The United States, my own country, has been in a fantasy of "going it alone," when our problems are so fundamentally global and shared. How do you address climate change, even if you recognised it, by yourself? The U.S. Government solved that problem temporarily by not recognising it. But when they do recognise it they're going to have to recognise it in a shared and global way.
And how can it be, ladies and gentlemen, that we think we can be safe? 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. How can this be safe? How can we choose, as we do in the United States, to have a budget request this year of $623 billion for the military - more than all the rest of the world combined - and just $4.5 billion for all assistance to Africa and think that this is prudent? One might say it is science fiction that a zoonotic disease could arise and somehow spread throughout the world, except that AIDS is exactly that. How many examples do we need to understand the linkages, and the common threats, and the recklessness of leaving people to die -- recklessness of spirit, of human heart, and of geo-political safety for us?
President Kennedy talked about a way of solving problems, and that too will be a theme of these Lectures. We are entering I believe a new politics, and potentially a hopeful politics. I'm going to call it open-source leadership. If Wikipedia and Linux can be built in an open source manner, politics can be done in that manner as well. We are going to need a new way to address and to solve global problems, but our connectivity will bring us tools unimaginable even just a few years ago. I'm going to try to explain how this can be done, how without a global government we can still get global co-operation, how initiatives like the Millennium Development Goals can be an organising principle for the world -- though there is no single implementing authority -- and how it is possible to coalesce around shared goals. I am going to explain how scientists can play a fundamental role in this, such as they do in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The world is hungry for serious knowledge, for the information from what are sometimes called epistemic communities - that is communities of expertise - that can help to bring the best information to bear on the most crucial problems that affect the survival and the livelihoods and the well-being of people around the world. I'm going to talk about how our governments can be re-organised and need to be re-organised because we are living with nineteenth and twentieth century government structures for twenty-first century problems. Our governments simply do not understand the nature of these problems. Ministries generally are like stove pipes, narrowly defined. That's often true in academia as well. But the problems I will discuss cross disciplines and areas of knowledge, and inherently require cross-disciplinary and novel thinking, whether they are problems of poverty, disease, climate change, energy systems, war and peace, or Darfur. These problems cannot be left to the normal ways of operation, but that is what we are doing. That is why we see our governments flailing about blindly. These are not just "intelligence" failures, in the sense of our spy agencies, though surely those exist and are serious. We are experiencing the deep incapacities of our government to understand these challenges. We need some fundamental re-organisation, which I'll discuss.
We need, as President Kennedy said, concrete actions. I will discuss those, because there is no sense in theory if there is not something to do, starting today. There are things to do in all of these areas that can make a difference, a life and death difference. We need -- this is the possibility of our inter-connected, socially networked internet-empowered age --involvement from all of us. We all play a role. It doesn't just go through government, and if government remains as impervious to evidence and knowledge and capacity as it is right now, we're going to have to go increasingly around government. Perhaps that's inevitable, perhaps that's just a particular failing of our immediate times, I'm not sure. But we are going to have to play unique roles in terms of corporate social responsibility, civil society, and as individuals as well.
I'm an optimist, though you might not detect it! You might not hear it in this first lecture, because I want you to sit up, with open eyes. You know many or all of the things I'm saying, and certainly if there is one introductory note it is that we must not for one moment think that we're on an acceptable course right now. I want to stress, however, that fundamentally we have choices, and we actually have some terrific choices. We have the ability to do things at much lower cost, and much greater efficacy, than almost any of us can know, unless we are lucky enough to be engaged in epistemic communities that allow us to hear the wonderful news. I'm a partisan, for example, of anti-malaria bed nets, and I'll just give you one fact. There are three hundred million sleeping sites in Africa that need protection from malaria. Anti-malaria bed nets last five years, and cost a mere five dollars - one dollar per year. Often more than one child sleeps under a net. Economists are reasonably good at multiplication, so for three hundred million sleeping sites at five dollars per net, I calculate $1.5 billion. I also am acceptably good at long division. $620 billion of military budget, divided by 365 days, tells me that we are now spending $1.7 billion per day on the Pentagon. John Kennedy said in his world changing speech, "for we are both devoting massive sums of money to weapons that could be better devoted to combat ignorance, poverty and disease," 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.
I want to close with what President Kennedy said about that. I regard these among the most beautiful lines ever uttered by a world leader. First he said, "In short, both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace, and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours, and even the most hostile nations can be relied upon to accept and to keep those treaty obligations, and only those treaty obligations, which are in their own interest." He uttered those words and within a few weeks the limited test ban treaty was negotiated. He changed the course of history by showing that there was a path for peace that was mutually acceptable. But then he said this, and what could be more important for the challenges of our generation?
So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests, and the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity, for in the final analysis our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal.
Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: Jeffrey Sachs, thank you very much indeed. Well with us here in the Royal Society in London for this BBC World Service Reith Lecture is a distinguished audience to explore and challenge that view of where we go from here, so let me begin with Sir Christopher Meyer, a former British Ambassador to the United States and currently Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission. Sir Christopher, your question if you would please?
SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: Jeffrey Sachs, I would love to join you in your optimism, I would love to join you on this voyage to create a new politics. I would love to join you on a voyage to avoid conventional governments. But surely it's pie in the sky, because man does not change. What on earth leads you to think that this kind of human nature is ever going to change?
JEFFREY SACHS: The world does change, it changes remarkably. Many of the most important changes in the world have been led from this corner of the world. The world, as I recall, two hundred years ago to this year, was still a world of slavery, of slavery within the British Empire, but in 1807 the slave trade ended. We had rule of colonial powers. But that ended and independence, sovereignty -- which I believe is a basic part of good politics -- good governance, and hope for the future, came to the world, it's a fundamental change. We live in an age when women are empowered as never before in human history. We live in the shadow of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, and the end of Apartheid. We live in a world of choice. It's not right to say the world doesn't change, and even if human nature doesn't change our institutions can change. So I believe that we can create the kind of world that we want, and if it's true that human nature doesn't change, human understanding, rationality, and our institutions can all play a role to lead to changes in behaviour.
SUE LAWLEY: Let me ask Sir Christopher if he's any more persuaded that there's proof positive in there, that this is not pie in the sky.
SIR CHRISTOPHER MEYER: No I don't, I'm afraid I don't, I don't see any proof positive in there whatsoever. I'm not denying the notion of progress, I'm not denying the notion that people do do good things and make good changes. What I think I'm saying is that the kind of change that you want, and you've advocated it with extraordinary passion and eloquence, does require a step change in human nature which is simply not going to happen.
SUE LAWLEY: Let me just take it… Let me just… Another point, the lady there, behind, just behind, thank you very much. Tell us who you are as well.
SUE BLACKMORE: Sue Blackmore, psychologist from Bristol. I too wish your optimism were infectious, but I have not been infected with it. In fact I feel more depressed, really at… (LAUGHTER) a deep disjunct in your argument, which seems to be this. You've described the poverty, the deprivation, the people who are struggling, which shame us all, of course, and I'm sure like everyone else I feel bad about it, but you've also identified what is the root problem, which is over-population on this planet - too many people. Now if we all buy these mosquito nets, and those children live, what are they going to live for? They're going to live for not enough water, not enough food, not enough to go round. That's not a solution. We need something better than that don't we?
JEFFREY SACHS: The evidence is overwhelming that it's possible and necessary to have a rapid demographic transition on a voluntary basis to greatly reduce fertility rates in poor countries, and that by far one of the most powerful ways to achieve that is through child survival. Child survival is correlated and causally related to reduced fertility rates among poor households. You want poor households to cut their fertility and to have fewer children - assure them that the fewer children that they have will survive, they won't be carried off by a mosquito bite. So it is fundamentally the opposite that saving children somehow over-populates the world. This is a basic misunderstanding. But it's a, it's a big misunderstanding… (APPLAUSE) It's a big misunderstanding to think that you leave children to die as a solution to that.
SUE LAWLEY: Yes?
JENNY RUSSELL: Jenny Russell, I'm a Guardian journalist. I think the core problem that you're talking about here is really one of over-consumption, and I do believe that you're an optimist when you say that you feel that actually most of these problems can be solved without much sacrifice on people's part, because I simply don't see how that can be so. So what you're really saying is that people have to stop wanting to consume so much. Now I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that anybody is willing to do that. You talk about governments being short-term, which they are, but we as individuals are all extremely short-term, we've got extremely poor people in this country…
SUE LAWLEY: I'm hoping for a question mark.
JENNY RUSSELL: …and no-one's willing to do anything about that. When you, when you talk about this, what is it that you're actually proposing will change, because all I can see is that everyone in the globe is going to go on wanting to consume as much as possible until it's impossible.
JEFFREY SACHS: I am not arguing the over-consumption argument - that is actually not my point. I do not believe that the solution to this problem is a massive cutback of our consumption levels or our living standards. I think the solution is smarter living. I do believe that technology is absolutely critical, and I do not believe on the evidence that I'm going to be discussing in these Lectures that the essence of the problem is that we face a zero sum that must be re-distributed. I'm going to argue that there's a way for us to use the knowledge that we have, the technology that we have, to make broad progress in material conditions, to not require or ask the rich to take sharp cuts of living standards, but rather to live with smarter technologies that are sustainable, and thereby to find a way for the rest of the world, which yearns for it, and deserves it as far as I'm concerned, to raise their own material conditions as well. The costs are much less than people think. You are making the argument that this is so costly we don't dare do it.
SUE LAWLEY: But I can ask you just, Jeff, if you would, because I want to keep getting some more people in, to address the main criticism that we're hearing here that you know the history of the second half of the twentieth century is littered with goals that have been missed, with good intentions that haven't been fulfilled, with grand plans and the kinds of words you're using tonight that people have stood up and said but haven't translated onto the ground.
JEFFREY SACHS: Yes.
SUE LAWLEY: What do you say and what are you offering that is different?
JEFFREY SACHS: People have always denied the possibilities of concrete progress. We were expected to have an Armageddon when President Kennedy gave this speech in 1963. You look at public opinion in 1963 - the overwhelming expectation was that war with the Soviet Union was inevitable. And the expectation was on just about every piece of progress that it couldn't happen. The expectation was that by now India would be wracked by devastating famine year in, year out, that hundreds of millions would die, that the die was already cast. So frankly the extrapolation from the present to the future on current trends is the easiest thing in the world. The idea that there can be change perhaps is a hard thing to accept. The idea that there has been profound change should be understood by everybody. And I want to make a key message, which obviously in this first talk I can't amplify, which is that the choices are better than you think, because the cost of these solutions is much lower than is feared. And this is the most important point. Climate change is not going to end our civilisation unless we pretend that it doesn't exist or unless we are so afraid that we don't confront it. If we confront it in a timely and sensible way, we can head off the worst at quite low cost. We can end extreme poverty within our own generation if we stopped rubbing our hands in angst, or just turning our eyes away. The more people understand the real choices, the real consequences and the real power that we have, with the phenomenal technologies that we have available, the more likely it is that we make the right choices - that's why it's worth talking about these things, because they're not ...
SUE LAWLEY: Let me…
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: Let me bring in somebody who's seen how some of these plans work on the ground. She's Geri Halliwell, former Spice Girl of course, and she's currently a UN Goodwill Ambassador. Geri, your question?
GERI HALLIWELL: Hi. I'd like to say that I really support you and I think it's really wonderful to have a positive message. And I work for the UNFPA, what you talked about, and I went to Zambia last year.
SUE LAWLEY: For family planning yeah?
GERI HALLIWELL: Yeah, for family planning, health and reproductive care, highlighting Aids, and women's maternal healthcare, and what I learnt was that when we empower women through education, really taking care of their own health, everybody benefits. You know villages thrive through their economy. And you know this, this tribal leader, he was very forthright in his thinking although he was very traditional - he said when we empowered women at this very grass roots level everyone thrived, which was wonderful to hear this. So my question to you is that do you think that if we encourage more women, do you think that would have a positive effect on poverty?
SUE LAWLEY: Do you mean in the African political arena?
GERI HALLIWELL: Particularly there, but all over. You know…
SUE LAWLEY: More women.
GERI HALLIWELL: What do you think Jeffrey?
SUE LAWLEY: He's in touch with his female side!
GERI HALLIWELL: I think so!
JEFFREY SACHS: How could you argue with that? (LAUGHTER) I think it's an absolutely splendid idea and we are celebrating the election of the first woman Head of State in Africa - Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in Liberia. She is brave, she's tough, she's smart, she's caring, and she's making progress in what is one of the most difficult places in the world that went through years and years of extraordinary war. What we found in the villages where we're working, in the Millennium Villages, which I'm going to talk about in a later lecture - is that if you help with the basics, you automatically empower the women and change the communities. We're finding in one village after another that they may elect the women to be the heads of the village council because they're the best farmers, and then the men start saying maybe they can get something out of this by learning the same techniques. So we're finding exactly that this practical empowerment does work when you're specific, concrete, facing the real challenges of people in the villages.
SUE LAWLEY: What are the solutions? How do you overcome tribalism, corruption, ignorance, fanaticism? I mean you've got the President of the Gambia at the moment walking around saying that he has a cure for Aids, a herbal cure for Aids, and he's pouring it himself, anointing people with his own hands, and expelling from his country the UN worker who dares to cast aspersions about you know the efficacy of this cure. How do you overcome that kind of ignorance?
JEFFREY SACHS: You know it's a little bit funny for me, I guess I live in a political world naturally with what I do and you don't just say something and expect it to happen. This takes an effort. And when Wilberforce started in this city in the 1770s and said that slavery should end in the empire, he didn't have a talk to this group and they said. 'Oh that's very unrealistic, (LAUGHTER) there's some very powerful slave traders out there that are never going to go with it, just give up and go home.' You know it was a fight. (APPLAUSE) It was a fight for half a century. Don't be pessimistic because it doesn't happen immediately. Lots of things happen - they just take time. Let me give one example. In early 2001, based on work that I was leading for the World Health Organisation, I issued a statement with my colleagues at Harvard saying that people in Africa should be treated with anti-retroviral medicines. At the time there was a huge attack by officialdom - 'How could you do this? It's completely irresponsible.' Where are we today? Of course we now have a Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and malaria. There are billions of dollars being spent on this. There is a rapid scaling up of treatment, there is a commitment that by 2010 there should be universal access to anti-retroviral medicines for all who need them. Don't tell me things can't change, and that they can't change fast. We just need to fight for them, based on the evidence.
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: I'm going to take some comments. Comment over there from you, yes? Quick comment please.
MARK WOODALL: Yes, good evening, Mark Woodall, Climate Change Capital. In the year of the Anthropocene where the dramatic effects of climate change may not be visible in the democratic cycle, and tough decisions have to be made now, what is the role for unelected supranational bodies to make those tough decisions?
SUE LAWLEY: I'm not going to get an answer to that straightaway, I'm going to get another comment here if I can please, because we really must move towards a close. Yes?
ELIZABETH HAYDN JONES: Hi, I'm Elizabeth Haydn Jones, I'm an optimist. I just have a very simple comment, which is if we don't believe that human nature can change, then less than a hundred years ago I didn't even have a vote let alone have the chance to be in this illustrious company of predominantly white men!
JEFFREY SACHS: (LAUGHS)
SUE LAWLEY: Fine. And there's another woman here, just on your left here.
JUSTINE FRAIN: Justine Frain from GlaxoSmithKline. You referred to a coalescence around shared goals, which implies global co-operation, and an approach to attack some of the big issues such as poverty. Aside from commandeering the US military budget, how are the economics of this actually going to work in practice?
SUE LAWLEY: Well I'm not going to take an answer to that because I think it could be longer than we've got space for, (LAUGHTER) but point made. I'm going to have another comment back there, and then I'm going to set Jeff the problem of trying to give a compendium answer to these disparate comments.
ANDY ATKINS: I'm Andy Atkins from the Relief and Development Agency, TIF, and I'm on the Board of a campaign called the Market Challenge, to galvanise Christians around delivering the Millennium Development Goals. I'm an optimist, I believe we have to have faith, but I know that the battle is long. We've got seven years 'til the Millennium Development Goals are theoretically to be delivered. What for you would be the next critical steps to re-galvanise political weight around that as well as public support for them, after the high days of the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005 - one campaign? We've seen a dip, but we're only seven years out from theoretical delivery date. What would you do next?
SUE LAWLEY: Can you give us a brief answer on that?
JEFFREY SACHS: What I want is that the promises that were made at Gleneagles get put transparently into time lines and responsibilities. The rich world promised to double aid by 2010. Who's going to do it, on what time line? Which countries, which recipients? Let's get real now. And all we have to do is just live up to the commitments, and we'll make a fantastic breakthrough. It's not so hard to do. We don't even need new promises, we need the fulfilment of the ones that have been made.
SUE LAWLEY: Terry Waite I see over there. What's your comment? Just wait for the microphone.
TERRY WAITE: I would just like to go back to the first point that was made, by Christopher Meyer. The thesis seems to be based on the assumptions that human beings will so shape institutions that right choices will be made. But what is the basis, the real basis for having such faith in human nature, because I'm not entirely convinced by the empirical evidence that you've produced.
JEFFREY SACHS: I thought after such a depressing lecture, for five sixths of it, that people would not simply hone in on my unbounded optimism. I tried to explain actually. I spend my time with people who are dying. Twenty-two years ago I started to say that we needed debt cancellation for the poorest countries. (APPLAUSE) It came late, but it came. I can't give up, that we are doomed. (APPLAUSE) That's why I started this lecture as I did, that too many of us think it is impossible, too many think it is unreal, but that is a dangerous defeatist belief. That's exactly where I started. We have to believe that we can make choices if we can understand them. We have to believe that the more we analyse together and reason together, especially in this house of all places on the planet, that it's possible to sort out some of these things. No part of the whole planet has done more than this institution to change the course of history in fact. Life expectancy was twenty-five years, and it's because of what this house and what it represents has accomplished, that in the rich world we're at eighty years, and in the middle income world we're at seventy years. And when I think about how Condorcet, months before he was killed in the French Revolution, talked about how we could harness reason to grow more crops and to extend life expectancy - what right did he have to be optimistic, but he got it exactly right. So what right do we have to be so pessimistic, and blind, and not moving, when people are dying on our watch?
(APPLAUSE)
SUE LAWLEY: We have four more Lectures and four more debates to come, so we'll leave this one here for now. Next week we're in China, in Beijing. It's a country which stands, as you've heard, at the centre of Jeffrey Sachs' vision of our world in the twenty-first century. What happens there, what is happening there, will affect us all as we face up to the economic and environmental challenges of the future. That's Sachs over Beijing, next week. Until then from the Royal Society, goodbye.
(APPLAUSE)
- May 23 Wed 2007 15:12
Cambridge 5 Test 4 Writing Task 1
This is my mock test question. >.<” And I didn’t finish that…
The table illustrates the data which include build-up date (build-up date doesn’t mean date opened, right? It’s a slightly different. ), length, and number of passengers of the underground railway systems in 6 cities. Underground system was established earliest in London, and it owns the longest route of underground railway, however, the annual number of passengers was not so many as in Tokyo and Paris.
Tokyo, with the most passengers per year, followed by Paris, shows different picture from Kyoto, also a main city in Japan, which was built in about 50 years later and with shorter route and obviously fewer passengers annually. The newest underground railway is in Los Angeles, with only 28km of route and 50 millions customers per year, while Washington DC, the other city in USA, has about threefold of passengers and over 3 times of the route length.
Although the construction of underground railway system was done earlier in Europe than in America and Asia, and the route length are different in each city, the using frequency is not influenced by these two factors but displays its own order.- May 23 Wed 2007 14:21
Competition in children
Some people think that a sense of competition in children should be encouraged. Others believe that children who are taught to co-operate rather than compete become more useful adults.
Discuss both these views and give your won opinion.
In the modern world, it is common to hear there is full of competition among people, and for certain, there is no exception in children’s world. However, to consider on the other side, it is also essential to teach children how to cooperate with each other.
Generally speaking, competition can inspire ones sense of honour and the motivation of challenge. One would be more willing to overcome some difficulties if he/she wants to defeat somebody else. It is a born human drive and well used by the behaviourists to condition people. As a consequence, current competitive atmosphere among people, especially in capitalistic society, came to be the mainstream.(I prefer to put this paragraph at first. And if you can combine first and second paragraph become three sentences that will be better because they are general speaking.)
It is general accepted that (Although) competition brings people motivation to fight, the society is structured by every individual in the world, and in more macro-view, on the earth. Everyone acts as a unique role in the environment and has his/her function to make the world better. For example, teachers are supposed to develop young generation with better academic ability, and shop owners are responsible to provide daily products people need, even part-time workers have their job responsibilities with flexible work time. In other words, we have to learn to cooperate with each other and then we are able to lead our society better and to make ourselves happy in the end.
According to the question, you need to discuss both views. I think you should add this part.
In my personal opinion, to be cooperative should be taught before the concept of competition. Only with a well integrated society structure, we can compete to be better and better in our performance. Therefore, the introduction of cooperation is supposed to be prior to competition.
- May 23 Wed 2007 13:45
Cambridge 5 Test 3 Writing Task 1
Test 3
Writing Task 1The given map shows the relative location and the distribution of various areas in Garlsdon, which is surrounded by three cities with less population. The possible two sites of supermarket building indicate the different function of them in the traffic aspect. (The question is “A new supermarket is planned for the town. The map shows two possible sites for the supermarket.” In my opinion, I think you can combine this two sentence and emphasize the point.)Because the traffic is restricted in Town Centre, people going to S2 have to get by foot or by railway. Considering the distance, the areas surrounding S2, including Town Centre, Housing, and part of Industry, might be the main customer group. Also, for people living in Bransdon and Cransdon can get Garlsdon until the Town Centre by main roads and access to S2 by foot.
Writing Task 1The given map shows the relative location and the distribution of various areas in Garlsdon, which is surrounded by three cities with less population. The possible two sites of supermarket building indicate the different function of them in the traffic aspect. (The question is “A new supermarket is planned for the town. The map shows two possible sites for the supermarket.” In my opinion, I think you can combine this two sentence and emphasize the point.)Because the traffic is restricted in Town Centre, people going to S2 have to get by foot or by railway. Considering the distance, the areas surrounding S2, including Town Centre, Housing, and part of Industry, might be the main customer group. Also, for people living in Bransdon and Cransdon can get Garlsdon until the Town Centre by main roads and access to S2 by foot.
On the other hand, located between main road and railway, although S1 is far from Town Centre, it is convenient for consumers who own private cars or do not want to walk to access. Besides, according to the map, people in Hindon can drive to S1 with not too far distance.
The two supermarkets would be responsible for people’s shopping demand in different areas of Garlsdon and its surrounding cities. The access transportation type of them would be not the same, either.
Personally, this maps is boring. =.=”- May 23 Wed 2007 10:54
About reading news paper...
Reading news paper is a new habit for me. But i like it. Not because it can help me to improve my reading ability also can expand my knowledge. I knew a famous writer, Philip K. Dick, who is the oridinal work of the new film "Next". Tha attitudes of the public in disability has changed a lot. I believe my English was improved significantly although some article still not easy for me.Personally, I think the problem is that how to make reading become a effictive habit when i started to read New York Times. I took news paper from my office. ( Don't blame me. No one needs it besides me! ) Skiming titles and scaning interesting reports. After that, I put the news paper in my bag and try to find another time to read more carefully. No surprised that the timing didn't happen untile next news paper published.
You can imagine how frustrated I am. That waste this good opportunity and the benfit was limited. I decide to take action to change this situation.
First, I will read as fast as I can and try to remember the contents in one hour. Because I need to read 2,700words in 60 minutes in IELTS, so I should practice my reading speed. Second, I must choose one article to read and write an assay about it. That is for promotion skills of reading and writing. I wish I can reach this plan and make reading newspaper to a useful habit.
Of course I can! *^0^*
You can imagine how frustrated I am. That waste this good opportunity and the benfit was limited. I decide to take action to change this situation.
First, I will read as fast as I can and try to remember the contents in one hour. Because I need to read 2,700words in 60 minutes in IELTS, so I should practice my reading speed. Second, I must choose one article to read and write an assay about it. That is for promotion skills of reading and writing. I wish I can reach this plan and make reading newspaper to a useful habit.
Of course I can! *^0^*
- May 22 Tue 2007 09:49
Equal numbers of male and female students
Universities should accept equal numbers of male and female students in every subject.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?
To take a balance between two genders is an important work in education for it influences the development of gender attitude in students. But is it necessary for university to enroll equal number of both sexes in every subject? (Avoid an interrogative sentence) Personally, I would not assist this kind of management of class.
Indeed (I think you can put “indeed” after you express some opinion, that will better.), It is generally believed that (to emphasize this opinion) male and female students in the same number can achieve the balance and equality in a formative way. The opportunities for both sexes to get in a subject become the same, and there will be a balanced number of two genders, which may make grouping work and some responsibility distribution easier in the class. (This is from teacher’s view, but I think student is more important than teacher. If I were you, I will say because the different between male and female in thought is significantly. The balanced number of gender can provide opportunities to learn diversity. And don’t forget to make some example! )
However, as universities are supposed to be an institution with free learning, the willingness and preference of every student should be respected as well. If the availability of entering a subject is limited just because of the reversed vacancy for the opposite sex, it may become an injustice. Furthermore, the preference of every subject in different sexes would differ case by case. For example, male students tend to choose some subjects such as mathematics or engineering, while females would like to take history, literature, and art. It might become no need to limit the number of students of two sexes.
To make my statement into the conclusion, since we should respect the individualism, the freedom of self-decision, and the right to receive education, the option of every student should not be trapped, therefore, it is unnecessary to rule the equal number of male and female students in the same subject.
To what extent do you agree or disagree?
To take a balance between two genders is an important work in education for it influences the development of gender attitude in students. But is it necessary for university to enroll equal number of both sexes in every subject? (Avoid an interrogative sentence) Personally, I would not assist this kind of management of class.
Indeed (I think you can put “indeed” after you express some opinion, that will better.), It is generally believed that (to emphasize this opinion) male and female students in the same number can achieve the balance and equality in a formative way. The opportunities for both sexes to get in a subject become the same, and there will be a balanced number of two genders, which may make grouping work and some responsibility distribution easier in the class. (This is from teacher’s view, but I think student is more important than teacher. If I were you, I will say because the different between male and female in thought is significantly. The balanced number of gender can provide opportunities to learn diversity. And don’t forget to make some example! )
However, as universities are supposed to be an institution with free learning, the willingness and preference of every student should be respected as well. If the availability of entering a subject is limited just because of the reversed vacancy for the opposite sex, it may become an injustice. Furthermore, the preference of every subject in different sexes would differ case by case. For example, male students tend to choose some subjects such as mathematics or engineering, while females would like to take history, literature, and art. It might become no need to limit the number of students of two sexes.
To make my statement into the conclusion, since we should respect the individualism, the freedom of self-decision, and the right to receive education, the option of every student should not be trapped, therefore, it is unnecessary to rule the equal number of male and female students in the same subject.
- May 22 Tue 2007 09:26
Speaking questions from textbook
Part 1
Are you working or studying?
Why did you choose this major?
What are your responsibilities?
What do you do when you arrive at the office every day?
How do you like your job?
What are your future career goals?
What aspects do you like or dislike about your job?
Do you have an English name?
What’s the meaning of your Chinese name?
Have you ever changed your name?
Do Chinese people like changing their names?
What kind of people like changing their names? Why?
What are people’s purpose in changing their names?
Do you ever go to museums?
What kinds of museums do people like to visit?
Why do people go to museums?
Should people have to pay to visit museums?
How can a museum attract more people?
Where are you from?
Can you tell me about your hometown?
What are the features that you like about your hometown?
What kind of street do you live on?
Does your hometown have any local culinary specialties?
What is the climate like?
What do you like best about your hometown?
Are there any tourist attractions in your hometown?
What’s your goal in life?
How can you make your dream come true?
Do you think that goals are different for people of different ages?
Do you think goals are important for a person?
What’s your favourite colour?
What colour don’t you like? Why?
Do you think that people’s favourite colour will change with time?
What can we learn about people from the colours they like?
What influence do cilours have on you?
What colours did you like in the past? Why?
Do colours have meanings?
Is there a colour that is special to the Taiwanese? What does it signify?
Do you think that colours have different meanings in different situations?
What’s the relationship between colours and personality?
Do you collect things?
What do Taiwanese people like to collect?
What can people learn from their collections?
If you were going to collect something, what would it be?Part 2 | Part 3 |
Describe an advertisement that you have seen or heard. You should say: What it was about Where you encountered it Your opinion of it Why you mention it | What types of advertisements are there? What are the functions of advertisements? What are the negative aspects of advertisements? What are the effects of advertisements on people? What should be required of advertisements? Do you think that parents of young children are greatly influenced by advertisements? Why do many people spend large sums of money on famous brands? What famous brands are there in your country? |
Describe the most interesting class that you have taken. You should say: When you took it What kind of class it was What happened in the class And explain why it was interesting. | At what age should children start school? What is the best age to learn skills? Which is more important, learning on one’s own or at school? What do you think of the quality of teachers? What are the differences between university education and high school education? What do you think the role of teachers should be? Do you think schools should teach more subjects? Since you can learn by yourself, are teachers necessary? |
Describe one of your holidays. You should say: When it was What you did Why it made a deep impression on you. | What has the government done to develop tourism in your country? What are the positive and negative aspects of holidays? How does tourism influence society? How are your holidays different from you parents? How has tourism changed over the years? What are the positive and negative aspects of tourism? |
Describe the best or worst weather you have ever encountered. You should say: What kind of weather it was When you experienced it What you experienced How you dealt with it | Do you think that bad weather can affect a person’s mood? Do Taiwanese pay as much attention to weather as the British? What do you do when the weather is bad? How so you get information about the weather? What kin of weather do you like? What effects can bad weather bring? |
Describe how you learned a foreign language. You should say: When you began to study it What troubles and fun you had What motivated you most during the experience | Why is English difficult to learn? Would it be difficult for me (the examiner) to learn Chinese? What’s the most boring aspect of learning English? When do most Taiwanese start learning English? Do you think that all Taiwanese can speak a little English? What foreign languages were popular in the past? Is it more difficult for men or women to learn English? Is it necessary to have an international language? What is the most interesting aspect of learning English? |
Describe a letter you received. You should say: When you received it. Who the sender was What the content was Why you remembered this letter | What are the differences between letters past and present? Will people write letters in the future? What are the advantages of email? What’s the difference between sending email and writing letters? What’s the difference between writing letters and keeping a journal? Do you keep a diary? What’s the function of post offices if people don’t write letters? Do you think that post offices will disappear? |
Describe your favourite song. You should say: What the song is called What the song is about How you feel when you listen to it or sing it And explain why it is your favourite. | What kind of music do you like most and why? Do Taiwanese people like music? Should music courses be taught in high schools? What are the benefits to children of learning to play a musical instrument? Why is it easier for children to learn a musical instrument than adults? What’s the impact of Western music on world music? What can parents do to enhance their children’s interest in music? |
Describe your favourie mode of transport. You should say: What it is Why you like it Its advantages and disadvantages How often you use it. | Have you ever been caught in a traffic jam? Can you tell me something about the advantages and disadvantages of different modes of transport? What’s the main form of public transport problems? What measures should be taken to solve these problems? What do you think transportation will be like in the future? Do you think that it is a good idea for people to own a car? Do you like to travel by car? What’s your opinion of the transportation in your city? |
Describe your favourite animal. You should say: What it is What it looks like How you learn about it Why you like it | Do you have a pet? What are the advantages and disadvantages of keeping pets? What are the traits of different animals? Are there zoos in Taiwan? What can be done to improve the zoos? What animals do Taiwanese people like? What animals don’t you like? What animals can be seen in Taiwan? What animals are native to Taiwan? How can animals be protected? Have these efforts been successful? How important is it to protect the environment? |
Describe a job you are interested in. You should say: What job you want to do in the future Where you want to work What the working hours are like And explain why you think this job is desirable. | Is it OK for parents to choose jobs for their children? What are the factors that decide a person’s career? What about in other countries? How do people search for jobs? What are the differences between men and women in choosing jobs? What’s the role of work in your life? Do you think that it is a acceptable to change jobs frequently? How will working hours change in the future? How do you handle relations with your boss? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a boss? How would you relate to your employee if you had the opportunity to be a boss? |
- Apr 19 Thu 2007 10:21
*SPEAKING* Color and Friends
Part One
What is your favourite colour?
Brown and black are my favourite colours. I have a lot of brown and black clothes. They make me fell calm and tranquil, especially when I am in clothes with these two colours.
Do colours have meaning?
Yes, generally speaking, I think colours have their own meanings. For example, red represents passion and enthusiasm, and yellow is energetic and bright, while pink means loveliness.
Is there any colour that is special to the Taiwanese?
Yes, some colours have special meanings for us. For example, red represents happiness. During Chinese new year, people, especially children, dress in red. We wrap gifts in red paper and give red envelopes to each other’s children in this season. Red is used to create a festival atmosphere.
What is the relationship between colours and personalities?
It is said that if you like bright colours, you may be an optimistic person who enjoy life, and excitement more. If you prefer darker colours such as gray or black, you are probably relatively quiet and shy.
Part Two
Describe one of your friend.
(1) who this person is
(2) how you got to know each other
(3) what activities you engage in when you are with this person
(4) What influence do you think he/she has on you?
I would like to talk about one of my best friend, Jessica, who I have known for more than 20 years. We attended the same kindergarten, primary school and high school. One special thing we did together is giving speech as graduate representatives in our graduation. For the preparation of the speech, I went to her home after school almost everyday. Therefore I also got familiar with Jessica’s family. When we were at high school age, Jessica’s father decided to immigrate to New Zealand. After their immigration, we had not met for quite a long time but still kept in touch with letters. I think her positive and bright character makes me relaxed being with her. And she is also a hard-working girl that her attitude toward life encourage me to make myself better all the time. Because of this friend, I think I became more brave and optimistic in my daily life.
