Jeffrey D. Sachs's Blog, page 42

Why It’s Time to Raise the Federal Tax on Gasoline

Twenty-two years ago, when the price of gas at the pump was $1 a gallon and a movie ticket was $4, Congress saw fit to set the gasoline tax at 18.4 cents a gallon. The idea was to ensure enough funds for the Federal Highway Trust Fund to keep our roads and bridges in good [...]

The real climate battle after a sweltering 2014

The announcement that last year was the warmest on record puts another nail in the coffin of climate denial. Not that one was needed. The pseudo-debate about climate science has always been about politics, not science. There are two main sources of climate denial. The first is libertarian ideology, which opposes government more than climate [...]

Book Review: The Age of Sustainable Development

A leading economist offers a brilliant analysis of the worldwide need to balance economic development and environmental sustainability. Sustainable development is “the greatest, most complicated challenge humanity has ever faced,” writes Sachs (Sustainable Development, Health Policy and Management/Columbia Univ.; To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace, 2013, etc.). In an important, comprehensive and remarkably accessible [...]

The War with Radical Islam

NEW YORK – French Prime Minister Manuel Valls was not speaking metaphorically when he said that France is at war with radical Islam. There is, indeed, a full-fledged war underway, and the heinous terrorist attacks in Paris were part of it. Yet, like most wars, this one is about more than religion, fanaticism, and ideology. [...]

Paul Krugman and the Obama Recovery

NEW YORK – For several years, and often several times a month, the Nobel laureate economist and New York Times columnist and blogger Paul Krugman has delivered one main message to his loyal readers: deficit-cutting “austerians” (as he calls advocates of fiscal austerity) are deluded. Fiscal retrenchment amid weak private demand would lead to chronically high unemployment. [...]

Time to end the Cold War once and for all

This week’s heartening rapprochement of the U.S. and Cuba reminds us of the complexity of regional security relations and the very long shadow of the Cold War. Washington, Moscow, and Berlin would do well to build on the spirit of this week’s breakthrough in the Western Hemisphere to find a similar solution in Ukraine. It [...]

Why the shadow of WW1 and 1989 hangs over world events

This has been a year of great geopolitical anniversaries. We are at the 100th anniversary of the start of World War One, an event that more than any other shaped world history during the past century. We are at the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the opening chapter of the demise [...]

The Year of Sustainable Development

NEW YORK – The year 2015 will be our generation’s greatest opportunity to move the world toward sustainable development. Three high-level negotiations between July and December can reshape the global development agenda, and give an important push to vital changes in the workings of the global economy. With United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s call to [...]

New Book: The Age of Sustainable Development

Columbia University Press Amazon Barnes & Noble IndieBound Powell’s The Age of Sustainable Development explains the central concept for our age, which is both a way of understanding the world and a method for solving global problems – sustainable development. Sustainable development tries to make sense of the interactions of three complex systems: the world economy, [...]

Oil sands may have no place after 2015

Sir, Your editorial on the Keystone pipeline (November 25) seriously misconstrues the issues regarding Canada’s oil sands and the Keystone pipeline, albeit in a typical way. You state: “Long-term growth in global demand for oil, however, is very likely to make oil sands development profitable even if the crude has to be moved out of [...]