Brief extracts

Sachs:

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. 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’…

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…

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…

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.

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For the Reith Lectures 2007, log on to ABC, BBC, or Reith Lectures 2007.