Story summary:
The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world's leaders. The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G-8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders who went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership. They are weak individually and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action.
The G-8 Summit in Japan earlier this month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation. The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world's leaders.
The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G-8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders who went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership. They are weak individually and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action.
There are four deep problems.
• The incoherence of American leadership. While we are well past the time when the United States alone could solve any global problems, it does not even try to find shared global solutions. The will to global cooperation was weak even in the Clinton administration, but it has disappeared entirely during the Bush administration.
• The lack of global financing. The hunger crisis can be overcome in poor countries if they get help to grow more food. The global energy and climate crises can be overcome if the world invests together to develop new energy technologies. Diseases such as malaria can be overcome through globally coordinated investments in disease control. The oceans, rain forests and air can be kept safe through pooled investments in environmental protection.
Global solutions are not expensive, but they are not free, either. Global solutions to poverty, food production and development of new clean energy technology will require annual investments of roughly $350 billion, or 1 percent of GNP of the rich world. This is obviously affordable, and is modest compared to military spending, but is far above the pittance that the G-8 actually brings to the table to solve these urgent challenges.
• The disconnection between global scientific expertise and politicians. Scientists and engineers have developed many powerful ways to address today's challenges, whether growing food, controlling diseases, or protecting the environment.
• The G-8 ignores the very international institutions -- notably the United Nations and the World Bank -- that offer the best hope to implement global solutions. These institutions are often deprived of political backing, underfinanced, and then blamed by the G-8 when global problems aren't solved. They should be given clear authority and responsibilities and then held accountable for their performance.
Starting in January 2009 with the new U.S. president, politicians should take the best chance for their own political survival, and of course for their countries' well-being, by reinvigorating global cooperation. They should agree to address shared global goals, including the fight against poverty, hunger and disease (the Millennium Development Goals), as well as climate change and environmental destruction.
To achieve these goals, the G-8 should set clear timetables for action, and transparent agreements on how to fund it. The smartest move would be to agree that each country tax its CO2 emissions in order to reduce climate change and then devote a fixed amount of the proceeds to global problem solving. With the funding assured, the G-8 would suddenly move from empty promises to real policies.