The White House needs a subscription to Scientific American. The gap between science and society is profound and extraordinarily dangerous. — Jeffrey D. Sachs
In the recent essay, Will We Avert Ecological Collapse?, I led off with mention of Jeffrey Sachs’s keynote address at the State of the Planet conference at Columbia University. As as follow up, and because it’s really a great overview of the ecological challenges we face today, along with discussion of what we need to do to meet those challenges, I recommend listening to (or reading) Sachs’s actual address. This is the sort of material that can give you a general idea of the ecological issues we’re dealing with and the actions we need to take, without digging seriously into the scientific literature or reading whole books on the subject. (Though if a book is what you want, I can’t recommend highly enough Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update!)
It’s worth staying with the address till the end. Sachs does not deal with the the question of population growth, for instance, until late in the talk. When he does, however, he is forthright and, in my view, accurate.