Sacrificing Millennium Goals would be a real crisis

This was my response to an opinion piece by Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss about how the Millenium Development Goals shouldn't be scraped. The origional article came out just before the recent High-Level UN forum on global development. At this point the world was realizing that none of the development goals were on track for their 2015 deadline, and there was debate about the Goals future.

The BBC posed this question: Do you agree with Felix Dodds and Michael Strauss? Is the world doomed to face a future of crises and scarcity unless development becomes more sustainable? Would allowing the Millennium Development Goals to slip be a false economy? Or is the MDGs' 2015 deadline a false line in the sand?

My response:

I think Dodds and Strauss have constructed a piece for the mainstream media that is a long time coming. Bravo! They have started a wake up call to all who have not yet realized it: that this might very well be the most interesting time in human history to be alive. But here is a declaritive: let us not place this article, nor its authors, on a transcendental pedistal. Do not enshrine this article, specifically, as the key to averting world crisis. It is the product of several hours of hard work at the keyboard by two people. It would be unfair to place the whole burden of perpetuating something as important as world livlihood on the shoulders of their words.

Rather, I say we enshrine the author's great understanding by writing a thousand more origional articles that emulate it. If we can get enough unique itterations of this sentiment on the pages of too many periodicles, then I think that the era of brain-drain in American public service would continue to wane. If enough people could understand that doing good was a viable shift to our service sector economy; if enough people could see that socail actors can make good salaries; if enough people could see that saving the world's problems was in their best interests in a huge number of ways... Then the challenge of providing a tomorrow for all would be in a number of capable hands.

9/22/08