Global Sustainability
- Rick Bonetti
- Jun 26
- 3 min read
Jeffrey D. Sachs' 2020 book The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions grew out of three lectures given in 2017 at the Oxford School of Geography and Environment. The book was published as the COVID-19 epidemic was emerging, adding emphasis on our current accelerating globalization. Sachs emphasizes the need for new methods of international governance and cooperation to prevent conflicts and to achieve economic, social, and environmental objectives aligned with sustainable development.
"Today’s most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future."
The book traces the Seven Ages of Globalization - distinct waves of technological and institutional change shaped by geography:
Paleolithic (70,000 - 10,000 BCE)
Neolithic (10,000 - 3,000 BCE)
Equestrian (3,000 - 1,000 BCE)
Classical (1,000 BCE - 1500 CE)
Ocean (1,500 - 1,800 CE)
Industrial (1,800 - 2,000 CE)
Digital (The 21st century)
As a geographer, I love the book because it is full of maps and presents a visual history of humanity's interrelationship with the natural environment as it has evolved and is now facing an uncertain future. It is the book I wish was written 60 years ago during my college and university studies because it integrates cultural evolution, economics, politics, technology, institutions, and ethics/religion. It is consistent with the most recent understandings of science and cosmology of the universe.
Sachs' book reminds me of the Human Energy Project's 30 short YouTube videos narrated by Brian Thomas Swimme about the 3rd Story of the noosphere - a planetary mind, an evolving living organism, the unfolding of a mind-like universe with a common sense of meaning and purpose.
We have stumbled into the twenty-first century with our "Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technolgy." ~ E. O. Wilson
Jeffery Sachs is an economist, the Director of The Earth Institute's Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, President of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network, and UN Advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), - a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015.
Sachs' other most recent book is A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020), where he says: "The American Century began in 1941 and ended on January 20, 2017 [when Donald Trump was sworn into his first Presidency]... The current turn toward nationalism and “America first” unilateralism in foreign policy will not make America great. Instead, it represents the abdication of our responsibilities in the face of severe environmental threats, political upheaval, mass migration, and other global challenges."
Sachs also authored three earlier New York Times best-sellers The End of Poverty (2006), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity (2011).
In addition, Columbia University Press has published several books by Sachs: To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace (2014), The Age of Sustainable Development (2015), Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017), and A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2020).
Sachs is also a contributing editor in Ethics in Action for Sustainable Development (2022), Against Happiness (2023), and Escaping the Resource Curse (2007).
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