global issues Quotes

You have the refugee crisis triggered by Syria. That's got a lot of costs associated with it. Domestically, budgets are incredibly tight because the economy's not generating the growth that makes for easy trade-offs.

People are going to buy cheap fertilizer so they can grow enough crops to feed themselves, which will be increasingly difficult with climate change.

Most poor people live in the poorest countries.

We [US] are the biggest per person, by a substantial amount, greenhouse emitters, and we give the most foreign aid, not per person but in absolute. This is another issue where hopefully we will take a long-term approach which, even... ...

Haiti should remind us all that there is an immediate need to invest in and promote long-term development projects that are sustainable, scalable, and proven to work.

The first big effects will be farmers that live on the edge. Today's weather, they barely get by. Their kids, a high percentage are malnourished, and so if you impose more variable weather and more heat, you're getting more floods,... ...

The belief that the world is getting worse, that we can't solve extreme poverty and disease, isn't just mistaken. It is harmful.

If you say to people that there's less violence today than in the past, they would be stunned to hear that. But it's the truth, even though we have awful things happening in Syria or Sudan.

Bangladesh is largely a river delta, and the rising sea level means that when storms come in, the human sanitation is backing up, the ability to farm.

I don't have a magic formula for prioritizing the world's problems.