High Noon by J. F. Rischard, Basic Books, $27.50, ISBN 0465070094 Reviewed by Fred Pearce
STRAIGHT talking, plain thinking? Give me a break. High Noon purports to be a 200-page low-down on 鈥�20 global problems鈥� 鈥� global warming, poverty, deforestation, overpopulation and so on. It promises clear-eyed appraisal and 鈥渘ew thinking鈥� on how to solve them from one of the World Bank鈥檚 vice-presidents. Just the stuff to galvanise delegates at the 2002 World Summit in Johannesburg. Except that it turns out to be an exercise in World Bank obfuscation and management-speak, exposed rather than disguised by the crisp language.
Take the Bush factor. In coded language, Rischard occasionally hints that the US under George W. could be part of the problem. But as an MBA from Harvard he can鈥檛 find it in himself to say so. Did the White House betray the world when it reneged on the Kyoto Protocol? Not quite. It 鈥渟howed distaste for treaties requiring congressional ratification鈥� and it exposed a 鈥渢endency鈥� for such global deals 鈥渢o deteriorate鈥�. Well, thank you.
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Rischard does not seem well read. His 20 pages of references are predominantly from The Economist and the Financial Times 鈥� the cuttings clipped by his bank minions, I expect. When he does come up with a cracking statistic, it is often not sourced. In the course of describing the recent wars in the Congo region as 鈥渢he deadliest since World War II鈥� (has he forgotten Indo-China so soon?), he says that 鈥渋n some places, children have a 75 per cent chance of dying before they are two years of age鈥�. Staggering, but he offers us no source for this.
On the next page, he declares that economic disruption following 11 September 鈥渉as led to the death of 20,000 to 40,000 more children鈥�. We cannot attribute that headline-grabbing statistic to the World Bank because the publisher says we must not. So where did it come from?
Oh, and solutions to our problems? Easy. What鈥檚 needed is 鈥渘ew thinking about network-like set-ups that create a sort of horizontal, cross-border source of legitimacy鈥�. If I read that right, it means those same international cooperative UN set-ups Bush dislikes so much. Yet again, Rischard can鈥檛 quite spit it out.