Deep down, if we really accept that their lives - African lives - are equal to ours, we would all be doing more to put the fire out. Its an uncomfortable truth.

The defining challenge of the 21st century will be to face the reality that humanity shares a common fate on a crowded planet.

Obama is already setting a new historic course by reorienting the economy from private consumption to public investments... Rightwing pundits bemoan the evident intention of Obama and team to 'tell us what kind of car to drive'. Yet that is exactly what they intend to do...and rightly so. Free-market ideology is an anachronism in an era of climate change.

Russia has gone through eight years of continuing economic pain.

Roosevelt talked not only about Freedom from Fear, but also Freedom from Want.

It's not so unusual to run out of someone else's currency.

All of the incessant debate about development assistance, and whether the rich are doing enough to help the poor, actually concerns less than 1% of rich world income. The effort required of the rich is indeed so slight that to do less is to announce brazenly to a large part of the world: 'You count for nothing.' We should not be surprised, then, if in later years the rich reap the whirlwind of that heartless response.