Bono at the UN

Bono and his personal economic guru Jeff Sachs were blogging for the Financial Times during the week they were in NYC for the UN meetings on the MDGs. Worth browsing.

Sachs especially isn't too happy with US participation in recent efforts to reduce global poverty and disease. But there are some interesting proposals floating around for combining poverty alleviation with addressing climate change.

Palin meets most important leader yet

Bono met with McCain and Palin in New York to promote the ONE Campaign's efforts in fighting extreme poverty and disease. In short, wealthy governments promised in 2005 to increase aid directed toward the world's poor to $50 billion per year, but have since fallen far short of that goal. As Bono says, "They love signing checks, but they don't like cashing them."

And yet Bono remained overwhelmingly positive about the progress made so far, citing 29 million African children now in school and 2.5 million with access to AIDS medications because of increases in aid. He praised governments for their recent promises to eradicate malaria by 2015.

This is an effective strategy that the ONE Campaign has consistently followed. Instead of lamenting about pervasive failure, they direct our attention to the concrete (if smaller) successes that foreign aid can accomplish. Instead of playing to our collective fear or guilt, they play to our hope and faith in ourselves.

I wonder how much of this is ONE's strategy, and how much of it is Bono's own personal approach? I'm just guessing, but I think it has a lot to do with Bono's philosophy. As U2 sings,

Of science and the human heart, there is no limit;
There is no failure here sweetheart, just when you quit....
I'm not giving up on a miracle drug.