At an early morning session today at Davos, Bono and Al Gore spoke about a “Unified Earth Theory” that attempts to combine the agendas of both global poverty and climate change. Each year at the World Economic Forum, the biggest names in politics and business turn the chilly Swiss resort town of Davos into a week-long think tank.

According to a BBC journalist blogging directly from the conference, the Bono/Gore team was short on answers, but brought up some great questions that we do need to consider. And soon. The link between global poverty and climate change is critical—and it works both ways. Helping developing countries increase their wealth may also affect their consumption levels. But developing countries are also going to be the hardest hit when it comes to global warming. So how can we help developing countries in a way that doesn’t increase global consumption levels to a dangerous extent?

Bono noted that the G-8 isn’t doing all it can. They haven’t met their pledge to contribute $50 billion annually to help stamp out poverty. Bono continued, however, that they have been making progress—both France and Germany said that they would make a better effort. In addition to talking about a plan that would incorporate the negative effects of carbon into its price tag, Gore said that global compacts could solve both problems of poverty and climate change.

Read more about Bono and Gore’s session at CNN.com.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, January 24th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Conference, Climate Change, Global Development, Global Poverty, Environment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.