Philanthrocapitalism_ How Giving Can Save the World - Matthew Bishop [81]
Government matters. When it works well, citizen service can reinforce and supplement its efforts. When it doesn’t work well, citizen service has a tougher hill to climb, in order to fill in the gaps in the social fabric. That’s why one of the most important ways of giving time, money, knowledge, and skills can be in an effort to change, improve, or protect a government policy.
America has five big challenges that require an aggressive response from government: 1) how to work with others to fight terror, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and the consequences of failed or lawless states not just by opposing them militarily but also with diplomacy, aid, trade, and investment to build a world with more partners and fewer enemies; 2) how to restore our leadership in the global fight against climate change so that we do all we can and encourage China, India, and other populous developing nations with rising energy use to join us; 3) how to increase economic opportunity and decrease income inequality at home; 4) how to reform health care to achieve universal coverage that can’t be taken away, with enough cost reductions to remain competitive, and a renewed emphasis on keeping people healthy, not just treating them when they are ill; and 5) how to move to a clean, more independent energy future in a way that increases our national security, combats climate change, and creates millions of new jobs.
Bono became a well-known figure in the United States, even among those unfamiliar with U2’s music, by becoming an advocate in the first challenge, building a world in which more people are empowered to live positive, productive lives that are less vulnerable to siren calls to terror and violence. In 2000, he spent many hours talking to members of both parties in Congress on behalf of the millennium debt relief initiative to forgive the debts of the world’s poorest countries if they observed basic human rights and put the savings into health, education, and economic development. One of the rock star’s converts was Senator Jesse Helms, the very conservative chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. When President George W. Bush took office, Bono worked with the White House to make good on the president’s commitment to spend $15 billion over five years fighting AIDS and lobbied Congress for its passage. In 2005, in the months before the G8 meeting in Scotland, Bono supported Prime Minister Blair’s call for another round of debt relief for the poorest countries and a doubling of aid to Africa to $50 billion a year.
He has also found a way for you to participate. It’s called the ONE Campaign. Its goal is to persuade the U.S. government to dedicate one percent of our national income to eliminating extreme poverty in developing nations. The campaign is trying to get as many Americans as possible to sign the ONE Declaration—so far, more than two million people have signed. To raise the visibility of global poverty as a voting issue for Americans as we move toward the 2008 election, Bono wants to increase the number to as high a level as possible. You could be one of the signers.
Another important anti-poverty advocacy group is Bread for the World, a bipartisan faith-based group with 58,000 members, including three thousand churches. Bread for the World writes nearly 250,000 letters to Congress every year on behalf of initiatives to reduce poverty, hunger, and AIDS in the world’s poorest countries. For the last two years, it has supported President Bush’s proposal to change the way American food aid is delivered. Current law requires all aid to be in food grown in the United States, with three-fourths of it to be shipped on U.S. flag vessels. Rising energy costs, complicated logistics, and administrative costs now consume more than 60 percent of our main food aid program. As a result, U.S. aid is feeding about 70 million people a year as compared with more than 90 million five years ago. Canada and Europe have been moving away from shipping their own food to Africa and Asia in favor of giving cash to buy food in developing