On Thursday, the Washington Post published [18] a very thoughtful op-ed, Global Action to Save Global Growth, by Secretary of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon. For those trying to define the narrative, the agenda, the language and better understand the challenges of the era after Bush, this well-crafted piece offers a glimpse into what will be a very different era of global politics and economics:

HOKKAIDO, Japan -- Global growth is the leitmotif of our era. The great economic expansion, now in its fifth decade, has raised living standards worldwide and lifted billions out of poverty.

Yet today, many wonder how long it can last. The reason: Plenty comes at an increasingly high price. We see it daily in the rising cost of fuel, food and commodities. Consumers in developed countries fear the return of "stagflation" -- inflation coupled with slowing growth or outright recession -- while the world's poorest no longer can afford to eat.

Meanwhile, climate change and environmental degradation threaten the future of our planet. Growing populations and rising wealth place unprecedented stress on the earth's resources. Malthus is back in vogue. Everything seems suddenly in short supply: energy, clean air and fresh water, all that nourishes us and supports our modern ways of life.

As the leaders of the Group of Eight gather here, we know that these issues affect us all: north and south, large nations and small, rich and poor. And we know we must find ways to extend the benefits of the global boom to those who have been left behind, the so-called "bottom billion." In dealing with problems of such dimension and complexity, there is only one possible approach: to see them for what they are -- as parts of a whole requiring a comprehensive solution.

A big part of that solution should be a "global supply-side response," as some economists put it, grounded in sustainable development -- nations, international financial organizations, the United Nations and its various agencies working together as one.

Begin with the global food crisis. It has many causes, among them a failure to give agricultural development the importance it deserves. What's needed, in effect, is a "green revolution" of the sort that once transformed Southeast Asia, this time with a focus on small farmers in Africa. With the right mix of programs, there is no reason productivity cannot be doubled within a relatively short span, easing scarcity worldwide. We've seen it happen in Malawi, which with international assistance has shifted within a few years from being a country plagued by famine to one that exports food.

In Hokkaido, I will call on G-8 nations to triple official assistance for agricultural research and development over the next three to five years. We must act immediately to get seeds, fertilizers and other agricultural "inputs" to farmers in vulnerable countries in time for the coming harvests. We must encourage nations to eliminate the export restrictions that many placed on foodstuffs this spring, as well as the more long-standing subsidies that many developed nations provide their farmers. Such artificial barriers distort trade patterns and drive up prices, deepening the immediate crisis and jeopardizing global growth.

With climate change, as well, sustainable development figures large in the solution. Most experts agree that we are nearing the end of cheap energy. Alternative technologies are among our best hopes for cleaner, affordable power. Here, too, a new "green revolution" is underway. The United Nations Environment Program has found that $148 billion in new funding went into sustainable energy last year, up 60 percent from 2006 and accounting for 23 percent of new power-generating capacity.

Our job, as national and international leaders, is to help guide and accelerate this nascent economic transformation. We need to change social behavior and consumption patterns throughout the developed world. And we must help developing countries "green" their economies by spreading climate-friendly technologies as broadly as possible.

We can take a big step forward in Hokkaido. Mindful of our responsibilities to the poorest nations most vulnerable to climate change, we must fully fund the global Adaptation Fund and make it operational. Looking forward to the December climate change summit in Poznan -- and to Copenhagen in 2009 -- we must push ahead with negotiations for a comprehensive agreement limiting greenhouse gases. Above all, we need to inject a sense of urgency and real leadership into this quest. It is not enough to set goals for 2050, far down the road. We need a middle-term timeline to 2020 if we are serious about promoting change now.

Lastly, Hokkaido will test our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. For Africa alone, donors have pledged $62 billion a year by 2010. Those in need have faces: mothers who die needlessly in childbirth, infants stunted through life because they do not receive adequate nutrition during their first two years. We promised to help. Now is the time to do so.

Never in recent memory has the global economy been under such stress. More than ever, this is the moment to prove that we can cooperate globally to deliver results: in meeting the needs of the hungry and the poor, in promoting sustainable energy technologies for all, in saving the world from climate change -- and in keeping the global economy growing.

These are the ties that bind us. We must act, in Hokkaido and beyond -- not merely because it is the right thing to do but also because it is in the enlightened self-interest of all of us.

In the coming month, NDN will be attempting to address some of the themes raised in this piece. This week we will host a major new speech by U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman on the future of the climate change debate in the United States; our new Green Project will release a new paper on the Solar Tax Credit and the need to invest in renewable energy sources; NDN Globalization Initiative Chairman Rob Shapiro will host a lunch looking at a new paper he's released that makes a compelling argument for how and why we can enact a carbon tax; we will host a discussion with Hon. Carolina Barco, Colombian Ambassador to the United States, who will discuss the state of our hemispheric relations and how we can best meet our common challenges; we will release a new paper that looks at the centrality of mobile devices in helping struggling nations grow; we will release a video interview with U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, author of the Global Poverty Act, a far-sighted piece of legislation that will position America to lead the world in meeting the Millennium Development Goals cited above; we will conduct an event on how high energy prices will affect America, a nation built on the assumption of low-cost energy; and of course, we will be banging away each day here on our blog and with the media.

To us at NDN, these are hard times, struggling times for our nation. But also a time of possibility, a time in which we can imagine once again doing big and important things, and leading America and the world with grace, confidence and success into the very different global political terrain of the 21st century.

When John McCain returns from his trip to Colombia and Mexico, he needs to clarify where he stands on the very important issue of how to best fix our broken immigration system. Once a great leader on immigration reform, his recent statements make clear that to win the Republican nomination and appeal to the anti-immigrant sentiment in his own party, he abandoned legislation that he himself authored and has now betrayed the immigrant community he once championed.

For someone like myself, who has worked hard, in a non-partisan way, to fix the broken immigration system these last few years, I find it incredible that John McCain would not just abandon his strong advocacy of comprehensive immigration reform, but attempt to mislead people about his record. This past weekend, we saw him - at a very important gathering of Hispanic leaders - misrepresent [21] his position on the last great immigration reform bill in 1986.

In this 2008 interview [22] with Tim Russert, McCain said his own legislation was dead. In this presidential primary debate [23] in Los Angeles, McCain said he would not vote for his own bill.

Once for comprehensive immigration reform, now against it. Once against the 1986 immigration bill, now for it. John McCain, when you come home this week from your travels, it is critical that you clarify just exactly where you stand on the important issue of immigration reform.

I just blasted away close to $2.8 billion in pork-barrel spending in three minutes using veto lasers and I'm only on level 2 with 4 McCains left. Not too shabby, right? This is all thanks to an application for Facebook created by U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign which, instead of reeling in young people as it is most likely designed to do, serves as a glaring illustration of how poorly they understand the demographic.

"Pork Invaders," as the game is called, is an application that anyone with a Facebook account can install in which the player shoots piggy-banks with vetoes as the piggies move back and forth across the screen dropping small, what appear to be, upside-down crosses at your McCain-logo-box-ship. As you skewer pork with vetoes, you save taxpayers millions, but be sure to keep an eye out for the pork-barrels -- strike down one of those and you're well on your way to balancing the budget and paying off our national debt. And after completing a level, you are rewarded with McCain campaign talking points trashing U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's record on earmarks while trumpeting his own. Check out the screen-shot below.

I doubt this venture into the world of social networking will give Obama supporters much to worry about. The game looks like an artifact of the early 1980s and surely those upside-down crosses will not do much to woo fence-sitting Christian conservatives. Moreover, when you look at just the sheer numbers, Obama has around 1,040,000 supporters on Facebook compared to McCain's 150,000. Still, I want to at least commend the McCain campaign for making the effort to reach out through social networks, but releasing an online game that looks painfully out of date will not only remind voters of the candidate's own distance from youth but may also instantiate McCain's recent declaration of computer illiteracy (see Maggie Barker's post [26]), neither association being particularly flattering.

At NDN and the New Politics Institute [27], we have done a lot of work to help progressives better understand social networking. Click on the link here [28] to find practical guidance on how to best engage social networks, including a memo written by Facebook's chief privacy officer. Below is a video from a recent NPI event during which Beth Kanter, a professional blogger and technology trainer, shares some of her thoughts on how to successfully utilize social networks.