Why We Pay 'Em the Big Bucks

The world's Nobel Laureates are meeting to discuss solutions to the big problems in our current world. Will they succeed?

I suppose it's unlikely that they'll open new venues of active improvement. I doubt they'll succeed, single handedly. But who better to frame the problems of the world globally than those who have spent their lives working against these huge issues?

The laureates meeting in Jordan's ancient rock-carved city of Petra focused in a two-day conference on four main areas - peace and security, economic development, health, environment and science, and education, media and culture.

In a region noted for its wars, and with neighbouring Iraq giving daily examples of bloodshed, the delegates called for peace to be promoted by linking economic development and education to efforts to end conflict.

In a statement issued after the two-day meeting, they pinpointed inequity and injustice as the "root causes of terrorism" and underscored the needed to strengthen democratic institutions and foster economic development.

Root causes of terrorism. At least somebody's looking at how these events and sentiments begin and are fostered. The real war on terrorism is the same thing as the war on poverty. But America is only fighting one of those wars.