I have a special disdain for professional pessimists, people who exploit the very real problems and threats the world faces to advance themselves and their objectives. They are like skunks, making bad smells to disorient and confuse others and so make their own situations easier.

Jeffrey Sachs has probably done more to shape contemporary low horizons on global poverty than any other individual. . .

For Sachs, the key problems facing the world today are rooted in overpopulation: ‘Our generation’s unique challenge is learning to live in an extraordinarily crowded world.’ He argued that the world is ‘bursting at the seams in human terms, in economic terms and in ecological terms’. So for Sachs every human being is, literally and metaphorically, another mouth to feed. The mass of humanity is leaching the planet of its resources and destabilising the world.

This isn't unique. It is the age old story, the normal condition of humanity. Crowding on a local scale has the same effects, and that is something that humans, as well as other species, have faced since the beginning. It's silly to be morose about it.

Sachs has played a key role in transforming the contemporary mood of pessimism into a coherent intellectual system. He has used his considerable intellectual and oratorical gifts to develop an outlook of profoundly low expectations in relation to eradicating global poverty. The celebrity economist is a fitting prophet for our miserable age.

Grow up! Life is hard and has always been so. The threats and problems are real but not novel. There is work to do which requires ingenuity and great effort, as ever, and the outcome will be mixed, as ever. It does not help to wallow in self pity and depression, whining that things are not all shiny and simple.