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Sometimes it seems that we're beset by a bewildering diversity of overwhelming challenges.  However, as with most things, the complexity becomes less bewildering once the basic causes are understood.

In the PL Field Guide to Global Issues, we aim to help you to understand that the causes of the many problems we face have just a few root causes, and that, therefore, the solutions are easier than they might at first seem.  According to the Pareto Principle, 80% of our problems are often the result of 10% of the causes.

But to address root causes instead of symptoms, it's important to drill down beneath the surface.  To illustrate to our readers how that can be done, we begin by showing how to use a powerful tool, the Ishikawa diagram.  (Please see:  How to Identify Root Problems at left.)

We then proceed through the root causes of our problems.  The most fundamental problem of all is greed, and the indifference to the needs of others that is caused by geographical distance and a corrupt global media.  These two factors permit the existence of destructive, anti-democratic global institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank, that are themselves corrupt, and work to promote the global agenda of transnational corporations otherwise known as globalization.

Each of the individual problems that follow can ultimately be traced to greed and indifference.  We scrutinize these problems, always keeping in view their root causes.

Solutions to the individual problems will follow more or less automatically if we can successfully address their root causes.