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It's to the best of our knowledge. I'm Anne Strain Champs. Today, the mayor. Poverty, climate change,

unemployment, name a problem, and Washington seems unable to solve it. Immigration, education,

enter the mayor. Pragmatic, problem-solving, nonpartisan, mayors just might be the next best hope for democracy.

That's according to political theorist Benjamin Barber.

The title of his recent book puts it right on the line,

If Mayors Ruled the World.

Steve Paulson caught up with him at a Chicago conference on cities and sustainability.

Ben, why do you think we'd be better off if mayors

rule the world? Well, we'd be better off if almost anybody else ruled the world than the people

who are ruling it, which is the CEOs of giant carbon corporations and financial banks, which

have no interest in public goods, which is the leaders of nation-states

stuck in ideology and embedded in their sovereignty and unable to cooperate. So you might say that

almost anybody would be an alternative. I argue that mayors in particular, however, are

efficient, pragmatic problem-solvers, closer to their people, more democratic,

and indeed since cities today have over half of the world's population than them, in the

Western world, it's actually 80%. Cities really are democratically representative of the world's

population, and mayors are already cooperating with one

another across borders and dozens of intercity organizations and global organizations.

So in every way, mayors are better positioned, the more capable of and more interested in

solving real human problems. It's all about real stuff, real stuff. And if mayors don't do the real stuff,

...