Last September, urged on by Pope Francis, the United Nations and its 193 member states embraced the most sweeping quest yet to, basically, save the world and everyone in it — dubbed the Sustainable Development Goals. It’s a global agenda to fix climate change, stop hunger, end poverty, extend health and access to jobs, and vastly more — all by 2030.

The goals comprise no less than 17 separate items and 169 “targets” within them. And this isn’t just an airy exercise — the targets are quite specific (“By 2030, progressively achieve and sustain income growth of the bottom 40 per cent of the population at a rate higher than the national average”). That means that at least in many cases, countries can actually be measured on how they’re faring in meeting these goals, based on a large range of sociological, economic and other indicators.

“In the global context, the idea that we should be both measuring and aiming for economic, social, and environmental goals simultaneously, a kind of triple bottom line, has become more and more a worldwide accepted idea,” said Jeffrey Sachs, the Columbia University economist and U.N. adviser who has been closely involved in the goals and heads the Sustainable Development Solutions Network.  That’s even though, as Sachs points out, here in the U.S. we barely discuss or acknowledge the goals.