Calls for action are often tokenistic.
The latest eminences arguing for action are Lord Dannatt, former head of the army, and Lord Richards, former chief of the defence staff.
Nearby, at 9 Maple Avenue, the most popular drink is a meticulously constructed apple martini; also cleared for action are 150 single-malt Scotches backlighted like objets d'art.
Some of those pressing for action are concerned that, with just four weeks left in the legislative session, the governor will give up on the issue.
That's unfortunately how calls for action are sometimes portrayed in the Middle East, as a bunch of right-wing hawks and Zionists moving on from Iraq by trying to grab Darfur from the Arab world.
Demands for action are hardly unreasonable given frustration with stagnant incomes and a growing body of evidence linking inequality to reduced equality of opportunity, reduced demand for goods and services and increased alienation from public institutions.
Try as they might to concentrate on their tomb excavations, Amelia and her Egyptologist husband, Radcliffe Emerson, a dashing fellow who is "intoxicated by danger, spurred on by the need for action," are soon prowling the mean streets of Cairo in odd disguises, searching out spies and foreign agents.
Also pressing for action are a group of 20 bishops who wrote to the Guardian today calling on the government to take a stand: There are currently tighter regulations on sales of stamps and dinosaur bones than there are on the sale of weapons.
Businesses are realising that the cost of inaction is greater than the cost of action - CEO of Unilever Paul Polman at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change's Annual Lecture, Imperial College London, 7 April 2014 Calls for action are growing - but still frame action as a cost or burden that will hamper business and act as a drag on the economy.
More than 1.4m signatures and calls for action are set to be presented to MPs on Wednesday in an effort to force David Cameron to take immediate action to combat the refugee crisis, after the Government's pledge to resettle 20,000 refugees was labelled "pitifully short of what is needed".
By heightening awareness in new ways, possibilities for action are expanded and new directions are forged.
