| Social/Economic Well-Being |
 |
| Individual/Humanity Well-Being |
|
| World Environmental Well-Being |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
Dr. Takeda, all the wonderful staff of
the Takeda Foundation, ladies and gentlemen: This, needless
to say, is a very proud moment.
I would like to remind you of something that Socrates said 2400
years ago, and that is that it is not the ownership of things
that brings satisfaction; it's the use of these things, and
I think this is part of what we have been trying to think about
and to develop when designing what the future may give us, not
just for us obviously but for many generations to come.
One can quite easily show that it is totally impossible to globalize
the material consumption, the energy consumption that we have
achieved over the last altogether 150 years with absolutely
fantastic technology. This earth is just not big enough for
that. That can be calculated quite easily and that is to say
the economy as it runs now, the ownership, the use of things,
the infrastructures and the way we create leisure time and happiness
is not going to last.
We not only have to invent a totally new technology in terms
of lowering the input of natural resources and increasing the
output of services, happiness, of things we want and we need,
and we have@reasons to expect, all of us. We also have to
think of the rest of the world, the other 80 percent who do
not have these things at this time, and they will take those
things, and if we are not clever enough to replace material
and energy with brains in the future, this humanity is not going
to survive much longer.
This is not just a question of climate change or of other important
issues that you all are familiar with. This is a question of
where we are and where we wish to be. We have shown over the
last 10 years or so that this is not just a pipe dream that
we can live with much less natural resources and still create
quite easily, technologically speaking, the kind of services
we have, but it doesn't work at this time. It doesn't work not
because of technology. It doesn't work because we have created
the long economic framework, and so what you are giving us here,
my friend Ernst and myself and many of our co-workers whom I
wish to thank from this platform, it is not just a question
of technology. It is a question of societal choices, it's a
question of creating the economic framework that will allow
to make resources as much worth as they should be on the market
because there is no use in saving resources as long a they are
worth almost nothing, and that, I guess, is the future that
we are trying hard all together to change the system sufficiently,
not going away from the market but changing the system, making
the market stronger than it is today, and create a society in
which we can live with a lot less natural resources and maintain
the system we have on this earth for hopefully a long time to
come.
Dr. Takeda, I thank you in the name of my co-workers, in the
name of my institute, and all that you given to us for what
we have done because I think it will make a big difference that
we have this prize.
Thank you very much. |
|
 |
|
