2052. The new report to the Club of Rome

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2052. The new report to the Club of Rome. A global forecast for the next 40 years (original title: 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years ) is a description of trends in global development by Jørgen Randers . It was published in 2012 and follows on from the first worldwide report by the Club of Rome , The Limits to Growth from 1972.

It differs from its previous report in three main features:

  • First, it does not describe an impending disaster scenario, but only shows trends.
  • Second, it should be read against the background of the experience since 1972, namely that all of humanity reacted to the previous reports, but with a delay of 20 to 40 years.
  • Thirdly, he not only offers future scenarios, but also makes specific suggestions as to how individuals should react to emerging developments.

background

In contrast to “The Limits of Growth” (1972), Randers does not present alternative future scenarios that will come true depending on the path mankind chooses, but a single prognosis. This is possible because, after 40 years of experience, one can assess the obstacles that stand in the way of sustainability relatively well. Of course, his prognosis does not predict any events, only general trends. These trends will include that in large parts of the world capitalism will no longer be geared towards profit maximization, but towards ecological goals. Also, the economic growth will decrease, but due to decisions, but because it will not be no longer enforce despite all efforts. He believes that the current emphasis on individual rights is unsustainable. You would have to step back behind the common good. But he fears that this will happen too late for the global temperature rise of over two degrees to be prevented.

The struggle for redistribution will lead to lower productivity growth. However, growth will not be stopped in good time so that disasters can be foreseen for future generations.

The climate will not change catastrophically until 2052. It will only be possible to determine after 2052 that the climatic change intensifies by itself even without human influence.

Global forecast

The logic underlying the forecast

Randers starts from two central questions: “How will consumption develop over the next 40 years?” And “Under what conditions - in which social and natural environment - will this future consumption take place?” (P. 78) He uses computer models in order not to overlook feedback effects. The forecast for 2052 is based on many - sometimes contradicting - individual forecasts.

Population and consumption

According to Randers, population growth will slow down, from around 2040 onwards the population will shrink. The working population will decrease as early as 2030. Productivity and gross domestic product will continue to grow, but more slowly. After all, investments in preventing and eliminating environmental damage will have to increase. Disaster costs will arise that were previously unimagined, and the state will have to intervene more. Overall, consumption will no longer increase, and not infrequently also decrease.

Energy and CO 2

Energy efficiency will continue to increase. Energy consumption will increase, but not endlessly. The climate intensity of energy consumption will be reduced through renewable energies. CO 2 emissions from energy consumption peaked in 2030. The temperature will rise by more than two degrees and that will lead to serious problems.

Diet and footprint

In the race for the last raw material sources, the world's biocapacity will be increasingly exploited. The cities are becoming more abundant raw material sources for metal than the last as yet unexploited raw material deposits in nature ( urban mining ). Just as the zoos have become the last refuge for some endangered animal species, so would parks be for nature in general.

The non-material future

Randers argues that global gross domestic product will hardly increase in the medium term due to population decline, general aging and declining productivity gains.

The Internet will create a completely new understanding of privacy and the public. Knowledge will no longer be a scarce commodity, but that will only lead to more rational decisions to a limited extent, since knowledge alone will not be enough to bring about changes in behavior if this is opposed by strong interests. Therefore a “green force” will presumably be set up to enforce ecological behavior, just as the blue helmets advocate peacekeeping today .

The zeitgeist of 2052

Emphasis on local / regional solutions

Scotland and the Scandinavian countries as winners of climate change

“I believe that in 40 years the balance of power in Europe will shift northwards. The emerging countries are then Scandinavia, Germany, the Benelux countries and the Baltic countries. Scotland will separate from the UK […] Southern countries like Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and the Balkans will suffer from temperature rises and water scarcity, causing food shortages, health problems and civil unrest. The consequences are population shifts and waves of immigration from North Africa. ”(Catherine Cameron, p. 230)

Alignment of the states north and south of the Mediterranean

Despite the euro crisis, the states north of the Mediterranean remain attractive for the North African states. "Despite these gloomy developments in the Mediterranean north, illegal immigration from Africa and Asia is increasing explosively, mainly in the direction of Italy and Greece and, to a lesser extent, in Spain, Malta and Cyprus." (Thymio Papayannis, p. 235)

Slum urbanism in Africa

Edgar Pieterse believes that “given weak GDP growth, persistent wage inequality and systemic political malfunction, slum urbanism will remain a predominant trait in African cities. […] Nothing is expected from the state, just as little as from the private market. Instead, the residents come together in different constellations and try to stretch their minimal income by using their mutual support, their knowledge and their labor to slowly but systematically bring everyone forward. At the core of this social operating system is the possibility of cannibalizing, infiltrating, taking possession and transforming the resources and expectations of the ordered city outside of the slum. ”(Edgar Pieterse, p. 241)

Less fixation on economic growth

Randers argues as follows about changing economic policy objectives:

"I don't believe that capitalism will continue to exist unchanged for the next 40 years. The name will remain, but the way capitalist society works will change in two ways: investment flows will no longer be driven solely by profitability and corporations will be forced." to be accountable not only for their financial performance, but also for the ecological and social consequences of their actions.

[…] In the next 40 years, global society will face growing challenges, the solution of which will require additional investment. In more and more cases, intervention will be necessary before these investment projects become economically profitable. Ideally, the state solves such problems by adjusting relative prices (the " internalization of external costs and benefits"), but this could prove difficult in practice. It goes faster if you increase taxes and invest the income directly in socially necessary projects.

A good example is the decision by the German government to make significant investments in wind and solar energy during the 2000s and let consumers pay the bills. "(P. 250)

"By 2052, China will have shown the world how a strong government is much more capable of meeting the challenges humanity faces in the 21st century, because China will get the 5 percent of its GDP that it needs to grow To cope with collapsing problems can easily be redirected. And meanwhile the market economies will still hesitate whether you use another 100 billion US dollars (less than 0.1 percent of their GDP) to support climate-friendly technologies. " (P. 252)

"Modified capitalism could also be lived if capital flows are controlled by pension funds that focus on their true task, namely to secure a secure pension income for their customers in 30 years instead of chasing indexes that promise maximum short-term profits. The (best motivated) Pension fund managers could act like a far-sighted and wise government. " (P. 253)

Collective creativity

"Using the internet like a wiki makes it possible to query practically the entire knowledge of mankind on any project. It makes it possible to combine the voluntary commitment of many individuals into one large work - as only the church or particularly successful social movements would have done in the past .

Such collective ventures will, I believe, be of great importance in the future. They will help decentralize engagement and power. "(P. 258)

"Almost 40 percent of company bosses worldwide expect that the majority of future innovations will be developed with outside partners. Instead of the old model of in-house innovations in isolated research and development departments and the secrecy and aggressive control of intellectual property, corporations are becoming external and internal ideas commercialize by using external as well as internal market entries.

The boundaries between the ideas of a company and the ideas of its surroundings are becoming more and more permeable. By 2052, the not-invented-here syndrome (NIH), which limited the use of external ideas, will finally be forgotten "(p. 261f.)

Intergenerational justice

“I don't know with which weapons the Third World War or even the Fourth World War will be fought. But it can be safely assumed that future wars will bring us a world court of generations by 2052 , through which government, corporations and other actors can be indicted and prosecuted for ecocide and massive damage to the interests of future generations. ”(John Elkington, quoted on P. 267)

Randers is not so sure about that.

analysis

Thoughts about the future

Randers assumes that the world standard of living will not suddenly collapse in the next 40 years. The reason for this he assumes is that on the one hand 2-3 billion people will remain poor and will not benefit from the increase in productivity and on the other hand the rich will do everything to maintain their standard of living despite all the shortages. However, this will essentially only happen when the causes of the shortages can no longer be combated.

There is a relatively simple and effective plan to reduce CO 2 emissions to almost zero within 20 years. Randers introduces it with a rhetorical question:

“What if world leaders decided, as part of a common plan, to use five percent of global GDP every year for 20 years to solve the climate problem? That would mean that five percent of the working population and five percent of the capital would work to produce and provide climate-friendly goods and services. This big project would solve the climate problem. After 20 years of joint and well-planned efforts, the global economy would be emission-free. "(P. 298)

The global financial markets would drive sustainable development once they recognized the overvaluation of fossil-based companies , says Nick Robins.

The world must learn to live with lower economic growth than is common today. We can only do this if we also learn how to redistribute without growth. (Randers, p. 309)

Five regional futures in view of 2052

In the US, consumers “will see absolutely no wage increases for a generation. However, the US land mass is enormous compared to its population, and so the country will continue to be able to sustain itself with natural resources and still have significant reserves. Per capita food production will remain very high by international standards, and although a considerable part of the surplus is used for biofuels, some food can still be exported. ”(P. 315)

Surprisingly to many Westerners, the Chinese population will peak as early as the 2020s - but it will be a flat and long maximum. In this way, the country will take early and immense advantage of its unpopular one-child policy of the last generation. The People's Republic of China will be spared the additional burdens of several hundred million people and the country will be able to use the resources that have become free to provide for the 1.4 billion people who will live there in the 2020s create better existence. (P. 320)

Randers paints the following picture for the OECD-excluding-USA:

"The region's total GDP will grow slowly, peaking around 15% above current levels in the early 2030s. This slow growth will be primarily due to population decline, but also to slow productivity growth. [...] The main Production reserve lies in the opportunity to bring an even higher proportion of the potential labor force into employment. In this sense, the current high unemployment rates in the OECD - more than 10% of the potential labor force - are a unique opportunity. The region has the necessary workforce to However, this requires an income transfer from current employees to newcomers. Bringing more people to work and livelihoods will require leadership and the willingness of the majority to invest in order to master the numerous challenges that the regions are facing to come, incl That is to say, those that the aging of the population and climate change entail. In this regard, the OECD-ex-US region will have a better starting point than the United States. "(Pp. 329–331)

“My fourth region, BRISE, consists of Brazil, Russia, India, South Africa and ten major emerging economies, with a total of 2.4 billion people in 2010. […] This region is so diverse that it is almost pointless to talk about mean values. After all, it currently covers a third of the earth. BRISE's current GDP exceeds that of China. The only good reason to group these countries together is that they are large (the average population is 170 million) and all on the way to becoming an industrialized nation. [...] Food production will continue to increase despite the loss of some arable land due to the immense unused arable land in the regions (e.g. in Brazil, Ukraine and Siberia). However, the region is also becoming the scene of potential climatic disasters as a result of global warming. "(Pp. 334–335)

The rest of the world "is an eclectic mix of around 183 states with a total population of 2.1 billion people in 2010, making it home to a third of the world's population. […] The average GDP per capita is around two thirds that of the BRISE- region. Region. The population is still growing rapidly - 1.9 percent annually - compared to 2.4 percent 40 years ago. However, the growth rate will continue to fall [...] Consumption and production per capita will grow, but the three billion people in this region will in 2052 will still be far behind the five billion "who will live in the rest of the world" - despite the 40 years of stagnation in the OECD region. "(pp. 342–346)

Comparison with other futures

Randers compares his study with that of Die Limitations of Growth (GdW) (1972) and shows that at that time only very rough scenarios were presented as conceivable future alternatives. He selected a probable scenario (in the edition of GdW (2004) Figure 6-1, p. 210) and formulated a more precise forecast from there.

In 1972, when people talked about overshoot and the resulting collapse of the system, this did not mean that humanity would be extinct, but only that a life as before was completely excluded.

In the years following 1972, “The Limits to Growth” was viewed as refuted because in individual cases the raw materials - for various reasons - did not run out as early as anticipated. At the same time, the decisive statement of the study from 1972 was misunderstood, namely the indication that humanity will soon be consuming more than is sustainable in the long run. So what in the 1990s was called too large an ecological footprint .

What other options do we have?

“My forecast for global developments up to 2052 is pessimistic, but not catastrophic. [...] Almost three billion people will still not have a standard of living that is adequate for me, without adequate food, housing, health care or security. Efforts will be made to resolve these problems over the next 40 years, but efforts will not be enough to eradicate poverty by 2052. [...] the rich countries will have to spend a much larger part of their economic power to solve the flood of new problems that will come their way over the next 40 years. [...] The poor countries will not treat as particularly urgent a problem the full effects of which they will only really feel in 30 years. And as far as climate change is concerned, you have a right not to do it: after all, the rich countries created the climate problem in the first place [...] ”(Randers, pp. 373–374)

The rich “countries will not fall into anarchy, but they will not grow rapidly enough to eradicate unemployment and injustice. Although they can, they will not be able to revitalize their economy because they are unable to make the necessary decisions ”(p. 374)

Regarding the question of the right strategy for a successful change, Randers argues:

"Fifty years of development aid and experiments with various economic forms have shown that stable state institutions and education are indispensable prerequisites for long-term economic growth for everyone, especially for women. Experience has also shown that no outside solution can help against poverty The solution has to come from the local people themselves. […] However, well-ordered, reliable framework conditions, low levels of corruption and sufficient investment in the future are essential.

Actually implementing such solutions is the real economic challenge. The past 50 years have shown that this is easier said than done. The past has also shown that it makes much more sense to use the resources of a developing country to build up the country than to sell them to foreign investors. "(Randers p. 375)

“But what can and should each and every one of us do in this matter? In my opinion everyone should speak out publicly in favor of reducing emissions, point out that climate change is a serious problem and that countermeasures must be taken as soon as possible, that a solution is technically possible and relatively cheap and that you are ready yourself to pay his share of the cost if the majority so choose. On top of that, if you are demonstrating in your daily life how easy it is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through your personal lifestyle, then I think you have done more than your duty. Because you have contributed to the formation of political will, which is necessary to initiate and support a clear and targeted step into a climate-friendly future. But as you know from my forecast, this step will unfortunately only be taken on a large scale much later, in the 2030s. ”(Randers, p. 377)

An advisory group to the Secretary-General of the United Nations has produced a "remarkably clear list of recommendations for action".

20 pieces of advice

Towards the end of the book, Randers lists 20 personal pieces of advice that will apply if we do not change our current course:

  1. Place more emphasis on satisfaction than income.
  2. Avoid having a preference for things that will soon be gone.
  3. Invest in high quality consumer electronics to replace reality. What Randers does not express, but suggests, is the question: Shouldn't you get used to the fact that you can no longer do a lot of things that were previously possible?
  4. Do not raise your children to be nature lovers.
  5. If the diversity of life is important to you, enjoy it while you still can.
  6. Visit the sights of the world before they are ruined by the crowds.
  7. Live in a place that is as little affected as possible by climate change.
  8. Move to a country where decisions can be made.
  9. Find out which consequences of a lack of sustainability will affect your quality of life the most.
  10. If you don't want to work in the service or care sector, find a job in the energy efficiency or renewable energy sectors.
  11. Advise your children to learn Mandarin.
  12. Say goodbye to the idea that all growth is good.
  13. Remember that one day your fossil investments will suddenly lose their value.
  14. Invest in things that are resilient to social unrest.
  15. Do more than you have to. This will avoid a guilty conscience later.
  16. For entrepreneurs: explore the business potential of improving sustainability.
  17. For entrepreneurs: Volume growth does not automatically mean increased profits.
  18. For politicians: if you want to be re-elected, only support initiatives that promise long-term gains.
  19. For politicians: remember that we will encounter many limits in the future.
  20. For politicians: Accept that equal access to limited resources will become more important than freedom of speech.

reception

Uwe Schneidewind , President of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy , comments critically on the report that it is a bit too pessimistic because it takes too little account of developments in the direction of sustainability. One can observe a “considerable change in values ​​that is currently taking place from purely economic to sustainable thinking”. This is addressed in the report, but not included in the calculation models.

Sven Stockrahm, reviewer of the time , on the other hand, believes he can detect a certain hysteria in Randers ("The trends are plausible, but their presentation is hysterical.").

Dorothee Landgrebe, Ecology Officer at the Heinrich Böll Foundation , sees the report as the most critical . He criticizes the democracies far too one-sidedly for slow decision-making and paints an overly optimistic picture of China, although there is particularly strong environmental pollution.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ “We are well informed about the reasons behind the decisions made in these decades. And have a pretty good look at the pressures that keep us locked in inaction on various fronts. We have learned how fast it can be to solve certain solvable problems through technology, and how slow mankind advances on problems that are less easy to solve. Since we know so much about the first 40 years, it makes sense to draw certain lessons from those 40 years and to look at the next 40 years. When examining a dynamic phenomenon, one should initially look back as far as one plans to look ahead. ” (P. 25)
  2. ↑ “My prognosis does not exclude free will; rather, it is based on the belief that human decisions are influenced by the conditions under which they are made. […] If there are reasons to believe that the conditions will develop in a certain way, one can also usefully forecast the resulting decisions. ” (Randers: 2025, p. 25) If no other title is mentioned, refer the following quotes all refer to this title.
  3. ↑ "So old-school capitalism will survive in some parts of the world, while in others it will be heavily modified." (P. 44)
  4. ↑ Randers suggests, "that if human consumption were increased to the level of the United States, human environmental pressures would increase five to ten times. In my estimation, it won't get that far on our limited planet simply because there isn't enough space for it. But humanity will definitely try […] ”(p. 52)
  5. ↑ "We will remain clinging for too long to the ideal that individual rights enjoy priority over the common good, a view that will be less and less helpful in an increasingly crowded world." (P. 58)
  6. ↑ "We will continue to optimize, but primarily for our own generation and that of our children. As a result, our grandchildren in the world will have a hard time." (P. 64)
  7. ↑ “The negative effects will be considerable - but not catastrophic, at least not before 2052. Then there will be more droughts, floods, extreme weather events and insect pests. The sea level has risen by 0.3 meters, the Arctic summer ice has disappeared and the new weather is affecting farmers and holidaymakers alike. Ecosystems have migrated a few 100 km towards the poles or a few 100 meters uphill. The shell-forming animals in the oceans are troubled by the acidic water. Many species are extinct. "(P. 71)
  8. ↑ My prognosis is presented linearly […] but it was by no means developed in this way. Rather, it was developed in an iterative process. After much trial and error, I finally ended up with the forecast presented here. "(P. 82)
  9. ↑ pp. 87-128
  10. ↑ "The CO 2 concentration in the atmosphere will certainly increase, but will not trigger self-reinforcing climate change before 2052." (p. 41)
  11. ↑ “If the GDP in 2052 turns out to be lower than expected - an ecological blessing for the planet - then it is not due to the lack of growth tendency of the states and their people. The aging and depopulation of society will simply make less active hands available. In particular, the productivity of the mature economies will rise much more slowly due to social tensions due to increasing injustice. "(P. 198)
  12. ↑ "The traditional psychological and epistemological separation between the written and spoken word is already disappearing and in response to this, new norms are developing in terms of trust, privacy and the exchange of feelings. The specialty of electronic communication via SMS and e-mail and social media means that everything is recorded and can be traced. [...] The paradox here: What is put in electronic form "to the files" has to be refreshed about every ten years and is therefore far less permanent than records Paper that can last for centuries. " (P. 210)
  13. ↑ "Everyone will be able to access the entire knowledge of mankind with the touch of a fingertip (or perhaps with a mere thought caught by an implant). Ideally, this should increase overall labor productivity as the right answer is always at hand. However, this only applies when the lack of knowledge is a bottleneck - for example when looking for the right seeds, when the climate changes so quickly that there is no time to gain experience in years of sowing attempts - especially in democratic countries human endeavors are not limited by a lack of knowledge but by a lack of consensus. Access to additional information does not necessarily make it easier to reach an agreement - it can just as well harden the fronts. Experience shows that unpleasant information makes people different can only be influenced a little. " (P. 211)
  14. ↑ “Attentive readers have surely noticed that most of the special features mentioned, which will be lost, are of little interest to the average citizen, because they were never affordable for them to enjoy anyway. That is indeed the case, and it is one of the main reasons why I believe that there will be no democratic majority for preventive measures to maintain them. ”(P. 214)
  15. ↑ "I suspect the transition of the military to the" green force "- perhaps hand in hand with the peace-making blue helmets of the United Nations - will come much faster than expected. This will be the intangible expression of perhaps the most significant non-material change of the future Be 40 years: the changed image of the enemy. The enemy will not be the closest neighbor with a dissenting opinion about government systems or religions, but human-made climate change. Not someone else, but the collective to which each of us belongs - or a poster to quote from the first Earth Day 1970: 'We have met the enemy and we are ourselves.' "(p. 227)
  16. ↑ According to my prognosis, the standard of living will not collapse suddenly and massively in the next 40 years. […] One reason is the fact that a large part of the world's population - 2 to 3 billion people - will remain poor. A second reason is, I am convinced, that global society will bridge temporary shortages (which affect the few who can pay) by simply taking a lot of money in hand, solving the problem with a crowbar. "(P. 277)
  17. ↑ The greatest challenge in our common future is not solving the problems, but the decision to want to solve them. This requires a lot of persuasion: people and capital owners have to be convinced to make sacrifices at short notice, to roll up their sleeves and lend a hand. The realization that we must act will come. But late. And the act itself will come even later. And only later do we see the results of the action. "(P. 277)
  18. ↑ “A very simple way to achieve this would be a carbon tax of 100 PPP per tonne of CO 2 , which is levied at the point where the coal is extracted, at the oil well and at the point where the gas enters the pipeline. This would generate $ 3 trillion PPP per year ($ 100 PPP for each of the 32 billion tonnes of CO 2 currently emitted each year), equivalent to five percent of global GDP in 2010 of $ 760 billion per annum. The money could be collected by the governments from the energy companies, who would pass the costs on to the consumers. The government could reimburse all citizens for exactly these extra costs, but with a flat rate per capita. That would enormously increase the competitiveness of renewable energies and accelerate the elimination of fossil fuels. "(P. 299)
  19. ↑ "Modern financial theory ignores natural resources and therefore implies that the stream of ecosystem services flows and just as inexhaustibly drives economic growth. Natural capital does not appear in either the balance sheets of companies or in those of the national economies. [...] Compared with the ongoing (Mis ) Allocation of capital to fossil reserves, the subprime bubble is only a minor issue. [...] Financial crises arise when the markets recognize that what was previously considered a solid value is vanishing into thin air. [...] In the carbon crisis it will be the overvalued fossil-based companies. The job of the financial regulators, who are supposed to manage the systemic risks of the markets, will be to defuse the fossil fuel bomb before it blows up. " (Nick Robins, pp. 306-308)
  20. ↑ In the broadest sense, my prognosis can be seen as the elaboration of one of the border crossing and decline scenarios in GdW. It deals with a world that is rapidly moving towards a climate crisis caused by a very obvious boundary : namely the limited capacity of the earth's atmosphere to absorb CO 2 without warming up. (Randers, p. 351)
  21. ↑ Many will have read the GdW scenarios completely correctly as a representation in which humanity is so rapidly reaching the limits of the world that this impact itself reduces human lifespan through hunger due to overpopulation and toxic environmental pollution. In addition, this impact has a whip effect, since the same toxic inputs also reduce agricultural productivity and thus, in keeping with Malthus' population theory, cause a further reduction in lifespan and even more hunger. However, in today's globalized world of money and trade, it is more likely that decline will take the form of decreased purchasing power rather than increased mortality. However, I would say that the effect in both cases is a reduced quality of life. So what comes into the overshoot and collapses is "well-being," not the population or GDP. Boundary-crossing-and-collapse scenarios involve a finite amount of time in which the level of "well-being" exceeds what has been shown to be sustained over the long term. In the face of threatening decline, one possible human response would be to redefine the concept of "wellbeing" so that it only includes what can be made sustainably available. Another solution would be to wait until the global population becomes small enough to grant everyone the privileges that few enjoy today. I assume that humanity will do a little of both in the 21st century. So if we avoid destroying the world in this process - if we avoid self-reinforcing climate change - then there is hope: In 2100 the world population will be much smaller than it is today and the energy system will be 100 percent solar. Humanity will be much closer to a state of sustainability, especially if some non-sustainable values ​​have changed along the way. (Randers, p. 353)
  22. ↑ GdW's message "Crossing borders due to delayed decisions" does not meet with broad understanding. That wasn't surprising a generation ago, because in 1972 (when the human ecological footprint was about half the size of today) it was seen as quite unthinkable that global society would allow itself to grow beyond the sustainable carrying capacity of the planet. […] Smart politics must ensure that the human footprint does not become unsustainable. That means refraining from expansion that would only bring short-term benefits. This is difficult in a democracy that is determined by short-term thinking voters and in markets that are dominated by short-term thinking investors (Randers, pp. 359–361)
  23. ↑ Randers, p. 377, German summary: Strengthening human development ( Memento of the original from April 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 220 kB) and original English text (PDF; 2.7 MB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.menschliche-entwicklung-staerken.de
  24. ↑ If your mother is electronically projected into the room in three dimensions and with a real smell, how often will you actually visit her "(p. 382)
  25. ↑ When you teach your child to love the solitude of the pristine wilderness, they will love something that is increasingly rare. This increases the chance that your child will be unhappy because they will no longer find what they want in a world with eight billion inhabitants and a gross domestic product that is twice as high as today. The new generation learns better from the start to find peace, calm and contentment in the pulsating life of the megacities and with endless music in their ears. "(Pp. 383–384)
  26. ↑ "We will experience a collapse", Süddeutsche Zeitung of May 8, 2012
  27. ↑ The end of the world is dragging on , ZEIT online from May 8, 2012
  28. ↑ “Unilaterally making democracy liable for slow ecological restructuring ignores the successes of the civil society ecological movement. Only in a democratic, pluralistic form of government is it possible for citizens to advocate an environmentally friendly way of life and push an ecological turnaround from below. [...] It is also extremely strange to praise China as a role model. It has by no means proven its ability to act in the area of ​​environmental protection: no country is currently shaken by so many environmental and food scandals, no country invests so much in coal and nuclear power. Even China's inhuman one-child policy can hardly be praised as a global model, even if this leads to a family size that is below the required two children. ", Club of Rome: 2052 - a global forecast for the next 40 years , Heinrich -Böll Foundation from May 14, 2012