Abstract
While the world is talking about climate change, the real challenge of sustainability lies in a diminishing resource base for humans that calls for radical action. Sustainable economic conditions cannot be reached without increasing the resource productivity of the industrialized world dramatically. The price structure as well as economic boni and mali must be adjusted for approaching sustainability. The necessity to change lifestyles needs to be encouraged by all means of public policies. By 2050, the world-wide average per capita consumption shall not exceed 8 tons of material per year. System policies need be developed and applied to ascertain success. We need to start acting now.
The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.
Lincoln’s Second Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862
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Notes
- 1.
See also Wieviel Umwelt braucht der Mensch – mips, das ökologische Mass zum Wirtschaften, Birkhäuser, Basel, Boston, Berlin, 1993.
- 2.
See also Material Flows from a systematical point of view; H. Lehmann and F. Schmidt-Bleek, Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, August 1993.
- 3.
Markku Wilenius & Sofi Kurki: Surfing the Sixth Wave. Exploring the next 40 years of global change. FFRC eBook 10/2012.
- 4.
Reid, Alasdair, Miedzinski, Michal (2008), EUROPE INNOVA, Final Report for the EU Sectoral Innovation Watch Panel on Eco-Innovation, www.europe-innova.org
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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Schmidt-Bleek, F., Wilenius, M., Lehmann, H. (2014). The Challenge of the Whole: Creating System Policies to Tackle Sustainability. In: Angrick, M., Burger, A., Lehmann, H. (eds) Factor X. Eco-Efficiency in Industry and Science, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5706-6_8
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