In the Sunday edition of the New York Times, Thomas Friedman illustrated the need for the world to turn to radically conserving resources after experiencing grid-locked traffic in Russia.
This is just the beginning, he says, since the world will add another two billion people by 2050, and they will all want to live and drive like us.
"There is going to be one monster traffic jam and pollution cloud, unless we learn how to get more mobility, lighting, heating and cooling from less energy and with less waste – with so many more people.
We can’t let the climate wars continue to derail efforts to have an energy policy that puts in place rising efficiency standards, for buildings, windows, traffic, housing, packaging and appliances, that will drive innovation – which is our strength – in what has to be the next great global industry: energy and resource efficiency," he says.
He points to the books, "The Sixth Wave: How to Succeed in a Resource Limited World," by James Bradfield Moody and Bianca Nogrady. Moody, who works at Australia’s national research agency, and Nogrady, a science journalist, argue that, since the industrial revolution, we’ve seen five long waves of innovation – from water power to steam to electrification to mass production and right up to information and communications technologies. They argue the sixth wave will be resource efficiency – because rising populations, with growing appetites, will lead to both increasing scarcity of resources and dangerously high pollution, waste and climate change.
"This will force us to decouple consumption from economic growth. In the past, says Moody, "the more we consumed, the more we grew." But that cannot last, says Moody. When you have a global market, with a burgeoning population, that faces rising scarcity of resources and still so much waste in how we make and consume things "there is a great market opportunity for innovation."
"The only way to grow without consuming more resources is through systemic breakthroughs in efficiency – developing new business models to deliver mobility, heating, cooling and lighting with dramatically fewer resources and pollution."
Read the Column, "Take the Subway":
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