There is no such thing as a Fourth Industrial Revolution with 9 billion thriving co-citizens in the world if it is accomplished on linear economic principles. We need a transition to circular economic principles and practice.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need for a shift from traditional economic models to sustainable practices for future growth.
Johan Rockstrom highlights that the concept of a Fourth Industrial Revolution cannot be realized under the existing linear economic framework, which often leads to unsustainable resource consumption and depletion. Instead, he advocates for a transition to circular economic principles, which emphasize sustainability, resource efficiency, and responsible production and consumption, ensuring that all members of society can thrive in harmony with the planet's ecological limits.
In practice
In discussions about sustainable development, this quote can serve as a cornerstone for advocating for circular economic practices.
Emissions of greenhouse gases warm the planet, altering the carbon and water cycles. A warmer ocean stores more heat, providing more fuel for hurricanes. A warmer atmosphere holds more water, bringing dangerous deluges. Rising sea levels threaten coastal zones.
There is an old belief that solving environmental problems can only be achieved by first building enough economic wealth so we can 'afford to save the environment.' This 'Kuznets Curve' thinking has never been correct and must be abandoned once and for all if we are serious about economic development for a thriving humanity on Earth.
Either we leave our descendants an endowment of zero poverty, zero fossil-fuel use, and zero biodiversity loss, or we leave them facing a tax bill from Earth that could wipe them out.
Global sustainability is now the only avenue to future inclusive progress that can deliver the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris climate agreement.
Even the wealth of the U.S. cannot protect against the levels of environmental destruction that we are unleashing.
A man who is used to acting in one way never changes; he must come to ruin when the times, in changing, no longer are in harmony with his ways.
With a tear for the dark past, turn we then to the dazzling future, and, veiling our eyes, press forward. The long and weary winter of the race is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity has burst the chrysalis. The heavens are before it.
Those who can't imagine change reveal the deficits of their imaginations, not the difficulty of change.
The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.
Fathers' sharing in the birth experience can be a stimulus for men's freedom to nurture, and a sign of changing relationships between men and women. In the same way, women's freedom to give birth at home is a political decision, an assertion of determination to reclaim the experience of birth. Birth at home is about changing society.
Let all of us turn from bullets to ballots, from guns to shovels.
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