We could be much more pro-active in lessening our impact on the environment. Energy-efficient cars and "passive houses" can make a real difference.<br /><br />Question: How much <br />government regulation should there be? <br /> <br />Ernst Weizsäcker: Typically, in the Anglo-Saxon mindset, there is hardly any role for <br />government. They think the markets <br />will do all. And if there is <br />scarcity of resources, markets will react. But this is wrong because climate disasters happening <br />perhaps 50 years from now are not visible in today's markets. So you have to have state intervention, <br />or an international agreement, like the Kyoto Agreement, making it more <br />profitable for companies to be climate friendly then to squander energy. And one measure that we have taken in <br />my own country at the time I was a member of Parliament, was the Ecological Tax <br />Reform, which let electricity and petrol prices rise in small steps for five <br />consecutive years, and at the same time was reducing indirect labor costs. And <br />in balance, it was calculated that this saved, or created roughly 300,000 <br />jobs. For a small country like <br />Germany, this is a lot. Because <br />labor getting cheaper meant that for the employer, it became more profitable to <br />lay off kilowatt hours and hire people than the other way around. <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />So, this is a policy measure <br />that worked very well. It was not <br />exactly popular, but it was very good for the economy of Germany. And I suggest that America could <br />emulate that scheme, but today it would be so unpopular that I doubt it will be <br />adopted soon. <br /> <br />Question: How much <br />better could we be doing? <br /> <br />Ernst Weizsäcker: We can do five times better. <br />And that relates to carbon efficiency, but also to metals, water, and <br />energy in general. So, what we are <br />doing, or considering is, a transport system that is based on very efficient <br />cars. My friend Amory Lovins talks <br />about the hyper-car revolution that would do something like 120 or 150 miles <br />per gallon, plus much better public transport as we have it in Japan or in most <br />of Europe, plus technological advances in rapid public transport. Again, in France, in Japan, in Germany, <br />we have those fabulous trains which do roughly 250 kph, and for practical <br />purposes tend to be faster than air transport because you don't have those <br />terrible waiting time and security checks and all the rest. So, that is the transport sector. <br /> <br />It also relates, of course, <br />to good transport. Wal-Mart, for <br />instance, is renewing their fleet of trucks to be more carbon efficient. So, it's a multitude of factors in this <br />one sector of transport. You could <br />also look at agriculture where water efficiency is perhaps the most important <br />part with irrigation and all the rest, but also energy plays a big role. And non-carbon greenhouse gasses play a <br />big role in agriculture. <br /> <br />Or, the housing sector. My family and I are living in a <br />so-called "passive house," which is roughly ten times more energy efficient than <br />conventional homes are. So we are <br />saving a lot of energy, have a very good air quality, and at the same time do <br />something for posterity for a better climate. Recorded on April 9, 2010
