Ashok Khosla - Fast and fundamental changes are needed

Ashok Khosla is Co-President of the Club of Rome and President of the  International Union of the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He holds a masters degree in natural sciences from Cambridge University and a PhD in experimental physics from Harvard. He will participate at the WRF in the opening addresses and in the session on “Regional Perspectives - Meeting the Challenges”.

Ashok Khosla is often referred to as one of world's leading experts on the environment and sustainable development. In 2002 he was awarded the 2002 Sasakawa Environment Prize - "the Nobel Prize of the environment world". I’m sure it will be very inspiring to listen to Ashok Khosla live in Davos.

I expect Ashok Khosla to stress the urgency of the environmental problems we are facing. He once said in an interview “[...] We have no choice but to move fast into a totally different way of life” ; meaning that he not only underlines that we are running out of time but also that the changes has to be fundamental.

Why will he take part in the “Regional Perspectives” session? I think because he often underlines the local response to the problems of today as an important part of the solution. “There must […] be technologies of a very different nature from the ones we have got used to: small, decentralized, using local, renewable resources and creating large numbers of jobs. These technologies will have to be designed to produce the level of goods and services we now have access to but with far less material and fossil energy inputs.”

In lots of statements Ashok Khosla stresses the importance that the public understands the urgency to change the current system. But how can we make the people understand that? I wonder if he will describe the accessibility of the public as a regional challenge.
 

Club of Rome

I remember very well how excited I was when I read in the newspaper some month ago that The Club of Rome establishes its International Secretariat in Winterthur in the Canton of Zurich (Switzerland) – my birthplace. The first time I heard of The Club of Rome was from my economics high school teacher – back in Winterthur. We discussed economic growth model and my high school teacher dedicated full 2 hours for the discussion of the point of view from The Club of Rome. I´m sure that not a lot of teacher do this - unfortunately. Because for a lot of people economic growth is a simple idea, GDP growth rate per Year in percentage – or for the last few month negative rates meaning a shrinking economy which was in everybody’s mouth (worst global recession since...) and made a lot of people very nervous.

So how can somebody dare to question growth? Well the Club of Rome did - already 37 years ago (1972) with the first report to the Club of Rome: "The Limits to Growth". The report called attention to the possible collapse of the global economy from over utilization and exhaustion of certain natural resources.  And now, nearly 40 years later, we will meet in Davos to discuss this subject. Sad that so many years after pioneers thought these questions trough the public awareness is still on a very low level and often limited to some degree of worry about climate change. Hopefully this conference can contribute to get the public beyond just climate change to topics like growing pollution (in general, not “only greenhouse gas emissions), waste accumulation etc.

Sources on Ashok Khosla

http://www.principalvoices.com/voices/ashok-khosla-white-paper.html
Interview by TerraViva: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBpP1lO5ifE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3LjV3yFkVo