The successor to “Factor Four” (first published in 1997) has been published by Earthscan in December. Picking up where Factor Four left off, this new book examines the past 15 years of innovation in industry, technical innovation and policy. more…
The International Panel for Sustainable Resource Management (short: Resource Panel), set up by the United Nations Environment Programme, is focusing on biofuels, metals, decoupling, and prioritization. more…
I am back home in Germany. After three wonderful and successful years as Dean of the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I returned to my home country and settled down in Emmendingen near my old Alma Mater, the University of Freiburg. more…
The core of the answer to the energy challenges may not come from modified energy supplies but from a systematic, long term strategy of increasing energy productivity, which essentially means curbing energy demand while further increasing prosperity. more…
There is one unchallenged parameter for quality rankings of universities: publications in peer-reviewed journals. The same holds for quality measurements of candidates applying for professors’ chairs at ambitious research universities. Peer-reviewed publications typically have a rather narrow disciplinary scope. more…
Dinner Speech — Bren School Corporate Partners Summit — May 11, 2006 Tomorrow, we shall discuss the science, management and economics of catastrophes. After Katrina, this is one of the hot debates in this country and the world. I seem to observe some kind of a new mindset setting in and do hope that the Bren […] more…
This title contrasts with the preoccupation with labour productivity during the last 200 years of technological progress. Labour productivity has been the melody of the first Industrial Revolution. It increased twentyfold or more during those 200 years. This has been the basis of prosperity and it is the main theme of China’s stunning economic progress. more…
The subtitle of the report of the World Commission for the Social Dimension of Globalization, which you were involved in, is “Creating opportunities for all”. It also mentions the role of companies and of the UN Global Compact, which Bosch also joined in 2004. more…
We live in a finite world. Ultimately, there is no way around production and consumption patterns that are sustainable. Ultimately, customers, engineers, managers and politicians will show a strict priority for the respect of nature and the environment. more…
In my role as Chairman of the parliamentary Select Committee on Economic Globalisation I learned with a degree of surprise that the term globalisation was brand new. It began to play a role in public life not earlier than in 1993. The strongest reason for the sudden appearance of the term globalisation has been the end around 1990 of the Cold War. more…