Rademacher: Tech, consumers and governance

Once the prices tell the truth, consumer behavior will be completely different. So the consumer behavior is very strongly driven by prices, and at the moment prices don’t tell the truth. Under a reasonable government system with reasonable technology you have a completely different price structure, and that changes everything. It changes the path of technology, it changes the lifestyles, it changes the innovation roots, it makes a completely different world. Therefore we say we need two strengths of innovation at the same time, and it must be in the sense of a double factor ten.
The right kind of regulation will allow us in 70 years to have a ten times as big a GDP as today, but to have a ten times as better eco efficiency at the same time. So not using more resources, not creating more environmental problems. Ten billion people will have a much more equitable situation and a good life. And then world population will shrink. We have a chance that world population will shrink from 10 billion down. And then we have a very good situation for sustainability. It’s not impossible, but it’s difficult and the hardest part is to care for the right global governance.