Book Review. The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs

The following is an excerpt from a Report to the Club of Rome, submitted by Professor Gunter Pauli, founder and director of www.ZERI.org. (Zero Emissions Research Institute). The Report is based on Dr. Pauli’s new book, The Blue Economy: 10 Years, 100 Innovations, 100 Million Jobs. (Available soon at Amazon.com – see book review below)

The form of capitalism that has dominated world societies is entirely disconnected from peoples’ real needs. Two billion people struggle to get by on less than two dollars a day, lacking access to food, water, health, and energy, the most basic requirements for survival. Over 25% of the world’s youth are unemployed. Yet one billion of us are over-nourished and swim in 400 million tons of electronic waste. 70% of the world’s wealth is controlled by 10% of the population.

The prevailing economic model predicates that scarcity is the major limitation. Industry searches for ever higher agricultural yields and factory outputs, demanding that the Earth and human labor produce more. We must re-evaluate this notion and begin to more fully utilize what the Earth and labor produce… It is time to end the insatiable quest for ever lower costs that drives business towards economies of scale through megamergers and acquisitions financed by billion dollar loans. It’s time to adopt broad-based innovative strategies that generate multiple revenues and greater cash flows while creating more jobs. It’s time for a Blue Economy.

Re-imagining our economic future requires entrepreneurs in science, social affairs, business, environment, and culture. We must make information available, exposing the opportunities we have to accelerate these innovations on the market... We must reach out to others we never imagined working with, to efficiently and purposefully allocate resources so that we can respond to the needs of all with what we have. We must move away from an economy where the engine of growth is indebtedness loaded upon our children and grandchildren, squandering those future generations’ material resources.

The incapacity of our leaders to imagine meaningful jobs and provide worthy challenges to a whole generation equates to telling the young that there is no future for them, that their generation is lost. With over one billion young people entering the labor market in the next decade, we must move toward a Blue Economy, based on what we have and what we can share with those who have not.