Dag Hammarskjold's quote, "Not to encumber the earth. No pathetic 'Excelsior!' but just this: not to encumber the earth," may well serve as the motto of the growing sustainability movement. Yet how
Dag Hammarskjold's quote, "Not to encumber the earth. No pathetic 'Excelsior!' but just this: not to encumber the earth," may well serve as the motto of the growing sustainability movement. Yet how can economic development occur without energy, and primarily from fossil fuel sources?
The balancing of growth and ecological sustainability — the defining issue of our age — may be resolved in humanity’s favor by cross-disciplinary innovation, especially in ICT (Information and Communications Technologies), and through scientific breakthroughs, such as in the physics of silicon or storage chemistry. Assuming other favorable conditions, however, organizational innovations may have the greatest immediate term impact.
Historical, organizational and industry boundaries must break down, and new associations created, to give birth to the electric utility of the future. In the economist Schumpeter’s words, we need to “com