The post-war periods prosperity model is founded on the assumption that cheap energy and increasing use of materials would make people happier, Schellnhuber says. This is why nuclear power plants are being built in geologically superactive areas, and why we burn a quantity of oil in one year that took 5,3 million years to accrue. ”We are sacking the past as well as the future to achieve present-day abundance”, he says. “This is the dictatorship of now.”
It would cost just a few percentage points of economic output “to deviate from the dangerous path which otherwise leads to new nuclear accidents and unchecked climate change”, Schellnhuber says. “Economic growth up to 2100 would be delayed by six to nine months. Is this price really to high?”
The Scientific Advisory Council on Global Change for the federal government, presided by Schellnhuber, will soon present a master plan for societal transformation, aiming at an increased level of sustainability. This plan is also about concrete measures. “For instance, we have to stabilise our energy consumption on a reasonable level”, says Schellnhuber. “If we began to fully use the potentials of energy efficiency in Germany, we would need at least 30 percent less energy – without being less well off.”
