[MUSIC]. One part of sustainable development is tounderstand the inter-linkages of the economy, of society,of the environment, and of our politics and governmentprocesses, and the other part of sustainable development todo something about it. We will examine over, you know the comingtalks, two different scenerios for the future of the world.One, which I will call business as usual. If we continue more or less on the coursethat we're on right now. What kind of world we could expect in ten,20, 30, 40 years? It's not all bad. Because, after all, many wonderful thingsare happening on the planet. Poverty has been declining. Technologies have been advancing. But, there are a lot of risks withbusiness as usual. Especially in the age of the Anthropocene,especially as we trespass planetary boundaries, especiallyas we see growth that is not inclusive, and leavinglarge numbers of people behind. So we want to contrast the business as usual, or BAU path, with a truly sustainable development path forthe planet. What would a business as usual path looklike? It's not all terrible. For many people, especially comfortablepeople of, at the top of the income heap, they say business as usual,looks pretty good to me. The world economy is expanding, life expectancy rising, infant and child mortalityfalling. One could say, not bad. If we get business as usual, no disaster. I think the problem however, is thatthat's a little too optimistic a view of what we really face.Sure, business as usual offers more economicgrowth, but is it fair and inclusive?How many people will be left behind? What will happen in societies, as we sawin Rio, where the favelas, the slums, are right up against, themodern, and wealthy part of Rio.What happens in those parts of the world really left far behind.The peasant farmers in dry lands facing more and moredroughts. Places that find themselves vulnerable toever more flooding, but are too poor to do something about it.We know that all too often, the result isn't merely protest, the result can evenbe violence, and especially what happens if we just go on our merry way, thinkingthat we can produce more, have more cars, burnmore coal, oil, and gas. Put more carbondioxide into theatmosphere. Cut down more trees. Acidify the oceans.And not respect the planentary boundaries. There I think, we are surely going to getour comeuppance in ways that we really are not very clear about right now, certainly not in our broad,public discussions. Because the environmental dangers arevast. They are so large, they are coming sofast, they're so threatening that they could upend the very process ofeconomic development itself. What seems like a pretty safe course of economic growth could turn out to beevanescent. Swept away in floods, withering indroughts, in massive heat waves. A loss of quality of life. Even a massive loss of production, agrowing food insecurity that could threaten theentire world. So business as usual, that's what you seein front of you. Pipelines carrying oil or gas, to, powerplants, to factories. Fossils fuels have been a great part ofeconomic growth ever since the invention of the steam engine powered bycoal in England in the 18th century. But, by using so much of it, by putting somuch carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by deranging theclimate system, this kind of business as usual, poses anenormous threat. Now we've gotten pretty good at finding new sources of natural gas, hydrofracking. New sources of oil, new ways to produceoil such as in Canada's tar sands, a place that yousee in this picture, criss-crossed by roads. Massive use of water and land to dig outthis heavy oil that needs a special kind of processing and that of course, wouldhave a market around the world, but at whatcost? At what cost to the environment of Canada, where you see how polluting theseprocesses are. What cost to the world's environment?As these tar sands and other fossil fuels are burned in such vast numbers thatthey derange the climate. Will we see more massive drought in theSahel? A drought that was so severe, coveringChad and Mali and neighboring countries, that it led to tremendousamounts of violence, contributed to the outbreak of war in Mali and in continuingviolence in other places. Droughts like this affected many parts ofthe poorest countries, will we see more ofthat? And of course, if economic growth is notperceived to be fair, if the rich get richer and thepoor get poorer, if the poor feel left behind and cheated by those at thetop of the heap, will we see more unrest, moreinstability. We know it from New York City where we sawthe Occupy Wall Street movement. Protests against what the protesterscalled the top 1%, and calling for legality and responsibility onWall Street after the devastation of the 2008 financialcrisis. But these street protests weren't just onWall Street or in other parts of the UnitedStates. In Tunis in 2011 in Cairo, in Athens, inTel Aviv, Chile, Madrid, Istanbul, Rio deJaneiro. Cities around the world, there have beengrowing street protests, protests mostly led by young people.Protesting high unemployment, high income inequality,corruption in government, lack of accountability,lack of transparency, is that the kind of business as usual paththat we want? We study sustainable development becausewe can do better, by understanding technology, byunderstanding the interconnections of economic, social, environmental andpolitical systems. What you see here is an example ofinnovation in the Netherlands, one of the mostsustainable countries. This innovative building called the whaleis a highly innovative architecture where thetenants enjoy sunlight, open space and a building has been built in harmony with the naturalenvironment. Half of the world's population today livesin cities. That will rise to perhaps 70% in cities bythe year 2030. Vastly more than half of the world'seconomy is in cities, so a great deal of the path to sustainable developmentwill be through sustainable urbanization.Smart cities, smart architecture, smart systems of transport, of power, ofwater use. Of recycling of wastes that cities canachieve when they put their mind to it. Paris, perhaps, on everybody's list, among thefavorite most beautiful cities in the world.We see the, the new innovation of bicycles in the cities.People want to be out bicycling in cities. Massive congestion.Massive pollution not good for our physical health.So walking and bicycling will necessarily become more importanttechnologies of the 21st century. And I'm happy that in cities around theworld, that there is a return to bicycling, using clever shirt, the bicyclesystems, new walkways, and places where people can improve theirhealth, because city is a, can be places where the obesity epidemic and, andpoor health take hold. In Bogota, there were great innovations inusing rapid transit, and bus systems to movepeople much more cleanly and effectively thanindividual car ownership. And congestion was reduced, pollution wasreduced, carbon dioxide emissions were reduced, anotherexample of how innovation in transportation can make, avery big difference for the future. And, look at these two examples of, socalled, self-driving vehicles. Using the revolutions of informationtechnology, cars themselves, detect other cars, detectpedestrians. And the cars, are able not only to drivethemselves but to offer a much more efficient mode oftransport. Well, who knows what technology will bringbut we can see that one of the pathways to sustainable developmentis through smarter technological systems. Converting automobiles from the internalcombustion engine, which burns petroleum, to electricvehicles charged by electricity produced by cleanenergy, could be one of the most effective ways to reducethe carbon dioxide emissions in the future.And to get that clean electricity, we need to move off of our addiction tofossil fuels, to coal, oil, and gas.And to move to what technology is now offering, much lowercost and effective harnessing of nature's ownenergy sources, especially solar power and wind power.In many parts of the world, solar and wind power are already at gridparity. What does that mean?It means that they are already, at an economic cost, competitive with more traditional, fossil fuel based energysystems. This is a picture of a solar thermalconcentrator and collector, where you see large mirrorsset up in a desert region to collect solar power, that turn it intoenergy for electricity production. There are many ways to do it. It could be photo-voltaic cells, we'lllook at later on, it could be concentrated solarthermal energy where you use the heat that's produced to boil water, to turn steam turbines toproduce electricity. Exciting technologies but what they meanis ways to rid ourselves of the addiction to fossil fuels whichhave brought us a modern economy to be sure. But have now put us in danger because ofthe rising CO2 levels. And the advances are, not only in information technology, better urbandesign. Clever architectures, smarter grids, smarter transport systems, renewableenergy. But breakthroughs in agronomy, in biology. You see here a site testing a new kind of rice, which isbred through special breeding processes, to be able to resist flooding, somethingthat obviously will be very important. Afford the farmers, in Bangladesh forexample, where this new kind of rice has been shown to be highly effective whennormal fields are flooded the rice dies. But by breeding rice in ways, that thathave what includes gene patterns that allow the riceto survive submergence and flooding. You save lives, improve food security, andfind ways to sustainability. So this, at the essence, gives us a hintof what a sustainable development pathway mightmean. Business as usual, we know a lot aboutthat. And we see more and more how risky it canbe. A sustainable development pathway, thecore features of that would be societies that ensure that all parts ofthe society. Girls as well as boys, women as well asmen, and minorities all of different regions,all children have access to a healthy start in life, to good nutritionand healthcare, and especially to the education that theywill need to be productive. And skilled members of their society bothin the labor force and also as citizens.A good start means inclusion and it means avoiding these mass inequalities of wealthand poverty that afflict the planet. Sustainable development will mean a newkind of urbanization. Smarter cities, new transport systems,smarter power grids, fed by renewable energy rather than bytraditional fossil fuels. New kinds of vehicles, publictransportation, or bicycles, and walking that can also keep us healthy. New ways to build buildings that are muchmore energy efficient. And much more pleasant and consistent withthe, with nature. At the essence of sustainable development,is problem solving. We have a lot of problems.We're going to need a global effort. In a focused and relatively short periodof time. A matter of decades, not centuries. To move from the business as usual trajectory to the sustainabledevelopment trajectory. And in order to accomplish that, everypart of the world will have to be involved in brainstorming in determining new and creative ways to ensure inclusiveand sustainable growth. That's going to be your job in the comingyears, and that's going to be our task in the comingsessions, where we investigate what those problems are, what their corefeatures are and what innovative new design can mean, to enable us tochoose that path of sustainable development.