A depressed man with a smiling face: Jorgen Randers speaks at the Summer School of the Club of Rome in Florence
This is not a picture taken at the summer school, but it is Jorgen Randers, the real one!
Jorgen Randers’ speech at the Summer School at the Club of Rome has been dramatically different from the standard speech dealing with sustainability. Randers defined himself as a “depressed man with a smiling face” and he summarized his 47 years of work to promote sustainability as an utter failure. “We are worse off now,” he said, “than we were 50 years ago.
What went wrong? Randers asked to the audience to propose reasons. He got more than a dozen, from the financial system to greed. But he said that none of these is the real reason. It is not a fault of the government, it is not a fault of corporations, it is not a fault of banks. It is, simply, the fault of people. According to Randers, people are simply unable to postpone their immediate satisfaction for a better future. And that’s the problem today as it was 50 years ago.
Randers supported his opinion with the example of Norway, the country where he comes from. He said that he and other scientists had prepared a plan that would have zeroed the country’s emission by 2050 at a cost of some Eur 200 per person per year for 50 years. It was refused at all levels. The rich and well-educated people of Norway prefer to have an extra 200 Eurs to spend shopping in London rather than give an example of good management of the ecosystem to the world.
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