New industrial revolution needed to avert ‘planetary catastrophe’ – UN report

“Technological transformation, greater in scale and achievable within a much shorter time frame than the first industrial revolution, is required,” it says. “The necessary set of new technologies must enable today’s poor to attain decent living standards, while reducing emissions and waste and ending the unrestrained drawdown of the Earth’s non-renewable resources.”
“Staging a new technological revolution at a faster pace and on a global scale will call for proactive government intervention and greater international cooperation. Sweeping technological change will require sweeping societal transformation, with changed settlement and consumption patterns and better social values,” it adds.
In the preface to the report, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon writes that “rather than viewing growth and sustainability as competing goals on a collision course, we must see them as complementary and mutually supportive imperatives. This becomes possible when we embrace a low-carbon, resource-efficient, pro-poor economic model.”
The survey concludes: “Business as usual is not an option. An attempt to overcome world poverty through income growth generated by existing ‘brown technologies’ would exceed the limits of environmental sustainability.”
The report comes out yearly. Last year’s survey called for a major overhaul of the machinery for international finance, aid and trade.