去物質形态化与可持续发展
　　
　　经济和环境是同一个硬币的两面，因为正是通过经济发展，我们对环境施加影响，而环境既是经济发展的基本资源又是发展的结果。事实上，那些把经济置于首位的国家越来越清楚地意识到经济与环境之间的关系和经济对环境的依赖性。
　　尽管中国的经济发展取得了巨大成就，中国仍然是世界主要经济体中最缺乏效率的一个，认识到这一点对中国非常有益。这当然有历史和结构方面的原因，但现实就是中国比日本及几个主要的欧洲国家等都消耗了更多的能源、原材料，单位GDP产生更多的污染，当然，这使中国有更多的机会去消除这一“效率鸿沟”，并为全球的可持续发展提供了“双赢”的方式。
　　中国已经展示了其在可再生能源开发方面所取得的进步——太阳能、风能和生物质能——同时提高化石燃料，特别是煤的使用效率，煤仍然是中国消耗最多的能源。《世界能源展望2007》指出，2006年至2030年，中国将在能源供应的基础设施方面累计投资3.7万亿，其中3/4将投给电力行业。到2030年，中国的汽车拥有率也将上升到每1000人拥有140辆。但通过效率改善、能源转变和结构调整，中国仍然有无限的可能在2030年将其一次能源使用量降低15%，相似的缩减也可以在其他产业实现。中国在几个关键产业，尤其是汽车、能源的发展上仍处于初级阶段，这一现实使中国能够比其他更加传统的竞争者更快、更有效地实现转型。但这一转变所需的政策、措施都必须尽快执行，并坚持到底。
　　知识无疑是未来经济增长、发展和管理现代文明的主要源泉。技术带来了一系列新产品、服务、设计、管理和信息系统，它是在全球经济中拥有附加值和比较优势的主要来源。它为实现可持续发展提供了这样的途径：即生产和消费的非原料密集型、非能源密集型和去物质形态化。CD光盘和电脑芯片的价值主要在于其功能和人类智慧、技术赋予它的特征，而不是它的物质材料。经济发展的去物质形态化已经非常明显，美国就是一个例证，其目前最大的出口项目是娱乐，每年高达300亿美元。我们经济生活的去物质形态化为实现可持续发展提供了最有希望的路径。
　　在知识社会，教育体系和机构、政策和激励体系将成为每一个国家取得比较优势和成功的主要因素，因为教育体系和机构帮助人们开发并运用知识和技术，这些知识和技术对社会的运转起着关键作用，而政策和激励体系则给人们以动力。对此，中国比其他任何一个国家都更急需，也拥有更大的机会。
　　
　　新经济学与国际协议
　　
　　气候变化的危险日益严峻，这是威胁全球社会可持续发展的首要危险，即使它不是唯一一个，而且这一危险无人能避免。目前，我们已经感受到了极端气候变化、特大洪水和干旱、高山地带冰河融化带来的影响，包括喜马拉雅山脉正影响着中印两国成千上万人口依赖的多条河流。尽管单位排放量指标仍低于美国和其他主要工业国家，中国现在仍成为世界二氧化碳排放的主要国家。而且中国也将不幸成为受其危害最严重的国家之一。《京都议定书》、《联合国气候变化框架公约》和近期排放贸易权交易的引入都为中国减少二氧化碳排放提供了巨大的支持。
　　两极地区冰盖的加速融化将对低海拔的沿海地区造成深远的影响，而这一地区人口众多。未来，越来越多的人将面临污染和水资源紧张带来的影响。这些问题带来的挑战和危险与人类生存息息相关，且相互影响，这要求各个国家、机构和种族之间高度合作，超越历史成见和未来冲突。
　　尽管科技带来了巨大的变化，21世纪仍很可能见证一些基本、传统问题的再现，并带来潜在的冲突：即拥有水、土地和生计的机会与权利。对此的竞争将无比激烈。食物短缺就是一例，它威胁了底层社会和贫困人口的生活，我们对此已经熟知。
　　我们必须怎么做呢？
　　首先我们需要一个经济体的全新范本，它可以整合传统的经济规则和生态经济学的新理论，我称之为新经济学。这个新范本必须为这样的一个体系提供理论基础，这一体系把自然所提供的服务和环境的真正价值纳入经济定价和国民收入核算，且必须包括财政和监管体系以促进经济、社会和环境的可持续发展。
　　在一个推动全球化进程的市场经济中，市场提供了促进可持续发展的信号，即把征税的对象从环境友好型和社会友好型的产品、服务转向稍具危害性的产品和服务，实际上就是合理定价。任何一个国家都不可能在毫不损害经济的条件下完成这一过程，而是必须通过国际协作才能完成。尽管各国在处理这一问题上各有特点，但只有在国际协议的框架下才能完成。
　　有效地处理这些问题并不仅仅是寄希望于出口，尽管这看上去是那么的合理。19世纪30年代，美国进步科学协会曾对可能影响人类的新技术作了一次调查，但目前支配人类生活的主要技术都不在其列。我们必须对未来有预见，但我们必须为一个我们无法准确预见的未来做好准备。人类活动产生了极端的结果，这一过程超越了传统的国家、部门和学科的界限。
　　我们成为自身未来的代理商，在人类发展历史上，我们是第一代拥有这种能力的人。今天我们成功与否将决定我们的未来。这并不要求我们在生活方式、梦想等方面具有同一性，但在关系采取怎样的措施维护人类社会的福祉和避免灾害等方面，就要求我们必须在全球层面上保持一致，这样才能保证个体拥有自我表达和自我实现的权利。最健康的、可持续的自然生态系统正是那些能保持高度多样性的系统，提醒自己这一点非常有意义。保证可持续性还要求系统必须在合理的基础范围内，系统健康、有效的运行正是基于此。我认为，这同样适用于人类系统。
　　
　　Dematerialization and Sustainable Development
　　
　　The environment and the economy are two sides of the same coin. For it is through the economy that we impact on the environment and the environment is both an essential resource for the economy and the consequence of its development. Indeed, those whose primary interests are in the economy are realizing more and more its essential relationship to and dependence on the environment.
　　
　　What is particularly instructive for China is the realization that despite its remarkable economic growth it is still the least efficient of the world's major economies. There are sound structural and historic reasons for this, but as it requires China to use more energy, more raw materials and produce more pollution per unit of GDP than countries like Japan and some leading European countries, it also produces a great opportunity for China to bridge this "efficiency gap" which offers a "win-win" means of producing a new generation of internally generated sustainable economic growth.
　　
　　Already China is demonstrating the progress it has been making in developing renewable sources of energy - solar, wind, and biomass - while improving the efficiency of fossil fuels, notably coal, which continues to provide the biggest single source of China's energy use. The 2007 World Energy Outlook projects that China must invest 3.7 trillion in energy supply infrastructure, three-quarters of it in the energy sector. And car ownership will rise to more than 140 per 1,000 people by 2030 from 20 per 1,000 in 2005. But there is an immense opportunity to effect dramatic reductions of China's primary energy use by 15% in 2030 thanks to efficiency improvements, fuel switching and structural changes. Similar reductions can be achieved in other sectors. The fact that China is still at the early stage in the development of some of its key industries, notably the automobile and energy industries, enables it to make this transition far more rapidly and effectively than its more traditional competitors. But the changes in policies and practices which this requires must be urgently undertaken and vigorously pursued.
　　
　　Knowledge is clearly the principal resource on which the future growth, development and governance of our modern civilization will be based. Technology manifested in a galaxy of new products and services, design, management and information systems is the primary source of added value and comparative advantage in the global economy. It also offers the main ingredient for the transition to sustainability through patterns of production and consumption that are less physical in nature, and less materials- and energy-intensive. The value of a compact disk or a computer chip is primarily attributable to the functions and characteristics with which human intelligence and technology have endowed it, rather than to its material content. The dematerialization of economic growth is already evident in the fact that the biggest single export of the United States today, amounting to some $30 billion per year, is entertainment. The dematerialization of our economic life provides the most promising pathway to a sustainable future.
　　
　　In the knowledge society, the educational system and the institutions which help people to develop and apply the knowledge and skills which are the keys to the functioning of their society, and the policies and incentive systems which motivate them, will become the principal sources of comparative advantage and success of each country.No country has a greater opportunity or more urgent need for this than China.
　　
　　New Economics and International Agreement
　　
　　The accelerating risks of climate change are a primary, though not the only, example of the risks we face for the sustainability of our global society from which no nation or people can insulate themselves. Already we are experiencing the effects of increased climactic turbulence, extremes of droughts and floods, the melting of glaciers in high mountain ranges, including the Himalayas threatening the great rivers of India and China on which so many millions of people depend for their water. China is now becoming the world's main source of carbon emissions while still much less on a per capita basis than the U. S. and other major industrial countries. It will also unfortunately be one of the most severely affected. The cost of reducing its carbon emissions is receiving great support from the credits available to it under the Kyoto Protocol of the U.N.'s Climate Change Convention and the recent introduction of emissions trading.
　　
　　Accelerating changes in the ice conditions of both the Arctic and the Antarctic will have a profound impact on the sea level, threatening low-lying coastal areas in which so many of the world's people live.in the future of an increasing number of the world's people is facing growing jeopardy through contamination and reduction of their water supplies.These challenges and the risks to our common survival to which they give rise are inter-related and all require a degree of collaboration amongst the nations, institutions and peoples of the world which is beyond anything yet achieved or in prospect.
　　
　　Even with the profound changes driven by technology, the twenty-first century is likely to see the re-emergence of some very basic traditional issues with significant potential for conflict: access to water, land resources and livelihoods. The competition for these will intensify. One issue in respect of which we have become dangerously complacent is food security, which poses an ominous threat to the poor and underprivileged.
　　
　　What will we have to do?
　　
　　First of all we need a new economic paradigm which integrates the disciplines of traditional economics with the new insights of ecological economics, what I call a new economics. This must provide the theoretical underpinnings for a system that incorporates into economic pricing and national accounts the real values of the environment and services which nature provides. It must include fiscal and regulatory regimes with positive incentives for the achievement of economic, social and environmental sustainability.
　　
　　In a market economy which drives the processes of globalization, the market provides the signals that motivate sustainable development. This means shifting taxes from products and practices which are environmentally and socially beneficial to those which are least harmful. In effect, getting the prices right. No nation can do this alone without disadvantaging its own economy. It has to be done through international agreement. There is a lot of room for individuality in the manner in which we administer these nationally, but it can only be effectively done within an internationally agreed framework.
　　
　　Effective management of these issues cannot simply be a matter of placing our bets on the predictions of experts, however plausible they may be. A survey by the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the 1930s of new technologies that may impact on society did not indentify a single one of the main technologies that now dominate our life. We have to have a view of the future, but we must prepare for a future that we cannot reliably predict. The processes through which human activities produce their ultimate consequences transcend the traditional boundaries of nations, sectors, and disciplines.
　　
　　We are the first generation in history of which it is true that we are literally the agents of our own future. What we do, or fail to do, today will determine our future.This does not require homogeneity in our lifestyles or aspirations. It does require at the global level that we agree on those measures which are essential in avoiding the major risks to survival and well-being of the human community, which ensuring the broadest range of opportunities for individual self-expression and fulfillment. It is instructive to remind ourselves that the most healthy and sustainable natural ecological systems are those which maintain the highest degree of diversity and variety. But to ensure their sustainability requires that they remain within certain basic boundary conditions on which the health and effective functioning of the systems depend. The same, I would contend, is true of human systems.