Well, it's nice to see you again, David, too.
I feel the starting point for this is to do with competitiveness. Much of our debate on competitiveness is being based around the idea that labour productivity, the standard definitions of competitiveness between nations, do not include resource depletion, environmental externalities, investments in the future. They're largely static and backward-looking.
My own view is that economies, wherever they are in the world, will compete on resource efficiency. The numbers really tell you that. There are spectacular needs for a very large group of humanity that is yet to be born. The growth in our population, the aspirations of the middle class of the emerging economies, the phenomenal growth in the emerging economies over the last ten years.... Simply think of China alone. China has grown tenfold in 15 years. China's produced three new Chinas, in economic terms, in the last three years. Similar demographics are available in India.
A clean economy, I think, is almost synonymous with a resource-efficient economy. There are certain quality of life aspects, certain qualitative ways of reviewing what clean means—human well-being, how you live in harmony with your surroundings—but at base, in brute economic terms, it's about resource efficiency. It's about how you get economic output from more efficient use of inputs, particularly energy inputs. To do that, you have to innovate. Business as usual, the current resources, won't do that for you. The current modes of business won't do that for you.
If you look around the world, you see that the race has absolutely begun. It has begun in those economies that are either very populous or those economies that expect huge demands that they cannot meet from indigenous resources. It clearly involves open trade systems as well. It involves business entrepreneurship and connecting communities across political divides too.
A lot of this can be done without the intervention of governments, through better social organization of entrepreneurs and problem-solvers who can now communicate so much more clearly on social networks.