AN AMBASSADOR OF RENEWABLE ENERGIES



The public is excited about great adventures and relating to the dreams of pioneers and explorers. Solar Impulse wants to mobilise this enthusiasm in favour of the technologies, which will generate sustainable development and positive emotions about renewable energies. Public attention must be drawn towards the changes necessary to ensure our planet's energy and ecological future and to give a positive and stimulating image of environmental protection and show that the alternative energy sources, related to new technologies, can achieve what some consider impossible.

The problem with our society is that, despite all the grand talk about sustainable development, we are a long way from automatically thinking in terms of sustainability. Each hour, our world consumes around a million tons of petrol, not to mention other fossil fuels, spits back out into the atmosphere enough polluting emissions to disrupt the climate, and leaves half of the population stagnating in totally unacceptable living conditions.

It certainly seems that if sustainable development has difficulty in becoming a reality, it is because it is still more often than not associated with crippling costs and a restriction of comfort or mobility. It is this idea that has to be corrected. Indeed, even if our behaviour risks destroying the planet, nobody seems ready to sacrifice his standard of living. Our grandchildren will no doubt end their days without petrol and they will then call us the "plunderers of precious resources," but as human beings, we are generally more motivated by our personal, short-term interest than by a long-term compassion for our peers or our environment.

Since we cannot change the character of the human being, let us make an effort to adapt the way he functions. Let us try to give him a personal interest to get into the way of thinking in terms of sustainable development. Let us prove that here it is a question of a new and formidable market with all sorts of economic and political outlets for those who understand how to invest in it in time. Let us illustrate the scientific interests, favour the pioneering spirit, let us promote a new fashion, in the positive sense of the word, which will enable renewable energy users to be held in admiration. We should not try to force the population to follow the path outlined at Rio or Kyoto against its will, but let us give priority to those who invent or use new technologies that respect the environment. It could quickly become out of fashion, even frowned upon, to consume too much petrol, to heat or cool down private or public places for no good reason or to consume non-recyclable products.

Until now, renewable energies, often the prisoner of fringe political parties, have lacked really dynamic promotional and marketing impetus. The ecologists will only be able to make their voices heard, if they speak the same language as those, whom they wish to convince. It is now urgent to leave behind the division that has led nowhere for 40 years, in order to finally unite ecology with economy, environment and finance, general opinion and short-term political interest.

The expression "sustainable development" appeared officially in 1987, in the report "Our common future" by the United Nations Commission on Environment and Development, a report edited by Ms Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Prime Minister of Norway. This work concluded with the necessity of quickly finding a balanced relationship between the economy, the ecology and social responsibility.