Aware of the very clear message from Solar Impulse in favour of technologies that can reduce our dependency on fossil energy, she had asked Bertrand to speak alongside her.

For him this was an opportunity to bring up the story about an exchange with his meteorologists during his round-the-world balloon trip and which describes so well the question of sustainability and the long-term vision. Very pleased with himself at having found an altitude where the winds were pushing him twice as fast as the team's calculations had suggested, his advisors replied ironically: "Do you prefer to fly very quickly in the wrong direction or more slowly in the right one?". "This is the question that governments should be asking now given the speed at which humanity is moving towards massive public debt, the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of our environment."

As Bertrand pointed out: "Today's pioneers should not limit themselves to being explorers who walk on the moon or who do trips round the world; they should be heads of state resolved to meet the even more ambitious challenge of improving the quality of life on this planet.

The report ends with a list of practical recommendations for governments and international institutions, such as the need to remove the many subsidies still given to fossil energy and to include the environmental costs in the prices of all products. "Lastly an official stance that a legal framework is essential to change certain types of behaviour", say Bertrand and André happy to have included this subject in their Energy Charter last year.