Skip to content
Surprising Science

The Responsibility of Wealth

“It has been clear to me since the time of the commission that I led in the ’80’s, that no doubt the historic responsibility for where we are has to be born or taken on by those countries that have industrialized,” says Gro Harlem Brundtland, United Nations’ Special Envoy on Climate Change. According to the former Prime Minister of Norway, developing countries shouldn’t have to go through a period of industrialization in the old fashioned way. “We have to be investing and helping them by paying some of those debts


to nature that we have already taken on,” says Brundtland.

Today marks the third installment of Big Think’s series “Balancing People, Planet, and Profit: The Future of Business Sustainability, sponsored by Logica. For the next seven Mondays (through June 7, 2010), we will continue to release our in-depth discussions with top European experts focusing on how we can better align the interests of business with the greater social good.


Related

Up Next
As we push for better health care and longer lives, Gregory Rodriguez writes that we should think about the societal consequences of having so many old people hanging around.