How renewable energy may help to reboot global economies

As they searched for glimmers of hope in the wreckage of the world economy earlier this year," Time magazine noted in its October 5 issue, "politicians, economists and commentators used one phrase so repeatedly that it became something of a mantra for our times". The phrase: In crisis, opportunity. And nowhere, it concluded, does the motto apply more than "to the problem of climate change. The financial crisis only crippled a global system; climate change is hurting the globe itself."

Time got the green bit between its teeth as long ago as 1990. It ran a dramatic cover with a crystal globe version of Earth exploding into shards. The magazine later upped its coverage of green issues, with this year's Heroes of the Environment survey, which extended beyond scientists, activists and political leaders to spotlight leading environmental entrepreneurs, from large-scale organic farmers through to carbon-trade brokers and Bill Weihl, the Google scientist whose mission is to make green energy ubiquitous.

But an even more interesting section came earlier in the magazine and focused on the hubris, racial tensions, myopic politicians, and the stupid auto industry leaders and woefully complicit union bosses who helped bring Detroit to its knees. Perhaps the key player was Representative John D Dingell, who did his level best over decades to stop Federal initiatives to make the US auto industry competitive by imposing more stringent energy efficiency standards.

But what really caught my eye was the two-page photograph of eight leaders—several working on environmental regeneration projects designed to help revive Motown. One suggestion is that, just as in the 1950s the US government began investing what turned into half a trillion dollars in what became the interstate highways system, we should now be funding areas such as fuel-cell technology and renewable energy to reboot the Detroit, US and global economies.

Fine, but only if they kick out the old-order leaders and replace them with the sort of people featured in Time's Heroes of the Environment survey.

John Elkington is co-founder of SustainAbility and Volans.