Each second that passes means three more people are living on our planet.
The demographic explosion – that has taken the world’s population from 1.6 billion people at the beginning of the twentieth century to 6.12 billion at the start of the new millennium – is accelerating at an alarming rate, seriously threatening the planet’s survival. The economic divide between the northern and southern hemispheres is constantly deepening (according to the World Bank, 1,000,200,000 people live below the poverty line, on less than $1 a day ) and there are no signs whatsoever that this situation is about to change. From a social point of view, the predictions of the ethologist Konrad Lorenz are actually happening. The growing population is causing a gradual increase in egotistical behaviour, in the first place, followed by aggression and actual violence. It is obvious to all of us that we are living in an age of decadence, where the cult of the individual has dominated for some time now over community life, also contributing to the gradual collapse of the family, that was at one time the core of society.
I believe that terrorism can even be included within this gradual escalation.
The impact of mankind and demographic growth has also had, and is continuing to have, a devastating effect on the environment: the 25 regions of the world that are home to more than half the species on the planet have already lost 90% of their natural habitats. There is a real risk that Nature will collapse. In short, economic, social and environmental sustainability have been thrown into a profound crisis as a result of overpopulation.
Faced with this scenario, we are asked to take on a new responsibility, both as citizens and as businessmen. The challenge is to show that mankind’s intelligence and capacity for adaptation can act on the causes of these phenomena, or at least handle the consequences as well as possible. As citizens we can, in the words of Voltaire, all cultivate our own gardens, helping to make the world a better place. Yet it is particularly as businessmen that we can make a substantial contribution.
First of all, we can think of businesses much more as social institutions that bring together ever-expanding communities in the face of the gradual loss of prestige of other institutions and communities, by offering citizens their own value systems. Secondly, a company can commit itself to research, to find solutions to vitally important issues. It can seek out renewable energy sources to gradually replace the more polluting fuels; it can work towards a farming industry that reduces its impact on the environment while improving the quality and quantity of its products; it can investigate a sustainable form of architecture that makes it possible for ever-larger numbers of people to live together, and so on – because a company’s ultimate aim is not profit, but to improve the quality of life.
