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I think the new generation is much more demanding about respect for the environment than we have ever imagined.

On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.

Environmental spending creates jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction, materials, operations and maintenance.

What is new is that environmentalism intensely illuminates the need to confront the corporate domain at its most powerful and guarded point - the exclusive right to govern the systems of production.

Corporate executives need to re-frame their responsibilities to include the interests of all the stakeholders in society at large; not just shareholders, but also employees, the citizens of our communities, and those who care about the environment.

We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.

The industrial processes in use today were developed at a time when no one had to consider what the environmental impact was. Who cared? But making ecological concerns matter to a company's bottom line will help it do the research and development that will reinvent everything we buy.

Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children.

Though every nation must do its part to address climate change, developed nations are responsible for the lion's share of carbon pollution in the atmosphere, and they have an obligation to help developing nations transition to a sustainable future.

Governments have a unique opportunity to incentivise corporations so that they can accelerate their evolution to a more sustainable economy through more sustainable practices and products.