This piece was written by a European and an American both deeply engaged in efforts to moderate global warming, and each of whom has lived in both Europe and the United States. We give a perspective on the present situation regarding climate change in Europe; a parallel perspective on the situation in the U.S.; and then close with a series of recommendations and policy opportunities that should be on the agenda of the transatlantic partnership, but which reflect the reality that Europe is the leading geopolitical unit today in defining and mobilizing global progress toward a regime of carbon limits that holds out the possibility of avoiding the most catastrophic consequences of global warming.

Dinner Speech, May 11, 2006
Bren School Corporate Partners Summit
Tomorrow, we shall discuss the science, management and economics of catastrophes. After Katrina, this is one of the hot debates in this country and the world. I seem to observe some kind of a new mindset setting in and do hope that the Bren School and the [...]

Speech held at the RadTech Conference 2003 in Berlin, 3 November 2003
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, MdB/MP
Chairman, Bundestag Environment Committee, Germany
Why Sustainable Development?
We live in a finite world. Ultimately, there is no way around production and consumption patterns that are sustainable. Ultimately, customers, engineers, managers and politicians will show a strict priority for the respect of [...]

We all agree that a lot more economic wealth is needed for six billion people let alone nine billion people that we expect to live on earth by the mid of the century. Doubling wealth is the least, I suggest, what we should aim at.
On the other hand, we are already now overexploiting the earth. [...]

The global environment is endangered. We are losing some fifty plant and animal species every day. The global climate is beginning to become hotter. Unpredictable changes may hit countries both in the temperate and tropical zones. Theoretically even the sea water table is unstable.
If major parts of the Greenland or Antarctic ice covers were breaking [...]

Speech at the 10th Japanese Business Leaders Conference on Environment and Development, Tokyo, 12. Nov. 2002
Introduction
I feel greatly honoured being invited as your tenth speaker in the Business Leaders Conference on Environment and Development. Nihon Keizai Shimbun started the series in the year of the Earth Summit of Rio de Janeiro, the UN Conference on [...]

Annual Conference of the European Environmental Bureau, Brussels, 10 October 2002
Keynote Speech by Ernst von Weizsäcker, M. P.
Let me at the outset distinguish two different tasks of environmental policy.

One is pollution control which is predominantly a local and a national activity. The first twenty years of environmental policy in European countries were almost exclusively devoted [...]

Article for UN Chronicle, 3/2002
The World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) is the third event in a row.
The first was the UN Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, 1972. In its wake, the UN Environment Programme, UNEP, was founded in Nairobi, and some UN agencies made some moves towards an ecological significance of their programmes. [...]