Instruction
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00:15
I was only four years old
00:17
when I saw my mother
load a washing machine
00:20
for the very first time in her life.
00:23
That was a great day for my mother.
00:25
My mother and father
had been saving money for years
00:28
to be able to buy that machine,
00:30
and the first day it was going to be used,
00:32
even Grandma was invited
to see the machine.
00:35
(Laughter)
00:37
And Grandma was even more excited.
00:39
Throughout her life, she had been
heating water with firewood,
00:43
and she had hand-washed laundry
for seven children.
00:47
And now, she was going to watch
electricity do that work.
00:53
My mother carefully opened the door,
00:57
and she loaded the laundry
into the machine,
01:02
like this.
01:03
And then, when she closed the door,
01:05
Grandma said, "No, no, no, no!
01:07
Let me! Let me push the button!"
01:10
(Laughter)
01:11
And Grandma pushed the button,
01:14
and she said, "Oh, fantastic!
01:16
I want to see this! Give me a chair!
Give me a chair! I want to see it,"
01:20
and she sat down in front of the machine,
01:23
and she watched
the entire washing program.
01:27
(Laughter)
01:28
She was mesmerized.
01:29
To my grandmother,
the washing machine was a miracle.
01:35
Today, in Sweden and other rich countries,
01:38
people are using
so many different machines.
01:42
Look -- the homes are full of machines.
01:44
I can't even name them all.
01:46
And they also, when they want to travel,
01:50
they use flying machines
01:52
that can take them to remote destinations.
01:54
And yet, in the world,
01:56
there are so many people
who still heat the water on fire,
02:00
and they cook their food on fire.
02:02
Sometimes they don't even
have enough food.
02:05
And they live below the poverty line.
02:07
There are two billion fellow human beings
02:10
who live on less than two dollars a day.
02:13
And the richest people over there --
there's one billion people,
02:16
and they live above
what I call the "air line" --
02:19
(Laughter)
02:20
because they spend
more than 80 dollars a day
02:24
on their consumption.
02:26
But this is just one, two,
three billion people,
02:28
and obviously, there are
seven billion people in the world,
02:31
so there must be one, two,
three, four billion people more
02:35
who live in between
the poverty and the air line.
02:38
They have electricity,
02:40
but the question is:
How many have washing machines?
02:43
I've done the scrutiny of market data,
and I've found that, indeed,
02:48
the washing machine
has penetrated below the air line,
02:52
and today, there's an additional
one billion people out there
02:55
who live above the "wash line."
02:57
(Laughter)
02:59
And they consume
for more than 40 dollars per day.
03:03
So two billion have access
to washing machines.
03:06
And the remaining five billion --
03:09
how do they wash?
03:10
Or, to be more precise,
03:12
how do most of the women
in the world wash?
03:15
Because it remains the hard work
for women to wash.
03:19
They wash like this: by hand.
03:22
It's hard, time-consuming labor,
03:27
which they have to do
for hours every week.
03:30
And sometimes they also have
to bring water from far away
03:33
to do the laundry at home,
03:34
or they have to bring the laundry
away to a stream far off.
03:38
And they want the washing machine.
03:41
They don't want to spend
such a large part of their life
03:44
doing this hard work
03:46
with so relatively low productivity.
03:49
And there's nothing
different in their wish
03:51
than it was for my grandma.
03:53
Look here, two generations
ago in Sweden --
03:55
picking water from the stream,
03:57
heating with firewood
and washing like that.
04:00
They want the washing machine
in exactly the same way.
04:03
But when I lecture
to environmentally concerned students,
04:06
they tell me, "No, everybody in the world
cannot have cars and washing machines."
04:11
How can we tell this woman
04:13
that she isn't going
to have a washing machine?
04:15
And then I ask my students --
over the last two years, I've asked --
04:19
"How many of you don't use a car?"
04:21
And some of them proudly raise their hand
and say, "I don't use a car."
04:25
And then I put the really tough question:
04:27
"How many of you hand-wash
your jeans and your bedsheets?"
04:31
And no one raised their hand.
04:35
Even the hardcore in the green movement
use washing machines.
04:39
(Laughter)
04:43
So how come [this is]
something that everyone uses
04:45
and they think others will not stop it?
04:47
What is special with this?
04:48
I had to do an analysis
about the energy use in the world.
04:51
Here we are.
04:52
Look here. You see
the seven billion people up there?
04:55
The air people, the wash people,
04:57
the bulb people and the fire people.
05:00
One unit like this
05:02
is an energy unit of fossil fuel --
oil, coal or gas.
05:07
That's what most of the electricity
and the energy in the world is.
05:11
And it's 12 units used
in the entire world,
05:14
and the richest one billion,
they use six of them.
05:17
Half of the energy is used
by one seventh of the world population.
05:20
And these ones, who have washing machines
05:23
but not a house full of other machines,
05:25
they use two.
05:26
This group uses three, one each.
05:29
And they also have electricity.
05:31
And over there,
they don't even use one each.
05:33
That makes 12 of them.
05:35
But the main concern
05:37
for the environmentally interested
students -- and they are right --
05:40
is about the future.
05:43
What are the trends?
05:44
If we just prolong the trends,
without any real advanced analysis,
05:48
to 2050,
05:49
there are two things
that can increase the energy use:
05:52
first, population growth;
second, economic growth.
05:55
Population growth will mainly occur
among the poorest people here,
05:59
because they have high child mortality
06:01
and they have many children per woman.
06:03
And that will get you two extra,
06:05
but that won't change
the energy use very much.
06:07
What will happen is economic growth.
06:09
The best of here
in the emerging economies --
06:12
I call them "the New East" --
06:13
they will jump the air line.
06:15
"Wopp!" they will say.
06:17
And they will start to use as much
as the Old West are doing already.
06:20
(Laughter)
06:21
And these people,
they want the washing machine.
06:24
I told you. They'll go there.
06:25
And they will double their energy use.
06:27
And we hope that the poor people
will get into the electric light.
06:30
And they'll get a two-child family
without a stop in population growth.
06:33
But the total energy consumption
will increase to 22 units.
06:37
And these 22 units --
06:40
still, the richest people
use most of them.
06:44
So what needs to be done?
06:45
Because the risk,
06:47
the high probability
of climate change is real.
06:50
It's real.
06:52
Of course, they must be
more energy efficient.
06:55
They must change
their behavior in some way.
06:57
They must also start
to produce green energy,
07:00
much more green energy.
07:01
But until they have the same
energy consumption per person,
07:05
they shouldn't give advice to others --
07:06
what to do and what not to do.
07:08
(Laughter)
07:09
(Applause)
07:10
Here, we can get more
green energy all over.
07:15
This is what we hope might happen.
07:17
It's a real challenge in the future.
07:19
But I can assure you
that this woman in the favela in Rio,
07:23
she wants a washing machine.
07:25
She's very happy
about her minister of energy
07:27
that provided electricity to everyone --
07:29
so happy that she even voted for her.
07:33
And she became Dilma Rousseff,
07:34
the president-elect of one of the biggest
democracies in the world,
07:39
moving from minister
of energy to president.
07:42
If you have democracy,
people will vote for washing machines.
07:46
They love them!
07:47
(Laughter)
07:49
And what's the magic with them?
07:51
My mother explained
the magic with this machine
07:54
the very, very first day.
07:57
She said, "Now, Hans.
07:59
We have loaded the laundry.
08:01
The machine will make the work.
08:02
And now we can go to the library."
08:05
Because this is the magic:
you load the laundry,
08:08
and what do you get out of the machine?
08:10
You get books out of the machines,
08:14
children's books.
08:15
And mother got time to read for me.
08:17
She loved this.
08:18
I got the "ABC's" -- this is why
I started my career as a professor,
08:22
when my mother had time to read for me.
08:24
And she also got books for herself.
08:26
She managed to study English
and learn that as a foreign language.
08:30
And she read so many novels,
08:32
so many different novels here.
08:35
And we really,
we really loved this machine.
08:38
(Laughter)
08:39
And what we said, my mother and me,
08:42
"Thank you, industrialization.
08:45
Thank you, steel mill.
08:47
Thank you, power station.
08:49
And thank you,
chemical processing industry
08:52
that gave us time to read books."
08:54
Thank you very much.
08:55
(Laughter)
08:56
(Applause)
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