Corporate debt, on the other hand, remains high, said Sakaiya. When the Japanese economy was booming, many corporations took out loans secured by real estate. But land prices have been falling, and those corporations currently have massive debt obligations. Once Japan endures these hardships and comes through this pain, we will see the dawn of a new type of society, a knowledge-value society. I believe that time is not far away.
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In the past several decades, scientists have found the biosphere to be richer in diversity than ever before conceived. That biodiversity, which evolved over more than 3 billion years, is being eroded at an accelerating rate by human activity. In order for every person in the world to reach present American levels of consumption with existing technology, we would require four more planet Earths. The people of developing countries may never want to attain our level of profligacy, but in just trying to achieve a decent standard of living, they have joined the industrial world in converting the last of the natural environments and reducing a large part of the planet s fauna and flora to endangered status or final extinction. At the same time, humans have driven atmospheric carbon dioxide to the highest levels in at least 200,000 years, unbalanced the nitrogen cycle, thinned the protective ozone layer of the atmosphere, and triggered global warming that will ultimately harm the entire world.