And we are now having a very great number of higly educated scientists and engineers mastering this knowledge as well as numerous adanced reseach facilities. To a very great extend it has been the competition in the market economy which has driven these developments, and the market economy could do it again, now going for increased resourceproductivity, if adjusted with a set of additional rules. Index Adjustment of the market economy The market economy, as we have it today, is not driving the development in a direction of sustainability, at least not at all with sufficient force. We have in a way a market failure, because the market does not respond to the environmental problems. And only with true prices can the market respond rationally.
Prices are the main information element in the system.
It is on the basis of these that it is decided what and how much should be produced. Also by whom, where and finally how consumption should be distributed. It is therefore important, that prices are true in the sense, that they reflect costs correctly. These are the socalled 'external' costs, representing impacts on the environment in numerous ways. To disregard these costs may have been rational enough decades ago, when the total impact of consumption on the environment was much smaller, than today, and nature therefore could recoup itself.