Prof. Dr. Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker, MdB

„In a book which was published in 1989 („Erdpolitik“) [Earth policy] I named the 20th century the century of the economy. This had a double point: first, the 20th century has become the one of the breakthrough, the dominance of economic thinking, and second, this dominance of economic thinking won´t last longer than about a hundred years. (It has by the way prevailed only after 1945!)
I have characterized the 19th century as the one of national states and the 18th century as the one of the principality. In the 19th century, a German, an Italian, a US-American would have regarded the idea of the economy superseeding the principal of national states during the 20th century as hard to imagine. And a coutier from the 18th century would have judged the idea of a national state domainated by the people instead of the King at least the same way dangerous although very very unlikely.
From this the question follows, what could it be that an economist from the passing 20th century could hardly imagine, but what could characterize the 21st century when it is really mature, so to say from about 2060 on. We all are no prophets, but in the book mentioned I have named the 21st century as the "century of the environment". My thoughts were, that the dominance of the economic principle would finally manage to the exploitation of nature that perfectly so that mankind would be forced to make the rescue of everything remaining to the top political priority.
The transission from one principle to the next has always had a good reason. The economy has driven out the national states from their throne of dominance, after they have prooven their danger through permanent wars. The peoples of national states have rightfully replaced the Kings als the souveraign since the Kings remained bad souveraigns in regard to the people´s wishes and the chances of the industrial revolution. And the environment, so was my conclusion, would rightfully drive out the economy once this would not manage to reach ecological sustainability by its own.“