Sustainability
The process of maintaining change in a balanced environment.
It's the challenge of our time.
To put the definition and diagram into practice, imagine increasing levels of integration. Start with technology choices, the products into which they're integrated, then the business geared to run as a viable economic engine, inside of a larger company that maintains equitable relations with all stakeholders. Individuals then vote via consumption, both wallet and time; those values-driven decisions aggregate up into local communities. Communities comprise states and nations. Ultimately, we've integrated all individuals, value preferences and actions up to our global society.
Unfortunately, the state of the planet is unsustainable.
The existential planetary problem has been a disaster since ~40 years before Copenhagen, with a brief moment of hope in Paris, then dashed by agent orange. New Zealand is the only country to come close to doing its best. Communities are hit and miss, but 100% cradle-to-cradle & closed loop levels of infallibility at scale appear only in movies.
To see why, we need to start from the other end of the spectrum. Some clearly better technologies that are also net good for the system have been researched, developed and commercialized as products. But there are also net negative examples (e.g., corn-based ethanol, bottled water, energy extraction in tar sands / fracking, mishandling of batteries, etc). Plenty of perfectly good technology has done both good and ill.
Sustainable businesses (i.e., regularly generating more cash than they consume) making sustainable products are exceedingly rare. Even some of the businesses most committed to sustainability for a given sector make terribly unsustainable products, while endeavoring to do better. Patagonia does lead in company / community metrics that matter.
There are plenty of things that haven't worked from an enforcement or incentives perspective. Triple bottom line funds have confused the philanthropy with profit, hindering their own sustainability. Too much concessional capital chasing non-market deals also destroys markets, rather than foster innovation. The almighty dollar aligns economic incentives, but there is no ethical floor or similar reserve currency in either environmental or social arenas - externalities remain unpriced. Sometimes one is enforced at the state & local or federal level, but often inappropriate scale or scope until too late.
Folks have tried. For example, "Don't be evil." Most of these factors are known, or at most known unknowns that could be discovered. Why not the affirmative choice to "be good," with measurement and correction... simply too pejorative to be useful? Ambiguity in the definition of "good" (like pornography) doesn't help.
Making decisions quickly, while reserving the right to make a new decision that reverses the first, seems more viable than the path we're on now. To cast it into Bezosian thinking, we're paralyzed by the gigantic Type 1 decision that looms (i.e., adaptation and geo-engineering, followed by abandoning the planet), and therefore fail to make all the Type 2 decisions we can expediently. After failure, try again; get help, don't hide hoping no one will notice. The mission is more important than the (wo)man.
No single nation, enterprise or individual can make a positive blip in this problem. Sustainability is a team sport in which everyone is on the same team. The rules are win-win, not zero sum. It's also anarchy - decide to lead, don't wait to be led.
Waiting fails everyone.
It's the challenge of our time.
To put the definition and diagram into practice, imagine increasing levels of integration. Start with technology choices, the products into which they're integrated, then the business geared to run as a viable economic engine, inside of a larger company that maintains equitable relations with all stakeholders. Individuals then vote via consumption, both wallet and time; those values-driven decisions aggregate up into local communities. Communities comprise states and nations. Ultimately, we've integrated all individuals, value preferences and actions up to our global society.
Unfortunately, the state of the planet is unsustainable.
The existential planetary problem has been a disaster since ~40 years before Copenhagen, with a brief moment of hope in Paris, then dashed by agent orange. New Zealand is the only country to come close to doing its best. Communities are hit and miss, but 100% cradle-to-cradle & closed loop levels of infallibility at scale appear only in movies.
To see why, we need to start from the other end of the spectrum. Some clearly better technologies that are also net good for the system have been researched, developed and commercialized as products. But there are also net negative examples (e.g., corn-based ethanol, bottled water, energy extraction in tar sands / fracking, mishandling of batteries, etc). Plenty of perfectly good technology has done both good and ill.
Sustainable businesses (i.e., regularly generating more cash than they consume) making sustainable products are exceedingly rare. Even some of the businesses most committed to sustainability for a given sector make terribly unsustainable products, while endeavoring to do better. Patagonia does lead in company / community metrics that matter.
There are plenty of things that haven't worked from an enforcement or incentives perspective. Triple bottom line funds have confused the philanthropy with profit, hindering their own sustainability. Too much concessional capital chasing non-market deals also destroys markets, rather than foster innovation. The almighty dollar aligns economic incentives, but there is no ethical floor or similar reserve currency in either environmental or social arenas - externalities remain unpriced. Sometimes one is enforced at the state & local or federal level, but often inappropriate scale or scope until too late.
Folks have tried. For example, "Don't be evil." Most of these factors are known, or at most known unknowns that could be discovered. Why not the affirmative choice to "be good," with measurement and correction... simply too pejorative to be useful? Ambiguity in the definition of "good" (like pornography) doesn't help.
Making decisions quickly, while reserving the right to make a new decision that reverses the first, seems more viable than the path we're on now. To cast it into Bezosian thinking, we're paralyzed by the gigantic Type 1 decision that looms (i.e., adaptation and geo-engineering, followed by abandoning the planet), and therefore fail to make all the Type 2 decisions we can expediently. After failure, try again; get help, don't hide hoping no one will notice. The mission is more important than the (wo)man.
No single nation, enterprise or individual can make a positive blip in this problem. Sustainability is a team sport in which everyone is on the same team. The rules are win-win, not zero sum. It's also anarchy - decide to lead, don't wait to be led.
Waiting fails everyone.
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