3 Signs that the Sustainability Stars are Aligning

Things are looking up. When we are heads-down slogging away on a specific sustainability project or issue, we need to pause occasionally and recalibrate how it’s all going. I did that recently. It felt refreshingly hopeful. There are 3 signs that the sustainability stars are aligning – that there is a higher readiness for required profound changes than ever before.

1. The climate change wake-up call is working

Of course climate change is not the only sustainability issue, but it’s one of the top three – the other two are the water crisis and poverty. Climate destabilization is a surrogate lighting rod for all sustainability mega-issues, and it’s the most urgent. If we don’t fix it, the other environmental and social issues will be overwhelming. If we do fix it, the ripple effect directly or indirectly mitigates 80+% of other sustainability hazards. Recent warnings set off helpful alarm bells about climate destabilization.

• In June, Pope Francis’ Encyclical on the Environment framed avoiding climate destabilization as a moral imperative for this generation, on behalf of future generations.
• In June, the Lancet Commission on Health and Climate declared that climate change is a medical emergency that demands an emergency response.
• In June, the Dutch court ruled that the Dutch government has a “duty of care” to mitigate climate change and must reduce its CO2 emissions by at least 25% on 1990 levels by 2020.
• In September,  the China-US Climate Pact was a good pre-COP21 reminder that political leadership is an important part of the recipe for change.
• In September, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England, affirmed that investors face “potentially huge losses” from climate change unless corporations fix it.
• By September, the unstoppable fossil fuel divestment movement had grown to become the fastest growing divestment movement in history – 430 institutions and 2,040 individuals representing $2.6 trillion in assets have already committed to divest from fossil fuel companies.
• In October, NATO warned that climate change-related risks are “significant threat multipliers that will shape the security environment in areas of concern to the Alliance.”
• In October, Citbank warned that climate change will cost the global economy $44 trillion by 2060 unless we take decisive steps to rein in greenhouse gases.
• All year, the embers of public sustainability literacy have been stoked by media coverage of severe weather events, in which “climate change” is finally being used in the sentence as “disaster.”

Whatever the seeds of enlightenment, something is going on. Global leaders in the religious, political, financial, military, banking, and investment communities are adding their voices to the scientist and activist chorus demanding action on climate change. They agree that we are on a burning platform for change. The wake-up call on climate change serves as an alarm bell for most other important sustainability issues. This could work.

2. We know where the goal lines are

The recently announced UN post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals show us exactly what has to be done to ensure a healthy, resilient human society for ourselves and future generations on this finite planet. The science-based Future-Fit Business Benchmark defines corporations’ contribution to that lofty – and necessary – ambition. It establishes company performance goals for the 20 most critical environmental and social issues. By blowing the smoke away from the required level of performance on carbon, water, waste, wages, etc., the benchmark reveals the performance gaps that companies need to close if they are to be truly sustainable and fit for the future. We have overcome the “we don’t know how much is enough” and the “we don’t know what matters most” objections.

3. We know what the last obstacle is

We used to be unsure what we needed to do to be truly sustainable. As just described, the future-Fit Business Benchmark fixes that. It answers the “what” and “how much” questions.

We used to have vacancies in our suite of solutions. We’ve filled them. Of course, breakthrough technologies would be helpful, but existing technologies provide cost-effective solutions to accelerate our sustainability journey. Together with our necessary behavioral changes, they  answer the “how” question.

We used to worry that the business case wasn’t strong enough to justify aggressive action by the business community to do its fair share on sustainability issues. It is now. The Sustainability Advantage business case simulator enables companies to prove to themselves that using best sustainability practices will yield higher profits and give them a competitive advantage over their competitors. That answers the “why” question for companies.

The last obstacle is our collective will to change. Many businesses will need to change their business models if they are to become more sustainable organizations, but vested interests are extremely powerful. Led by the military-industrial complex, fossil fuel companies, and the global banking system, they make the rules and they control the game. That’s where you and I come in. We need to make it clear that the status quo is not acceptablea and unsustainable. We need to wake up and decide to expand our circles of influence. We need to help small local waves of progressive change build into a global tsunami. If the Liberal Party in Canada can go from third place with 36 seats in the Canadian parliament to a majority government with 184 seats, amazing things can happen when people wake up and demand change.

No other generation has had an opportunity to determine the future of humanity. The sustainability stars are aligning. I am increasingly hopeful that we can collectively do what needs to be done. Let’s do it.

Bob

Backup slides for the nine alarm bells on climate change listed above are in my Master Slide Set. Please feel free to add your comments and questions using the Comment link below. For email subscribers, please click here to visit my site and provide feedback.