End Game

What constitutes a climate-security win?

Imagine that Buckminster Fuller is finally satisfied that the world works “for 100% of humanity.” What is systematically, empirically different? Consider a world that has redressed, in unimpeachably proven ways, the vivid warnings of conservationist Rachel Carson and systems designer Dana Meadows. What is happening now at the intersection of societal growth and our finite environment that inspires confidence that one is not undermining the other? 

Image by _Alicja_ from Pixabay

If we have joined industrialist Ray Anderson at the top of Mt. Sustainability, “a mountain higher than Everest… that symbolizes zero footprint – zero environmental impact,” how has business, collectively and around the globe, already changed so it does no harm?  

This ought not be an exercise in writing science fiction. 

Sustainability execution today is undermined by a lack of language that speaks to a time when sustainability is achieved. As much as sustainability is mainstream, it’s unclear on outcomes. We might embrace the process of becoming sustainable, but it convinces neither the critics nor the impatient that it is taking us anywhere. Counting and abating greenhouse gas emissions is a very different process than reacting to a world that no longer permits the burning of fossil fuels – anywhere. 

What is sustainability’s end game and when, if ever, can we relax?

“Hardly anyone envisions a sustainable world as one that would be wonderful to live in,” Meadows said in a 1994 speech presented at what was the third conference of the International Society for Ecological Economics. “The best goal most of us who work toward sustainability offer is the avoidance of catastrophe. We promise survival and not much more. That is a failure of vision.”

A mid-course check in nearly 30 years later suggests we have made little progress in changing the doomsday narrative.

In the 1990s, the goal was a world where sustainability was integrated – where it just happened without special consideration. If that is the end game, then sustainability is far from successful. If sustainability is achieved by merely doing less harm, then we can raise our hands in victory – but we must then ask, “What’s next?”

The 2014 book Creating a Sustainable and Desirable Future collected the viewpoints of 45 leaders in sustainability, including futuristic views of a world already made more sustainable. So-called “future histories” are accounts from a time yet to be where we aren’t just envisioning potential outcomes but reacting to them already happening. 

In your version of world already made sustainable, what has happened to get us there? When? What makes you certain? Is it wonderful?