The Selling of Sustainability
| Author | Richard MacLean |
| Position | Founder of Competitive Environment Inc., a management consulting firm in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the executive director of the Center for Environmental Innovation Inc., a university-based nonprofit environmental research organization |
| Pages | 24-29 |
Page 24 ❧ THE ENVIRONMENTAL FORUM Copyright © 2010, Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, D.C. www.eli.org.
Reprinted by permission from The Environmental Forum®, Jan./Feb. 2010
e Selling of Sustainability
ose upbeat green messages by companies, environmental groups, and
governments may be blurring the real challenges facing future generations
Richard MacLean
I was trained as an engineer and mull over these
contrasting dynamics as a question of equilibrium.
In essence, there are positive processes under way that
advance order and sustainability, just as there are op-
posing forces that promote chaos. Which of these is in
ascendance?
Scientists express the impact that humans have on
the earth’s ecosystems by the IPAT formula:
Impact = Population x Affluence x Technology
Part and parcel to the notion of sustainability is the
idea that impact can be held in check or even reduced
via advances in science despite increases in the number
of consumers and their per capita wealth. Population is
an obvious consideration as is technology, but the role
of affluence in the IPAT formula represents a much
more complex issue than consumption patterns would
indicate and is harder to describe and quantify. Un-
fortunately, increased wealth may overwhelm the abil-
ity of technology to mitigate the ecosystem impact of
increased population. Despite heightened awareness of
humanity’s role in degrading the environment in the
nearly two decades since Our Common Future popular-
ized the term sustainable development, impact has been
growing at an ever-increasing rate. As such, impact as
measured by this formula has become a number that
characterizes the intolerable growth that will lead to a
global downturn if not disaster. e selling of sustain-
ability obscures that point by promising that advances
in technology will yield increased affluence forever.
e promise of sustainable development is alluring.
Many believe that the state of science accompanying
future industrialization will more than offset resource
depletion that results from affluence through the in-
vention of substitutes, discovery of new sources, or
improved efficiencies in reuse and recycling. Indeed,
Consider how much the world has
changed over the last century and a
half — the time since the Industrial
Revolution. Some may think of ad-
vances in manufacturing, medicine,
and quality of life. Others may point
to growth in population, pollution,
and resource depletion. Economists traditionally say
that as long as the price is right, the laws of supply and
demand will provide needed resources while avoiding
the harmful externalities. Many environmentalists, on
the other hand, are skeptical of the market’s ability to
supply public goods and believe that the last 150 years
have shown that continued growth will result in con-
tinued degradation or even catastrophe.
From many corners of the debate, sustainable de-
velopment has become the hope of tomorrow. Politi-
cians and environmentalists have taken up the cause.
Corporations now advertise their innovation and green
practices; many claim to be generating profits that are
compatible with environmental improvement (and are
achieved without onerous new regulations). But could
the relentlessly promoted message of sustainability be
hype obfuscating the real hardships facing generations
to come?
ho p e o r hy p e ?
Richard MacLean is the founder of
Competitive Environment Inc., a man-
agement consulting rm in Scottsd ale,
Arizona, and the ex ecutive director of
the Center for Environmental Innova-
tion Inc., a univ ersity-b ased no nprot
environmental research organization. He
is also an adjunct p rofessor at Ar izona
State Universi ty’s W.P. Ca rey School of Business.
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