It’s a question I’m sure plenty of people are asking, in both high (i.e. business interests) and low (i.e. hippies like me) places, so I figured I’d weigh in with my opinion on it. At the moment, I’d like to make the tentative judgement that sustainability is in for the long haul - at least, longer than it ever has in the past. Modern environmentalism in various forms has, after all, been around since backlash to the Industrial Revolution, sporadically re-igniting every few decades with the advent of a new crisis to fight (e.g. pesticides in the 60s, endangered species in the 70s, the ozone hole in the 80s) so it may be risky to suggest that this time around it’s something special.

But that’s exactly what I think. While the driving point for the latest environmental crisis is ostensibly still in contention (at least among non-scientists, right?), the fact of the matter is, it is a bigger issue than has ever been brought up before. Climate change may not turn out to be as bad as feared, but it could also be far worse than simulated - that unpredictability combined with the incomprehensibly massive scope of the problem makes for a looming phantom considerably more terrifying than the relatively certain misery caused by pesticides.

On top of, and thoroughly intertwined with, global warming is the matter of peak oil. While that issue merits a whole other post (or ten), it can’t be denied that the mindblowing growth of China and India is going to put immense strain on all our natural resources, and if coal turns out to be the last resort, we’re definitely doomed - we need alternatives if we plan on any sort of future.

(This one’s going to go long, so follow the link for more of my rant-y goodness.)

Besides the severity of the issues at hand, another factor that I hope will lend some more permanence to the current sustainability kick is the Internet. While there have always been communities that rallied around the idea of environmentalism, the Internet opens up the opportunity for millions of people to learn, share, collaborate, and motivate like never before. With a solid and growing base of dedicated treehuggers populating the web (FYI, Treehugger.com just sold to Discovery Communications for a cool $10 million), it’s much easier to stay abreast of the issues and, more importantly, find real solutions as they emerge.

That last point is especially important. Now, more than ever, there are legitimate technological advances that are making environmentalism not only feasible, but also eminently practical. Efficiency improves the bottom line, and I suspect that over the next decade many businesses are going to have to begin the ‘greening’ process if they want to stay competitive, not only as a result of market pressure towards sustainable choices, but also purely on the basis of reducing costs. Total quality management, the customer service revolution, mass personalization, and just-in-time inventory, may have initially been adopted as management fads, but where implemented well, they have all become central competitive advantages, and I see no reason why sustainability should be any different.

Speaking of market pressures, however, already there’s been an explosion of ‘greenwashing’ (i.e. false advertising loudly trumpeting trivial moves towards sustainability), and that is one problem that threatens the entire movement. The worst thing that can happen is for consumers to get burned out on the idea of ‘green,’ before any real meaningful change worth advertising actually occurs. While letting people know that your company is sensitive to the environment is important if you want to shift consumer behaviour, spending more money telling us about it than you did implementing it is downright repugnant.

I’ve mostly been writing in terms of glittering generalities, purely due to the sheer breadth of the subject, so I’m sure there are plenty of holes to be poked in my arguments, but I’d be interested to hear what other people think. Feel free to weigh in with some comments below.