what is Sustainability? (with a capital S, instead of plain old “sustainability”)
I attended a screening of a documentary, at a nearby cinema.
It was about how humans manage – or fail to manage – industrial waste, and consumer waste. There were a lot of statistics in the documentary.
It ended on an carefully curated optimistic note:
“In these dark times, we have a tendency to oscillate between complacent optimism and fatalistic pessimism. That leads us to lie down and do nothing... But one thing you can always do is to make a positive contribution to your community, wherever you are... What the planet needs is not a few people who do everything perfectly, but many people who do things imperfectly.”
It reminds me of a quote from a book by Dee Hock, former leader of the now-famous payment-processing organisation, Visa:
“There is no failure in failing to achieve something that you have dreamed of. The failure is in failing to dream of what you can achieve.”
As there was an accompanying discussion among panellists, I did some reading-up before the screening.
references
- https://circular-economy.tomra.com/podcast/02-04/annupa-ahi
- https://www.oecd.org/environment/extended-producer-responsibility.htm
- https://www.eco-business.com/videos/can-the-music-industry-ever-reach-net-zero/
- https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/environmental-social-and-governance-esg-criteria.asp
- https://web.archive.org/web/20120520130336/http://www.mensjournal.com/jack-johnson
- https://blog.science.edu.sg/2023/12/08/wasted-an-eco-business-documentary-series-review/
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eco-capitalism
- “Environmental scholar Bill McKibben proposes “full scale climate mobilization” to address environmental decay. During World War II, vehicle manufacturers and general goods manufacturers shifted to producing weapons, military vehicles and war time goods. McKibben argues that, to combat environmental change, the American Military Industrial Complex and other national arms producers could shift to producing solar panels, wind turbines and other environmental products in an eco-capitalist system.” https://newrepublic.com/article/135684/declare-war-climate-change-mobilize-wwii
my anti-library
an anti-library is defined as books that you haven't read.
- Smith, Richard (2015). “Green Capitalism: the god that failed”. World Economics Association. pp. 55–61. ISBN 978-1-911156-22-2.
- Tanuro, Daniel (2013). “Green Capitalism: Why it Can't Work”. Merlin Press. p. 112. ISBN 978-1-55266-668-5.
- Jeremy Rappleye, Hikaru Komatsu, Yukiko Uchida, Kuba Krys &
Hazel Markus (2020). ‘Better policies for better lives’?: constructive critique of the OECD’s
(mis)measure of student well-being,“. Journal of Education Policy, 35:2, 258-282