Sustainability: are we doing enough?

Personal reflections written December 2019, delivered powerfully by Galahad Clark.

As I walk through Kings Cross Station at 10pm on a cold winter’s night, I feel more dejected than ever. Stuck between the emotive and raw rhetoric from the youth on the state of our planet and the commercial, capitalist agenda of the corporate elite, I feel I have no place. 

Leaving a Christmas Party for a company who is publicly validated as a leader in ‘sustainability’, my role as someone who believes business can be the solution for us to un-fuck the planet is more opaque and misleading than ever.

Forever, I’ve believed that leadership was the key. If we could just get the CEO to care about sustainability, to sign some strategic document or commitment, then the rest is a breeze. 

Which is why I’m confused. This company has two of the most aspiring leaders I’ve ever met. They both speak passionately and authentically about do the best thing.

So why is it not translating into action? Why do we still feel like we should listen to consumers first instead of being an educator? Why are we still prioritising profit and loss? Why are we pumping more products into a world that can’t produce or handle more?

Perhaps it’s me? I ask myself at least ten times a day. Am I too passionate? Too single-minded? Just too much, for people that honestly don’t want to know.

Have I not overcome my desire to move quickly alone, by prioritising truly listening and connecting with everyone individually and accepting that we will move slower?

Why, if I have the best and most scientific intentions for the health of the planet and people, am I widely disliked and constantly personally and professionally challenged?

Perhaps my role should not exist. Or perhaps the call the action should devolve back to focus on corporate responsibility. True sustainability calls for real change. Not just in one department but across the whole business. Is anyone really up for that? 

Talking a positive game might work great to buy people into an important agenda. But if reality doesn’t translate then it’s all just smoke and mirrors. We’re no better than any other company taking resources from the earth and growing false capital. 

We are all being hoodwinked by companies capitalising on our concern for the planet by marketing something as sustainable that really isn’t. That has a dirty supply chain or a limited shelf life. If that’s ever going to change, doesn’t someone need to step up? 

Until a business strategy measures ecological or social welfare advancements in the same way it does commercial gains, nothing will change. Until we talk about the real stuff that needs to get done to even be in the ballpark of not fucking up the planet, rather than unrealistic technological fix-all solutions, nothing will change. Until the youth who really get it, who really see the glaringly obvious and unbelievably material impacts of our everyday decisions have on air pollution, toxic materials, chemical poisoning, habitat destruction, plastic pollution, water scarcity, rapidly declining biodiversity, decaying soils and inedible food sources, grow up and take the roles we occupy, then nothing will change.

I only hope I can say I did all I could to set them up for success. Which is the most depressing thing, because I’ve fought for the same agenda for 15 years and have nothing to show for it................ YET!!!!