"Your newsletters have become awfully negative recently"

"Your newsletters have become awfully negative recently" a friend told me a couple of weeks back.?

It certainly wasn't intentional, and maybe you've not seen it like that, but I think?there's more than a grain of truth in the comment.?I've been mulling it over ever since.

I've tried several times to write about what's going for me without success. So I'll just quote Aldo Leopold:

“One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.”

Actually, things have moved on considerably since he wrote that in 1949:

It's got worse:?we're on track to?breach the planetary boundaries that make world liveable.

And better:?even though they don't know the details, most people?believe?the climate and nature crises are real and serious.

We're now heading towards yet another COP and we can expect yet another?slew of emails encouraging us to sign petitions and join protests – "this is our last chance to stay within 1.5°C" etc.?

Of course the COP, international treaties and government policies are?crucially important, and?I'll probably be signing and protesting.

But they're not everything.?

As I've been feeling "alone in a world of wounds", I've also been reflecting on signs of hope.

Some of these signs of hope are big picture, like?‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief, but the ones that really touch me are much more personal.

The stories my podcast guests have shared, like?Alan Hendry, Sustainability Director at Mott MacDonald, telling me?his job used to be "annoying people", now it's helping them achieve their sustainability goals.

Like the sustainability manager at one of our Leadership for Sustainability forums, saying her problem is that so many colleagues have volunteered to be sustainability champions that?she's not sure what to do with them all.

I've come to realise that?COP, governments, policy makers, NGOs, lobbyists will do what they do. As citizens?we can support the good guys, and hold the bad guys to account,?as best we can.

But as sustainability leaders and sustainability pioneers, we can also do so much more.

By?encouraging and supporting?transformation in our organisations, supply chains and sectors we help move the world towards?the positive social tipping points that are essential to avoiding the negative environmental tipping points of the climate and nature crises.

I'm now working on a Leadership for Sustainability?manifesto to try and?clarify my thoughts on this.

I hope to share a draft with you next week.

All the best

Osbert?