Sustainability: A Green Faith

Sustainability is a persuasive charter with sure reasoning that is rising from the decline of the dominant ideologies of the 20 th
century. The search for truth has aroused human curiosity through the ages and can be aligned along three dimensions,
theism, pantheism and naturalism. Truth is the balance of evidence and uncertainty; seen through our own eyes, truth is a
commitment to the fundamental orientation of our hearts. The Bible espouses truth and science is the search for truth.
Sustainability or natural truth is grounded in Marxism and evolutionary contexts, with its key constructs of materialism and
naturalism; that the material world is all and that everything is the random result by natural causes. In essence, natural truth
is plagued with destruction. Unless divinity saves us, present constructs of rationality and growth must change to living
within limits and respect for the natural world that sustains us. The sustainability charter, one world philosophy is supported
at the top and is quickly becoming the main game in town; it requires persuasive leadership, dazzling know how, coordinated
action and unity of purpose.

Climatic Change
Climatic change is uncertain but convincing; it is a multifaceted manifestation of our time, involving uncertainties of
breathtaking dimensions. Science is mostly certain that anthropogenic influences, notable CO 2 emissions are associated with
global consequences, heightening awareness for behavioural change. The warning is robust and evidence based; the
mispricing of natural capital, resource scarcity and the perversity of externalities, results in an angry nature and social
recession. Invisibility accounting of ecosystem services degrades the natural world, causes serious public costs and erodes
social wellbeing. The climate message fragments around which mechanism will best steer the world towards a safe landing;
the tension is between growth for macroeconomic stability and the dilemma of growth for stability.

IPCC provides the world with clear scientific consensus on the current state of unmitigated climate change; advanced
modeling and empirical evidences support that change is happening at a faster rate; and that radiative forcing, the changing
balance between incoming and outgoing energy is the primary cause of global warming. The earth’s global mean climate is
atmospherically regulated by the absorption, reflection and emission of energy. CO 2 emissions have increased 80% from
1970-2004, this changes response actions like evaporation which lead to feedbacks that ramp up climatic change.
Ecosystems become distressed, natural events become more frequent and intense; there is widespread thawing of ice and
permafrost, sea levels rise and irreversible and catastrophic tipping points come nearer. Anthropogenic forcing is causal to
non-lineal adverse effects on ecosystems; tiny perturbations can qualitatively alter a systems state beyond a critical
threshold, a bifurcation point, where memory is lost, and a system switches to a different state. A systems perspective
elucidates the amplifying perturbation of human activities on the climate system. The scientific community is escalating its
advice; change is faster and uncertainties are in one direction, society is generally convinced but helpless in how to respond.

A persuasive ideology for climate stabilisation is built on adaption and mitigation, on clean and efficient energies and
improved industrial processes. Adaptive capacity is a substantial ongoing challenge, influenced by productivity, human
ingenuity, social resilience and national income. Initiatives include economic development, planning scenarios, poverty
alleviation, human capital skills and knowledge, coastal protection and early interventions. Sound informational instruments
raise awareness, promote environmental cognisance, and influence behaviours; creating a new paradigm of social
responsibility, equality and respect for society and nature. Mitigation involves the wide-scale diffusion of low carbon
infrastructures; a process that requires large capital investments, incongruent with the abundance of relatively cheap fossil
fuels (the world has identifiable fuel reserves of 1,500 Gt, we have consumed approximately 350 Gt) that drive economic
growth. Future prosperity is a classical problem of decision making under uncertainty; Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
technologies have the potential to stabilize emissions, but are capital intensive; carbon pricing will encourage innovation, but
storage losses could create situations that spiral out of control; society is adverse to the perception of black swan risks in
clean solutions like nuclear power and CCS.

1 Sustainability: A Green Faith

Influencing the sustainability charter challenges the structural fabric of society; changes will build around persuasive
leadership, coordinated action, efficiency processes, household assistance, efficient buildings and a green army of capable
and equipped citizens. The standard for housing will be compact fluorescent lighting, six stars for hot water heating and
insulated homes. Commercial buildings will require improvements to building fabric glazing, artificial lighting, heating,
ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). The clear message is that the benefits of action are greater than the costs; the costs
of inaction will compound and increase non-linearly over time. The message is about opportunity, climate education is
fundamental in building support for climate policies, engendering a shared responsibility and facilitating engagement across
all levels of the community. A green workforce will be equipped with the ingenuity and capabilities to engage in scientific
concepts, analytical problem solving and the critical reasoning of complex social and ecological problems.

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity

TEEB is an illuminating construct that shows how valuing nature and preserving critical ecosystems can achieve medium
terms outcomes of living within our limits. The economics of climatic change is concerned with the global consequences of
climate change and the cost of avoiding these impacts; it is diluted by uncertainty, time and spatial proximity; and a low
salience, buried in people’s familiarity with climate events. Risk is associated with consequences being completely
enumerated in terms of probability; uncertainty is when consequences cannot be fully enumerated or probabilities are
ambiguous. Cognitively, communicating uncertainty undermines our ability and willingness to act, it triggers, confusion,
distrust and denial, ‘if we don’t know what will happen, why should we act’. Self-efficacy reveals that people act when they
believe they have the capacity to make a difference, we place more weight on strategies that yield resilience and are
amenable to cost benefit analysis.

TEEB is a pragmatic and planned approach, a reflective awareness outside of the neoclassical paradigm of market delivered
wellbeing, which has not been a great success story. Biodiversity is a multidimensional multi-attribute concept of ecological
systems; it is the quantity and variability among and within living species and ecosystems; it is the basis of life, wellbeing and
prosperity. A new triple bottom line approach understands the interconnectedness of the world, that one thing cannot
benefit without other things depleting, i.e. the economics of scarcity. Triple bottom line reporting measures human capital,
social capital, natural capital and economic capital; it embraces people, planet and profit. Globalist leaders (MEA, IPCC, IMF,
OECD, and UNFCC) are advocating a new paradigm, which is collegiate, collaborative and global; fundamental to their ideal is
the elimination of poverty and a social awareness that maximizes the benefits of consumption across all individuals.

The age of irresponsibility has been characterized by an ideology of growth and an extraordinary ramping up of economic
activity that is at odds with a finite resource base and a fragile economy. Sixty percent of the world’s ecosystems are
degraded; global emissions are 40% above the Kyoto Protocol. Perverse economic externalities, misguided metrics and
regulatory mismanagement that subsidize the exploitation and extraction of natural commodities are a diabolical policy
failure.

The genesis of this botched idealism resides in capitalism and rationality. GDP is used to measure economic growth and
standard of living; it measures neither, policy confuses prosperity with debt-fueled spending. The world is consuming at an
unsustainable rate, evidence indicates the earth is experiencing pains and its impacts are deeper and faster than expected. A
new rallying call understands that society must live within the rules of nature, a humbler approach that transforms
commerce towards user pays and the truer cost of consumption. Consumption is not prosperity; it is a credit addicted social
recession.

The philosophy driving economic measurement of ecosystem services is better management and stewardship of natural
capital. A fundamental failure of growth is the absence of market mechanisms that value wild nature, biodiversity and
ecosystem integrity; public value is undervalued or neglected. Public goods are distinguished by their nonexcludability and
nonrivalrous characteristics. Non rivalry infers that one person benefitting does not impact on the quantity and quality
available to others, rationing their usage creates artificial scarcity and is inefficient. Excludability is the exclusion of use
through policy, institutions or technology; ecosystems are non-excludable, it is impossible or too costly to create property

2 Sustainability: A Green Faith

fights for them. Homogenous services like climate regulation are pure public goods; they are invaluable to civilization but
degraded due to limited accountability. Benefit sharing is an emergent mechanism that seeks compensation from the
polluters and provides incentives for the environmental stewardship of natural resources. Stern estimates that 1% pa of
global GDP (revised to 2%) is needed to protect the world from losses of up to 20% of global consumption.

Ecosystem research is conveying a clear message to decision makers; a concept that ecosystem services ensure provisioning,
regulating, support and cultural services, which are the basis of human wellbeing and complex social-ecological system
resilience. Ecosystem value is the discounted stream of benefits they produce. Provisioning services underpin marketable
transactions for food, fiber, fuel and construction needs. Standardization of food tastes by the global multinationals results in
an over-dependency on 30 crop species, despite evidence that 6,000 species have been cultivated over time; low genetic
diversity is causal to disease and crop failure.

Forests and wetlands are crucial to water purification and regulation; they improve soil quality, remove many pollutants and
limit erosion; most pharmaceutical drugs (118 out of 150) are derived from natural resources. Regulating services
significantly enhance human wellbeing, they create natural barriers to the hazards and phenomena that threaten human
lives, they significantly reduce noise and air pollution, sequester carbon and are positively associated with life quality,
reducing stress, improving general health, improved cognitive development and improved communities. Society adjusts to
shifting baselines in degraded ecosystem services; it is hard for us to imagine species richness and previous levels of
biodiversity.

Global leaders, scientists and academics are framing the debate, if human behaviour is the root cause of the biodiversity
crisis, it follows that ethics and the consideration of the right thing to do for future generations should be part of the
solution. Total economic valuation and the ecological production function define the relationship between environmental
inputs and the output of goods and services. Economics is about choice and satisfaction achieved through the allocation of
scarce resources with transparent valuations. People value reliability and are generally risk averse; if biota increases the
yields of valued services, and regulating services enhance biodiversity, ensuring the reliability of provisioning and cultural
services, it is transparent that biodiversity has value. Service flows represent the interest society receives from these flows,
and the drawdown of natural capital represents depreciation; appropriation of values and benefit sharing ensures
sustainable provision. Economic indicators simply and quantify information so that it can be intuitively understood and
explicitly acted upon. Biodiversity valuations are not a universal truth; they reflect constructed realities, worldviews,
mindsets and belief systems.

Discounting is a key issue in the economics of biodiversity; its convention lies in valuing the future cash flows resulting from
decisions made now, the dilemma is how to value the end of civilization. Common sense holds that benefits today are worth
more than the same benefits tomorrow, consistent with decreasing marginal utility associated with increased wealth. Social
discounting of benefits is an ethical concept; it considers a ‘rights based’ or deontological preservation of future welfare.
Ramsey’s equation is an ethical approach, valuing the future human welfare of our children should be equivalent to ours. The
social discount rate is a function of wellbeing, utility and consumption; utility is a moral measure of risk and a value of 1
conserves environmental drawdown; elasticity of growth requires a low or negative value of consumption; the ethical
approach results in a social discount rate of zero. Traditional discount rates of 4% value future welfare in 50 years’ time at
1/7th of today.

Education for Sustainable Development

Environmental awareness is not novel, it promotes human wellbeing and respect for natural limits; it is an imperative, a
holistic and expanding knowledge based concept that encompasses ecological, economic and social issues. Sustainability
challenges the twin engines of invention and innovation or resource depletive growth; it is emerging from a marginal issue to
a central and salient concern, an exciting frontier, ‘a new path, and paths are made for walking’. The all-encompassing
nature of environmentalism, its political, evolutionary and spiritual overtures make it a difficult paradigm to digest. Ideals of a
new world, steady state, conservation, awe for nature, socialism, universalism, poverty alleviation, benefit sharing, equality

3 Sustainability: A Green Faith

and unified goals conflict with individualism and free market paradigms of growth, consume at all costs, self-interest and
profit. There is tension between deep ecology and greediness.

Knowledge and learning are central concepts in the resilience and governance of social and ecological interactions. ESD
advances along an evolutionary rather than a revolutionary track; it is an iterative and participative process of reflection and
adjustment. Shifting challenges demand lifelong learning approaches to complex problems; learning to know, learning to do,
learning to live together and learning to be. Education is a central pillar providing honest information brokering of the climate
message; it presents weighted evidences and new knowledge; provides ongoing training and learning, develops cognitive
abilities and provides the tools that empower responsible collective actions. Ingenuity has exploited the natural world, it is
time for quite human cleverness, for green thinking and a reconnection with the natural world with its many low hanging
fruits; but the bottom branches of a redwood are far from the top of the tree.

Business schools have perpetuated the centrality of growth and the neoclassical paradigms of resource exploitation and
rational agency; creating amoral profit first leaders, entirely ruthless and motivated by greed. The bottom line is inculcated
behaviour; it promotes free riding, less cooperation, selfish and corrupt actions. Environmental reasoning is inexact, complex,
confusing and often misrepresented. We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom; we need knowledge
synthesizers who can articulate incontrovertible evidence. The message needs to be universally accepted, a holistic agenda of
awareness, reflection, participation, passion, engagement, commitment, social action and knowledge creation. Passion puts
‘you into what you do’, it brings enthusiasm, ambition and dedication for high achievement, it provides the mental energy
and critical reasoning to intuitively understand and convey illuminating evidence to decision makers.

Environmental education prepares students to help create a sustainable economy; a society in conjunction with its ecological
limits. Sustainability fulfills present needs without compromising the future; it is about building adaptive capacity in many
individuals and the wider social systems. Awareness and action don’t align, we can articulate the vision of saving the world,
but responsible change is much tougher, comfortable living styles cloud ethical responsibilities. Scientific evidence validate
ecological ideologies, the role of education is to create a picture of human connection with nature and the stresses that
result from collapsing biodiversity and ecosystems. Critical reflexive competence is the ability to connect decision making,
understanding and unforeseen circumstances; it produces citizens who understand the world, how it works and why; citizens
who are lateral, creative and focused on the truthful realities of a depletive nature. We are drowning in information and not
understanding or acting upon meanings that do offer hope. Educators need to develop a sense of caring and closeness;
building a sense of place and the right thing to do.

Greenness and Sustainable Living

Systems theory connects individuals with the larger human and natural systems they seek to manage. Systems behaviour is
the impact of individual parts, interactive relationships and the aggregated output of all its inputs. Livability and
sustainability are qualitatively different; they belong to different logical types in the same arena of a desirable future. Living is
high gain, dynamic, unplanned and guided by inertia, a path of least resistance with easy access to high quality materials; it
lives for the moment constraining sustainability. Sustainability is an engineered set of constraints and rate independent
planning, it is low gain with low quality resources; it can wait out livability until material pressures force change. Combining
livability and sustainability results in tension, differing views can only be resolved at a high level of truth, a Hegelian shift.

Greening is a sustainable movement that produces benefits for all stakeholders. It is a program of environmental stewardship
and social responsibility. Sustainable actions include process efficiencies, innovative practices, responsible procurement,
waste reduction and recycling, renewable energies, continuous learning and ethical decision making that values society and
the environment. A new vision regards the generation of pollution as inefficient, it espouses environmental friendly, doing
the right thing and leaving the world better than you found it. An earth friendly way of living will take time, high gain locked
in growth is championed at the highest levels; a new equilibrium between self-interest and collective-good will require
positive law and moral analysis. Greening is a new framework of trust, accountability and persuasive leadership. BAU is

4 Sustainability: A Green Faith

unacceptable; society requires new governance, new programs and new measures that prevent the traditional oversights of
perverse externalities, economies of scale mass production, profligate consumption and delusionary wellbeing.

Organisational learning is the way firms build, supplement and organize knowledge. Sustainability is a companywide
necessity of collaborative effort, practical experiences and individual learning’s that contribute to corporate knowledge.
There is increasing urgency to understand what this sustainability charter is, why is it so important and what should we do
about it. Global contagions elucidate the daunting challenges of declining natural stock. A transformation in thinking
embraces a broader systems centric view of people, planet and profit; it represents a discontinuous shift with more inexact
inputs and uncertain outcomes. Businesses need successful communities to create demand and provide a supportive
environment for their enterprise. Stakeholder theory conceptualizes organisations as being embedded in a wider social
system that shapes their behaviour. Strategy theory holds that successful value creation is a set of activities that creates,
produces, sells and supports its products and services.

New thinking and new strategies will transcend the bottom line of traditional finance; it will consider diametric thought,
intricate new work processes, structures and routines that deliver healthier outcomes to a wider set of stakeholders and
ultimately the earth which sustains operations. Traditionally, shareholder value has been the dominant motif of firms;
economic efficiency, waves of restructuring, outsourcing, activity relocation, balance sheet leveraging and shortening time
frames all designed to increase ROI. Employers need to reinvest in human capital, the unlearning and relearning of
transformative practices that provide vitality, ideas and innovation for the right way of doing things.

Environmental intuitiveness is about persuasive and visionary leadership. Committed leadership is a core sustainability value,
and its importance cannot be overstated. Leadership is an emotional process; it is the skillful management of follower’s
feelings, their job performance and the harnessing of a successful work culture. Transformational leadership involves
charisma, a captivating vision, emotional intensity and the intellectual stimulation of follower’s. A responsible climate vision
is challenging, BAU understands economic viability, short termism, cost cutting and efficiency. BAU is less comfortable with
human capital, social objectives and environmental goals. Accounting, finance and marketing departments are the least
comfortable with distant green initiatives which are less quantifiable.

Vision is the intellectual framework, a motivational driver of how to move from a current reality to a desired state. Mission
describes a business’ purpose and why it exists. Values are a guidance system for achieving a vision, they internalize
ideologies into action. Outstanding leaders articulate and inspire new visions and behavioural change; they inspire stretch
goals, an inspiration emphasizing shared power with followers; and a supportive and a truthful environment. A socialized
vision is characterized by altruism, social responsibility and collective outcomes benefiting both the group and the broader
community.

A Future without Growth

The pursuit of growth is untenable, unsatisfying and the myth of happiness remains elusive. Consumption is foundational to
our social world, tinkering with its fundamental aspects without understanding its tensions and complexities are to invite
inevitable failure. Consumerism is paradoxical and deeply flawed, incomes have doubled over the last thirty years, but life
satisfaction has barely changed. We live in a consumer society, its centrality and cultural identity is greater than any other
period of history; habits are locked in, our desires are conditioned by reinvention, social status and sexual seduction;
materialism is symbolic, it negotiates our social identity and credibility in life.

Adam Smiths self-interested economic person is the basis for rational choice and its basic tenet is that we behave to
maximize expected benefits. A premise of rationality is that citizens continually weigh up and choose the greatest expected
benefits and least cost from their deliberative actions. Consumers are expected to maximize the benefits derived from their
limited incomes, within the constraints of a range of products and an infinite set of exogenous preferences. Normative
theories move beyond individual agency imbedded in rationality towards the importance of sociality in individual decision
making. Personal lived experiences and material possessions communicate who we are; social progress is communicated

5 Sustainability: A Green Faith

through status symbols. The symbolic self must continually be pursued through consumption, novelty and stuff, continually
greasing the wheels of growth.

Behavioural change is fast becoming the holy grail of sustainable development; motivating sustainable consumption is a key
objective of sustainability thinkers; most consumption is habitual and locked in by social comparison. Cognitive dissonance
describes how people do not like internal feelings of discomfort, motivating them to remove inconsistencies. Self-identity is
partly influenced by our own concepts and partly by the perceptions of others. Displaced discrepancies between self-
concepts give rise to uncomfortable emotions, dissatisfaction, shame, disappointment and guilt.

Structuration theory reflects the fundamental nature of social interaction and the reflexivity of ongoing social life.
Structuration distinguishes between practical, routine everyday habits and discursive consciousness, the ability to reason and
have intentional awareness of actions. Shifting consumption from practical to discursive consciousness could help change
habitual behaviours. Persuasion is a highly credible, structured, well placed and very positive message. It promotes change
through considered attention of the persuasive content. Persuasion is desirable for achieving public interest goals like
responsible consumption and environmental stewardship. Sustainable societies can be promoted by building supportive and
inclusive communities, meaningful employment, purposeful lives and raising awareness of critical issues.

The Easterlin paradox argues that the relationship between prosperity and wellbeing has broken down. Euadaimonic theory
draws on Greek ethics; it extends beyond the hedonic pleasures of mind and body, to capture the concept of flourishing and
realizing ones potential. Eudaimonia is a practical or moral reasoning, a thoughtful process that provides engagement and
fulfillment. Wellbeing is a concept of being fully engaged, it involves autonomy, environmental mastery, personal growth,
positive relationships, purpose in life and self-acceptance. People’s positive evaluations of themselves include positive
emotions, engagement, satisfaction and meaning. The Biophilia hypothesis describes the innate connection of nature
providing provisional, intellectual and spiritual satisfaction.

Prosperity transcends stuff; it is about things going well and continuing to go well, it is about quality of life, health and
wellbeing; it is the strength of our families, our ability to give and enjoy love, the strength of our relationships and social
groups; it is our shared sense of meaning, hope, purpose and ability to contribute usefully and meaningfully. The GFC shook
our economic foundations; growth was undone by growth itself. The expansion of the money supply (credit and debt) was
championed at the highest level; it was a deliberate mechanism for freeing spending from income. To stay in the game
consumers pursued novelty, growth increased, wages flat-lined, savings plummeted and personal indebtedness ballooned.
This a perverse story about people being persuaded to spend money on things they don’t need, to create impressions that
won’t last, on people they don’t care about.

Prosperity as opulence is the conventional wisdom of material satisfaction draws on Adam Smith’s abundance notion; the
more we have the better of we are; the social world hangs on this language of materialism. A truer concept of prosperity is
about living well, a balance between short term arousal and longer term security. Capitalism has no steady state, natural
dynamics push it towards either expansion or collapse; growth is unsustainable and degrowth is unstable. Technology is
hailed as our great savior, it will allow us to decouple from material throughput while still sustaining growth; historical
evidence falsifies this claim. Human activity is a function of population, affluence and technology. Technology (T) is a proxy
for reduction in carbon intensity; currently T is declining 0.7% per year; the stark reality is that by 2050, T would have to be
130 times lower than today. Decoupling as an escape route is delusionary; the physical limits to efficiency are laid down by
the law of thermodynamics.

Questioning growth is an act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries, growth trumps all other policies. Anti-capitalism is
denounced as a type of social utopia, curtailing the long and fulfilling lives that growth offers. The new deal is about investing
in longer term infrastructures and technologies rather than short term extractive projects. It is about natural infrastructure,
sustainable agriculture, reforestation, recapitalizing energy systems for a low carbon future and the training of a ‘carbon
workforce’ for environmental reconstruction, maintaining public green spaces and building retrofitting. Living within limits is

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a humble concept, it deemphasizes materialism, it less about novelty and fashion, uses less energy, recycles and reuses,
encourages simple activities like gardening, walking and reconnecting with nature. The redefining prosperity project shows
that the economy needs to transition towards green in a controlled fashion and that redefining consumption is a key driver.

Modern society is experiencing a social recession, hurriedness, stress, labour mobility, family breakdown, unsustainable debt
and social expectations all contribute to escapism and rising levels of mental illness. A key observation is the breakdown of
trust which can be traced to the erosion of community and a sharp increase in loneliness. Consumers are locked in to an
undignified struggle of novelty and stuff, maintaining their social pecking and keeping up with the jones. The consumer
mechanism is flawed; it leads to fragmentation, diminished wellbeing and risks breaching ecological limits. Alarm bells are
ringing; a new balance an alternative hedonism to the work-spend cycle is needed. Voluntary simplicity is a simple philosophy
gaining traction; intentional simplicity communities are springing up everywhere, hoping to escape the rat race.

Thought leaders envision shared value and social responsibility; where businesses create economic value by addressing the
needs and challenges of their society. This represents a transformation in business thinking, it connects company success
with social progress; it appreciates societal needs and understands material constraints. Shared value is advancing the
economic and social conditions of a firm’s community. A virtuous cycle of shared value creates economic value by creating
societal value. Companies connect with societal improvements, recognizing the great unmet needs of: critical physical and
mental health needs; equity in housing and financial security; wellness and improved nutrition; quality aged care support;
improved education; and less environmental damage; families become healthier, absenteeism is reduced and firms more
productive. A deeper understanding, that total economic capital is the product of physical capital, human capital, social
capital and natural capital.

7 Sustainability: A Green Faith