我经常对我的信念感到挑战，即可持续的未来在于创建新产品，服务和商业模式。
Critics argue that going forward actually means backtracking away from the climate precipice before it’s too late. Putting the brakes on consumption. Going off the grid. Living with less, just like the good old days.
Environmental futurist Guy Dauncey offers a succinct retort to this ‘back to the future’ thinking, saying sustainability “…is about our civilization achieving a historic breakthrough from a world based on fossil fuels to one based on renewable energy, sustainable farming, and a new respect for our planet’s ecology.”
This sort of historic breakthrough does not happen when you’re going backwards.
不悔改，罪人
Sustainability strategist Peter Ter Weeme writes “…we certainly won’t create a better future by convincing the public to punish each other for their past environmental transgressions, or forcing them to make do with less.”
Sure, demanding repentance is an activity, and activity feels useful. But constant repentance leads to despair, and that makes us believe nothing can be done.
我的回答是中国谚语：“说不能做到的人不应该打扰这样做的人。”
简而言之，让我们继续前进，人们。开始思考。
对创新的信心
我们需要一个激进的重新启动 - 将我们的心态从稀缺性转变为一种丰富的人。这样，我们消除了思想，并采用了激发和集会的普遍概念。
我们不必担心化石燃料的耗尽 - 相反，让我们庆祝其稀缺性产生的创新，并使可再生能源可行。
Let’s not consider a ‘steady state’ economy as the best possible scenario, but envision a vibrant economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation.
And let’s replace our destructive ‘win-lose’ idea of competition with China and other Asian countries, instead adopting a ‘win-win’ mentality that encourages laddered collaboration in the design and production of greentech products and services.
As Wood Turner of Climate Counts says, it isn’t about limiting consumption, either. It’s about substitution of consumption.
“人们不会停止购买牙膏。他们不会停止购买洗涤剂。因此，我们需要做的就是设想和创新下一代这些产品。”例如，缅因州的汤姆（Tom）或第七代（Tom）。
The products will need to incorporate cradle to cradle thinking. If that sounds naively utopian, remember that for companies like Steelcase and Herman Miller, it’s already reality.
As Turner says, making these innovative, environmentally effective products for consumers will create a ‘consumption intersection’. That is, it will trigger new thinking, new hope, and a desire for more green innovation.
“这将为消费者提供更深入的参与。这将使他们兴奋，这将促使公司做更多的事情。它将促使政府做更多的事情。这将使消费者要求自己对自己的环境意识更加行为。”
不是观众运动
This is not to say we should skip merrily forward with blind faith in innovation. One look at films like The Story Of Stuff shows what happens when corporations are left alone in the wheelhouse. But even The Story Of Stuff concludes not with a condemnation of corporations, but by urging consumers to embrace the challenge to co-invent a better future.
Indeed, the rising corporate culture of transparency, third party environmental measurement, stricter government regulations and consumer engagement should offset the vagaries unchecked corporations are prone to.
Forward thinking corporations are welcoming the scrutiny. Look at the roster of sustainability think tanks like Tomorrow’s Company, and you see names like Cadbury, British Telecom, Astra Zeneca and Interface. Meanwhile, NGO’s like Climate Counts are scoring – and publicly disseminating – the climate actions of hundreds of leading corporations, from GE to Stonyfield Farms.
所有这些都描绘了未来的玫瑰色照片吗？不。但是，它是否通过积极的行动和创新来说服我们前进的道路？当然，这似乎比倒退更具吸引力。
As Guy Dauncey says “We only saw our earth from space in 1966. We only developed the internet in 1995. The solar revolution has only just begun. Why should we not have faith that we can do this?”
Marc Stoiber is VP Green Innovation atMaddock Douglas. He writes regularly for Huffington Post, GreenBiz and Sustainable Life Media