The world is spinning, everything is constantly changing and life is a marathon where everybody is too busy with catching up. Catching up the bus that is about to leave, catching up with people that you are not even sure that you like, catching up with your blog writing that you haven't done for a (too) long time. Markets are crashing, countries are close to default and companies are doing their best to keep their head over the surface; trying to catch a bit of that last oxygen left in the air.
So why should anybody have time to care about sustainability? If you always are running for the bus - how will you ever manage to make a consious decision as a consumer? And if you are running a company gasping for breath - why should you even consider putting a side a budget for a flashy sustainability report with nice pictures of kids running on meadows? Basic needs will always come first; if you don't even have access to fresh water, your main concern will never be how many grams of carbs are in your salad.
I say - turn it around; this is the time to care about sustainability - all aspects of the concept. Never have we been closer to actually jeopardizing the possibilities of future generations then now. The financial system is more fragile than ever, the natural environment is put under pressure that we do not even know the consequences of and facebook has replaced most human interaction.
I am not saying that sustainability is something that you can just implement and start considering, not as a company and not as an individual. Sustainability will never be about nice reporting, cool commercials or big words. It will not be about who can describe and discuss the problems and it will not be about gradual improvement. In the end it will all be about solution providers, it will be about those who can run a country, a company, a household while looking for solutions and not for problems. Don't read me wrong - I think disclosure and discussions about material problems is one part of finding the solution; but it is for sure not the solution.
The sustainability discussion has been circulating around formulating the problem for way to long and that needs to be turned around. A little more action, a little less conversation - please. The world is like a cancer patient where the doctor has spent years on finding the cause and the exact nature of the tumor but still didn't give once single dose of radiation. We need to take a leap of faith, we need to dare - we need to accept that we will be wrong and that it is a part of the learning process. There is not one solution - it has been said many times before - but there is a big portfolio of possible solutions and we must try our way through all the possible combinations before we find the winning hand.
I want to write about the solutions, I want to write about technology that will be changing the future. I want the discussion to be optimistic and I want the summer to come back to Zurich. Remember, if you miss the bus - there will allways be a new one and while you are waiting, you can look up into the sky and feel the sun on your face.
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