Every Day Is Earth Day
But the Earth is not measured by profits, efficiency, effectiveness, or trade-offs.
What should companies do now that corporate sustainability is in crisis — teases the title of Harvard Business Review’s Earth Day op-ed.
Is corporate sustainability in crisis? The authors write it is, due to a “shifting political landscape—intensifying rivalry between nations, increasing social polarization, and a populist backlash against sustainability efforts.” As a result, the authors raise what they consider to be an “existential” question: whether the whole corporate sustainability movement itself has become unsustainable.
No, they answer, because:
enormous progress has been made on renewable energy;
planetary realities will shape politics;
new business models are transforming sustainability into a source of profit and competitive advantage.
But, the authors go so far as to write that we’re in the midst of a time of monsters — a kind of interregnum — in which there’s less pressure to adopt sustainable business models right now because of populist pressure against them. Populist pressure is particularly against climate policies, as The Economist reported last October, largely because of conspiracy mongering by influential populists such as Vivek Ramaswamy and Donald Trump in the U.S., France’s Marine Le Pen, Britain’s Rishi Sunak, and Sweden’s Peder Blohm Bokenhielm. (Note: populism is an ideology that tends to rejects expertise when that expertise is inconvenient — SustainLab explicitly mentions frames to ideologies when used as “oughts” as explained in the opening post, Framing Sustainability — but the “ought” implicit in the Harvard Business Review op-ed is more in line with capitalism’s ideology, namely, that corporations and corporate leaders “ought” simply to adapt to populist political leaders rather than to confront them.)
Of course, #2 listed above is concerning, as planetary realities are already shaping politics especially in island nations such as Tuvalu, Kiribati, and Fiji. But what the Harvard Business Review op-ed authors wrote next floored me, and prompted me to change entirely what I was planning to publish this Earth Day:
"What’s least likely to be viable in this complex situation is to either press ahead idealistically as if nothing had changed, or to drop the sustainability agenda entirely. Neither an 'all-in idealism' or an 'abandon ship' approach are likely to further the long-term fortunes of individual enterprises or the planet as a whole."
I have no doubt the op-ed authors and HBR editors know their audiences. So what floored me is that the HBR audience appears to include people who may give preference to furthering the fortunes of their individual enterprises over the long-term fortunes of the planet as a whole, a whole that includes ourselves, our families, and our communities.
Indeed, that long-term fortune of the planet is at risk precisely because of the preference given to both the short- and long-term fortunes of individual enterprises, measured in profits, efficiency, and effectiveness, without considering environmental trade-offs to the long-term fortunes of the planet.
Measuring the long-term fortunes of the planet is far more complicated. It’s hard to capture it in a ledger. But scientists in 2009 attempted to do so, publishing in both Ecology & Society and Nature nine critical processes that together maintain a stable, resilient Earth: 1) climate change, 2) rate of biodiversity loss, 3) nitrogen and phosphorous cycle, 4) atmospheric aerosol loading, 5) stratospheric ozone depletion, 6) ocean acidification, 7) global freshwater use, 8) change in land use, and 9) chemical pollution.
For those nine processes, the group of scientists then attempted to assess the biophysical thresholds, termed “planetary boundaries,” that would “help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change” or, shall we say, to help maintain the long-term fortunes of the planet as a whole.
At the time of the 2009 publications, the scientists assessed seven of the boundaries and concluded three had been crossed already. In 2015, they again assessed seven of the boundaries and concluded four had been crossed. In 2023, the scientists assessed all nine of the boundaries for the first time and concluded six had been crossed (with some terminology changed, such as “novel entities” for “chemical pollution” in order to include radioactive waste that we also circulate in the environment).
This long-term research project has inspired many people to action in science, policy, and practice. To share their message even further, last fall Johan Rockström — Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, first author of the 2009 study, and co-author of the 2015 and 2023 updates — gave a TED talk (“ideas worth spreading”) using business-friendly terms (e.g., “tipping point”) and giving precise figures to the monetary costs of climate change: by 2050, Rockström says, climate change will result in an estimated loss of 18% of global GDP and cost us USD $38 trillion.
Perhaps today’s Harvard Business Review Earth Day op-ed that I’ve been reflecting on in this post will get a little more notice than usual because Harvard has been in the news for resisting a populist political leader, filing a lawsuit yesterday against the Trump administration. (Note: in full transparency, I teach journalism at Harvard.)
As a result of that additional publicity — and scrutiny — maybe the HBR op-ed will reach a few more businesspeople, including those who are more concerned with the short- and long-term fortunes of their individual enterprises than of the planet as a whole.
Of those additional people reached, maybe a few will read to the bottom of the op-ed and look at the short biographies of the op-ed authors — Georg Kell, Martin Reeves and Helena Fox — and decide to follow their advice, holding on to their company’s sustainability agenda because they recognize there is no way to “abandon ship” as we have no other planet on which future generations can live.
Maybe just one of those businesspeople who decides to make that change and tell others about it — keeping their company’s sustainability agenda going — will be the tipping point, prompting a cascade in which other people, businesses, policymakers, and politicians all start talking about and considering the nine planetary boundaries and the sixteen tipping points Johan Rockström mentions in his TED Talk.
Maybe crossing that tipping point will be just enough to counter the populist backlash, ending the corporate sustainability crisis and starting the radical curbing of greenhouse gas emissions needed to maintain the long-term fortunes of the planet as a whole.
You can help reach that one extra person. Please consider sharing this post.
Happy Earth Day, 2025.