A perspective on sustainability

Ideas

19/06

I am not an expert, or even an average, when it comes to the subject of "sustainability". I understand it from the "user's perspective". The analogy with the computer world will not be completely misplaced, since humanity seems to have, for the most part, a utilitarian perspective towards everything around us.

Despite my assumed ignorance, I remain attentive and increasingly critical. The indignation I feel toward myself, first of all, and toward many other people, is growing. It is no longer just troglodytic behavior - like throwing garbage out of a moving car - that makes me angry. I realized that I had begun to pay attention to phenomena that were previously invisible because of their banality. For example, the paper used for the endless receipts of questionable necessity that accompany every transaction we make in our presence. Even when we say we don't want the paper, in many cases the machines don't avoid throwing them up. What about in restaurants or cafes where there are napkin dispensers? You see a lot of people taking them out at a speed that doesn't even allow you to count how many sheets come out. Whatever the number is, it will be too high. It will be an unnecessary number. And what about water? How is it possible that in the 21st century, in a newly built house with modern equipment, the water in a shower takes 5 minutes to heat up, wasting liters and liters that will be increasingly precious? Or that public irrigation systems are full of leaks and work even when it rains? Or the use of drinking water for recreational purposes? I won't write any more examples, because they are too many and I feel irritation growing in me every time I think of some other situation that I have noticed.

Similarly, my attention has also been on how companies act under the banner of the acronyms CSR(Corporate Social Responsibility) and ESG(Environmental, Social and Governance). The history of these ideas has left the terrain bumpy. At the origin of CSR, which has now been replaced by ESG, there are scabrous accounts dating back to the time of the Industrial Revolution, where companies distracted the populations of the towns where the factories were located with gifts and offerings in order to divert their attention from the dire consequences of having industry on the site, including the terrible working conditions of the workers. It is the equivalent of stealing candy from a child and buying a bag of sweets to give to the neighboring kids.

Unfortunately, in many cases, the initiatives made in the CSR and ESG spheres foster more distrust and disbelief than their opposites. There are situations in which they are merely "cosmetic" operations or whose aim is to promote an image that does not correspond to reality. I even know of cases where, despite the good intentions, the inconsistencies are blatant. A company that gathers a couple of hundred people to collect garbage and plastic from beaches and as a reward offers trinkets - pens, badges and raincoats - made of and wrapped in disposable plastic, without even addressing the idea of the working conditions of the people who will have produced such tools. So in a trash and plastic cleanup operation how much trash and how much plastic has been created?

My ignorance does not allow me to say much about the metrics used to assess a company's concern and occupation with sustainability. But I suspect that there are more visible, pressing, and local effects than carbon emissions. For example, what is the point of a company being carbon neutral if, for example, the people who work there are exploited or get sick from working there.

The increasing attention and irritation have piqued my interest and I have been reading, listening and hanging out with people who know much more than I do. A while ago, at the 2022 Planetiers World Gathering conference, where I was invited to give a very brief speech, I learned, among many other interesting and important things, that "the sustainability problem is in most people's heads"; that many experts are pessimistic because they believe that it will be difficult for enough people to realize its negative effect on their/our environment and, even more difficult, to change enough to at least lessen the harm already done.

Coincidentally, more than a year later, when I arrived at the venue of The___Dream, the title of the 2023 edition of the annual event organized by House of Beautiful Business, the first person I ran into was and Renée Lertzman¹. Because we were both speakers at the conference and fortuitously arrived at the same time, we were greeted at the same time. I learned that besides being a fellow speaker she was also a fellow psychologist who has dedicated her career to the issue of sustainability, and who argues that "psychology is the definitive factor that can unlock important ecological and climate actions.

Therefore, the big problem of sustainability will be, first of all, a problem of mentality, individual and collective. It is not just about being more aware of the effect you have on the world, but also about changing the way you think so that you can change the way you live. I envision another facet of sustainability, one that is perhaps divergent from the conventional perspective and one that will not directly solve the climate and ecological emergencies we all have on our hands, and that has to do with the relationships we establish with other people. It will be the legacy that remains through the contacts we make. How will we leave the "internal world" of the people with whom we relate? What will be our psychological, emotional and intellectual footprint? This is a sustainability of human relationships, which will be detected by the relational, psychological, emotional, cognitive and spiritual quality that remains in our memory and in that of others.

Those who have children, although not a feeling exclusive to parenting, easily access this (pre)occupation with their legacy. Some influential psychological theories have left in common sense the feeling that what we do and don't do as parents leaves marks on the psychological, emotional and even cognitive structure of our children. And there are enough studies that show that unloving, violence and, worse, neglect have catastrophic effects on the "foundations" of any person. And it's not just from fathers and mothers to sons and daughters. Such negative effects are transmitted between any people, as long as they establish some kind of relationship, and it is clear that the more significant a relationship the more potential evil (or good). A very media example, although it belongs to the world of fiction, is what we see happening in the series "Succession", in which the relational models transmitted and acted upon leave deep marks in all the characters, who replicate or amplify, without exception and in an endless chain, the evil done to them.

Both in sustainability itself and in the sustainability of human relationships, the problems are found in comfort, convenience, habit, immediate gratification, attachment to unnecessary luxury, short-termism, the more-than-repeated-and-banal resistance to change, greed leading to the illusion of endless growth, lack of empathy, distance or excessive proximity. It is convenient to close or at least half-closed our eyes to the problems around us and to our own contribution. Sometimes it is convenient not to see reality clearly, lest it make us depressed or give us even more work. More than convenient, seeing reality blurred or not getting past a superficial layer of understanding may even be shortcuts to a defensive strategy, of supposedly maintaining our mental health or sanity, of supposed survival. "He who takes shortcuts, gets into trouble" but the path to improvement is not a shortcut, it takes work.

Written for Link to Leaders on June 12, 2023, published June 19, 2023.