"Failure to imagine the future possible is our greatest problem."

-Nicholas Parker, Executive Chair, The Cleantech Group

I am often challenged on my belief that a sustainable future lies in creating new products, services and business models.

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."

Have you seen the new Maddock Douglas homepage?

Follow Maddock Douglas on Twitter This sort of historic breakthrough does not happen when you're going backwards.

Repent not, sinner

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.

My response is a Chinese proverb: "The person who says it cannot be done shouldn't interrupt the person doing it."

In short, let's get on with it, people. Start thinking.

Confidence in Innovation

We need a radical reboot - shifting our mentality from one of scarcity to one of abundance. That way, we unshackle our thinking, and adopt a universal concept that inspires and rallies people.

We can't fear the depletion of fossil fuels - instead, let's celebrate the innovation that its scarcity has spawned, and make renewable energy viable.

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.

"People are not going to stop buying toothpaste. They aren't going to stop buying detergent. So what we need to do is envision and innovate the next generation of these products." Products like Tom's of Maine or Seventh Generation, for example.

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.

"It will give consumers an onramp to a deeper engagement. It will get them excited, which will push companies to do more. It will push governments to do more. And it will make consumers demand more environmentally conscious behaviour of themselves."

Not a spectator sport

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.

Does all this paint a rosy picture of the future? No. But does it convince us the way forward is through positive action and innovation? It certainly seems more attractive than going backwards.

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?"

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