Perhaps the biggest hurdle for sustainability is that we are trying to push the concept through an economic system that is built on the premise of short-term profitability.
In a paradigm-shifting video compiled by The Regeneration Project, a group of sustainability pioneers argue that market transformation will require a transition from our current economically driven economic system to one that is ecologically driven.
“I would like to see markets reframed so that companies are incentivized to compete as fiercely as they compete today around things like resource efficiency, increased productivity, and ability to serve markets effectively,” states Jonathan Porritt, founder, Forum of the Future. “All of those things could be driven as much by competition as the insane drive to short-term profit maximization that we have today.”
The video, titled “Rethinking our Economic System,” drives home the message that real change will require businesses to redefine their concepts of success and, perhaps even more so, survival.
“Nothing on the planet in a finite world can grow forever,” says David Suzuki, founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. “The only groups that think that’s possible are economists and cancer cells. Now the end result, whether it’s economics or cancer, will be the same—and that’s death.”
Rethinking our Economic System from The Regeneration Project on Vimeo.