Three ways you can stop corporate climate insanity

You see the madness, you’re not buying the endless growth narrative, and you want to help. Now what?

B. Lorraine Smith
9 min readJul 16, 2022
Passenger or protagonist, it’s going to be a wild ride. It’s good time to recognize, vocalize, and transform. (Photo by B. Lorraine Smith /2018)

This is no time for recycling and double-sided printing

If you read another sustainability report touting 25% emissions reductions by 2025 when you know what is needed was more than 100%, decades ago, along with a complete rethink of business’ relationship with the rest of the natural world that isn’t hyper-focused on carbon and is hyper-focused on supporting life, you will… [insert exploding head emoji here]. And let’s not even talk about waste reduction in the company’s operations. We can’t even.

I’m with you. I feel you. I feel your mind exploding at the realization that the corporate climate ambitions — maybe even the ones we’ve helped design — are a mystic paraphrasing of a mass suicide chant. It is existentially painful, and often paralyzing.

I can’t fix it. But I can offer three things any of us — all of us — can do to make it better. I’m not saying they’re easy, but they’re available.

First, a quick bit of context.

Sustainability agrees that sustainability is unsustainable

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B. Lorraine Smith

Former sustainability consultant replacing ESG with reality-based insights about corporate purpose and impact. https://www.blorrainesmith.com/