The Prostitution of the Sustainable

Julio F. Campos

Since 1972 the world is discussing the environmental issues. Why are we still struggling with the same problems? Why any palpable solution has yet to be implemented? Besides all propaganda by sustainable corporation actions, where are the results? Whit all accumulated knowledge, why isn’t the society moving towards a sustainable way to be?

Those are inconvenient questions that hide an inconvenient truth.  In this article the underlying reason will be presented, plain and simple, taking the reader to visit the other side of the sustainability.

When dealing with the environment and sustainable development issues and concerns in our lives, those who are worried about the current socio-environmental situation of the planet are increasingly uncomfortable with the position of the self-proclaimed "sustainability professionals".

“Why those professionals responsible to implement de needed sustainability are doing it so slowly?”

To answers that question an underlying reality must be exposed since whether as corporations, or consultants or auditors, the main daily focus of those professionals is assure the implementation of the corporations needs, whose sustainable environmental practices are first focused on their economic results, developing effective ways of achieving sustainable development only while they don’t affect their profitability, purposely ignoring the real issues in sustainable development.

“Why a person who chooses the environment as they profession would bend to those interests?”

Money and status. Rooted and desperately attached to their egos and salaries, comfortably seated in their cozy offices isolated from reality, they are actually concerned only with the caresses they egos will receive from their demagogues’ peers.

Actively seeking for new business opportunities, they are always present in events dedicated to discussing the "sustainability" but not strangely designed to connect economical interests and never to critically discuss the solutions to the problems they should be solving.

“Why can’t sustainability professionals see what’s wrong?”

Amazingly, while they proclaim the need of multidisciplinarity as the main qualification to work in the sustainability field, due to the absolute absence of the requested characteristic they are completely ignorant of the most basic concepts of environmental and social theories.

In the belief that their pseudo-academic titles provide the enough knowledge needed, what we see are graduates who never developed a study outside its original formation. Therefore we have business professionals who sought complementary formation in sustainability applied to business, economists with sustainability for economists,  lawyers with environmental law certifications.

Besides the fact that that’s not a multidisciplinary formation, without the proper qualification
the professional is restrained to a narrow mindset often based on a distorted, incorrect and incomplete knowledge of the subject.

As consequence of the money-ego-ignorance, while seeking solutions to socio-environmental problems they set up a theatrical stage whose sole purpose is to throw veils on the fact that they only seek to prevent their businesses from losing their profitability.

Attached to the consequent archaic and unrealistic concepts about how to act sustainably, they refuse not only to listen to criticism of their suicidal actions, but also, at the top of their artificial corporate titles of executives, directors, managers, consultants, auditors of "sustainability", seated on the thrones of their hoax MBAs, judging themselves omniscient on the subject, ignore their blatant mistakes.

Inept to see the reality beyond their offices, their hypocritical prostitution towards the socio-environmental questions would be irrelevant if only suicidal. Unfortunately, the chain of events initiated by their irresponsible attitudes comes pouring its venom on an entire socio-environmental structure external to the corporation, causing irreversible damages, often with lethal consequences to those who do not even know why.

Backed by “environmental“ technical standards and frameworks, still designed to improve profitability, they present to the poor gullible and ignorant consumer they empty sustainability actions while maintaining the status quo of their operations.

Unfortunately, the academic professionals which should present the necessary solutions exposing the perverse fraud of corporate sustainability, is also concerned only with the caressing of its ego in the publication of articles, incomprehensible to the public, only leaving the comfort of its offices to receive their caresses in events not different from the ones of the corporations.

In the midst of corporate prostitution and the comfort zone of academics, we have a population increasingly ignorant of the problems that are coming for their children and grandchildren in the long run such as illness, hunger, war, and misery. Tragically, so the descendants of the "corporate sustainable" myopic professionals, as well as the accommodated academics, also are part of this population.

The tragic consequence of the academy's comfortable position can be seen in the niche, by them opened and now occupied, of pseudo-scientists who use coherent arguments, at least for the scientific illiterate public, to create popularity on issues ranging from denial of climate change to "toxicity" of vaccines, a belief that already is resulting in frightening infant mortality from diseases that should be eradicated.

But the myopic Academy focus on its complex publications in reputable journals is more necessary than the enlightenment of the public.

Few, outside the corporate world, are shouting to deaf ears on the prostitution of sustainability professionals as we race at full speed for the collapse of our society.

“What is being presented as a sustainability proposal is real?”

One of the most crucial questions that one from the environmental field should be able to answer fails to be answered, again due to lack of qualification/interest.

As a result, many, either professionals or students, while ignorant of sustainability issues due to a narrow knowledge base, catastrophically applaud corporate actions disguised as sustainable ones, unable to look at the whole picture and come to a real understanding of what they see. Others, though well-intentioned, are led to defend irrelevant environmental causes in the current crisis we are in.

There is unfortunately little to do. The light at the end of the tunnel proposed by corporate sustainability is nothing more than the locomotive of progress that has brought us to the chaos we are today.

The academics, comfortably seated with its titles above the populace, scarcely deem fit to enter the discussion and destroy the hoax presented by "sustainability professionals", although they are the only ones with the knowledge base to do so.

Finally, there are those few who are willing to face the struggle on both fronts, hoping that others will be encouraged to take action on the real problem we face before it is too late.


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