Greenwashing Debunkers Club

The Sustainable Development Report (1) published its 2020 report ranking the countries based on how close they are to achieve the 17 SDGs, available here . The index purpose is to track "country performance on the 17 SDGs, as agreed by the international community in 2015 with equal weight to all 17 goals" and its value "signifies a country’s position between the worst (0) and the best or target (100) outcomes" . The higher the country index, the closer it is to achieve the best SDG outcome. But how realistic this index reflects the real development of sustainable actions? In one of the most significant works in the last years, developed at Leeds University, "A Good Life For All Within Planetary Boundaries" (2) ( interactive site here ) mapped the sustainability performance of a series of countries was estimated using the doughnut economics model , which provides an indication, for each country, on how close it is to the ideal social and environmental e...

Julio F. Campos Recently I was asked about which environmental friendly technologies or products we need to invent for a more sustainable society . Although a simple question, with a simple answer but complex explanation, it is indeed the single most important question that one could ask. The answer is plain simple: none. The reason behind both the question and the answer, however, demands a not so simple explanation.   Let's start with the question that is the root of what was asked:    Why do we need more technology? The concept that the technology development could improve human society development was introduced in the first two decades of the twentieth century and later used to describe the works of the economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen.   Its idea was resumed by the engineer William H. Smyth with the introduction of the technocracy concept, which was could be resume to  "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their serva...

Julio F. Campos The circular economy for some years has been emerging as an alternative proposal to the current production model being embraced by a growing number of governments and companies. Its concept is to introduce into the production system feedback mechanisms similar to those existing in natural systems, eliminating the linear explore-produce-discard characteristic in favor of a structure based on reuse and recycling cycles, thus reducing both the volume of discarded waste and the of exploited natural inputs. Basic model of the structure of the Circular Economy Encompassing different initiatives, such as cradle-to-cradle , biomimetics or industrial ecology , in this scenario the environment would cease to be a mere reservoir of resources/waste, but an adjunct to the economic process, providing proposals for the development of sustainable economic solutions. However, when we have in mind the finite characteristic of our planet resources, for the circular econ...

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...

A necessidade de entender corretamente os problemas ambientais sempre foi posta como um dos pilares da economia ecológica em contraste à neoclássica. Recentemente foi realizado um evento na Unicamp sobre Fórum Capitalismo e Meio Ambiente, Crescimento Zero e Desenvolvimento Sustentável. no qual acadêmicos discutiram as inter-relações entre ambos e possíveis soluções para os problemas atuais. Lamentavelmente vemos em uma palestra o conhecido Prof. José Eli da Veiga ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06TGj0G-jto ) argumentando sobre dois pontos importantes que merecem uma análise mais próxima: Primeiro aponta que se ultrapassados supostos limites impostos pela natureza não teremos um colapso. A base de tal argumentação é a proposição de Rockström et al no artigo “A safe operating space for humanity” publicado na Nature em 2009 (em anexo) ( https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v461/n7263/full/461472a.html ) , no qual o mesmo e sua equipe sustentam a proposta de trabalhar com o termo “fron...