Greenwashing Debunkers Club

www.intellectualtakeout.org Julio F. Campos With excerpts from the Guardian " How formula milk firms target mothers who can least afford it " Recently I was discussing the role of price over the consumerism that is collapsing our planet's systems. Some argued that the low prices are the more important driving force behind what people consumes, or better, how much they consume, and since corporations only produce to attend the consumer demand, the former would have a more impact of resources depletion than corporations. The basis of that logic is that consumers consume because corporations offer low prices products. I argue that the issue is a bit more complex and deep than that. First of all, both consumers and corporations are guilt for the environmental degradation. To define who’s more important is irrelevant. Prices under the consumer perspective. The first step is to dismember the consume into its two ramifications: The consume of needed go...

Julio F. Campos  What can we learn from Elon Musk to have more sustainable business models? "Sustainability costs dear" "Innovation costs dear" Cost. The first word we hear from companies when it comes to sustainability and innovation. Elon Musk is today the most well-known and envied example of success in innovation. Paving the roads of three major breakthroughs, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, and their revolutionary rocket generation, will be listed in history books at least as a new Von Braun, this one responsible for putting the man on the moon while Musk is the name that will take us to Mars. Many entrepreneurs want to know the secret behind their success, but few actually look for the information that explains it. As we shall see, it is simpler than it seems. But what is the relationship with sustainability? What can Musk teach? Before we understand this, let's talk about two problems concerning the driving of companies, whic...

Julio F. Campos Throughout human history, the careless use of natural resources has proven to result in catastrophic shifts to many civilizations. Overuse of natural resources is known to have played the major role in the collapse of ancient civilizations. Easter Island, being the most famous of them, presents the ultimate example of how the mindless use of local, limited, resources could drive the end of an entire civilization. The Mayans overpopulation and deforesting and overexploitation of local land, with a resulting drought, are another example of how the belief in the resources infinitude can lead a pungent civilization to disaster. Angkor Wat, one of the most advanced Asian ancient civilizations, with is marvelous water control systems, upon which the entire civilization relied, collapsed due to external climate events leading to floods and droughts, resulting in the end of this entire civilization. Even the great Roman empire was at the end subject to its soil...

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 After my last post , I received a most interesting reader comment about why everything about sustainability is so complicated and formal. As an example, the reader presented the example do Stephen Hawking, (hence the post title), to which I could add an enormous list of other scientists that are able to translate their most complicated researches into easy to understand way for the scientific illiterate community. However, the problem is that being a multidisciplinary field, sustainability demands the explanation of a series of concepts from a large number of scientific fields. Which is time-consuming when considered the vast range of knowledge levels of the audience. It's not impossible though. Paradoxically sustainability, or better, what to do to be sustainable can actually be put through only two sentences. Here they are: To explain sustainability to corporations: "There is no such thing as sustainable growth" To explaining sustaina...

Hugo Penteado I did not even wanted to participate in 2017. I do not know who chose the unfortunate 360-degree term for the conference, but it's perfect, the conference made it clear that we spin, spin, spin and never advance. In fact, we are much worse than when this whole movement began 20 years ago. Sustainability that does not change anything is worse than not doing any sustainability, just because it creates a sense that something is being done. It is not. The sustainability trophies continue to be sewage in cities, dumps, Vale disaster in Minas, Gulf of Mexico disaster, Alberta, deforestation for monoculture, large-scale agrochemicals decimating biodiversity and insects indispensable to life, accelerated climate change, extreme concentration and uncontrolled income and wealth, uninterrupted pollution, extinction of accelerated life, etc. There is not a single good indication in all this, despite so much conference and beliefs. In general, the lectures were empty, wit...

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...