Tom is correct when he says that leading businesses are starting to face up to the need for reductions in consumption of material goods. In a paper to be published next week, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development - which counts some of the world’s biggest (and most polluting) multinationals amongst its members - will state that efficiency gains and technological innovation will not be enough to bring consumption to a level that can be sustained by our planet. The report calls for deeper, systemic approaches that combine innovation, choice editing and choice influencing. This echoes our own calls (eg in Let Them Eat Cake), for businesses to realign their corporate and brand values with those of sustainable development.
The transition to a “green economy” is hindered by: a lack of political leadership: vested business interests; and the unwillingness of citizens to consume less or pay more for clean goods while cheaper, dirtier ones are available.
At the same time as we introduce taxes on “bad” things like pollution, we also need to reduce or eliminate taxes on “good” things like employment, innovation and entrepreneurship. The shift needs to be gradual and revenue neutral, so that every extra pound that consumers or businesses are asked to pay for environmental protection or community building is covered by reductions in their tax bills, and so that businesses have time to re-design their business models.
This model should also address the question of economic growth, since richer countries may have to accept a stabilisation or contraction in GDP, as advocated by ex-World Bank Economist, Herman Daley. If our politicians really want to help us out of both our financial and our environmental woes, they must face up to these realities and start looking for systemic solutions that allow humans and their businesses to thrive in harmony with the natural environment, rather than regarding it as the enemy.

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Sorry to post back to back Tom, but I just reread some of your conclusions and I had to comment on this point. You write:

"For a more difficult behavioural change like this, appeal must be made to more intrinsic motivations or a
person’s self identity; for example, external regulations (which might include emerging social expectations about conscientious and agreeable behaviour) must be integrated into a person’s sense of self, typically in the form of important personal values. Thus, a person may come to feel that “taking care of the environment is an integral part of my life”."

Spot on. But you could substitute 'lifestyle' for 'life' and this point becomes even stronger. Anthony Giddens argues that a lifestyle (functionally everyday doings) is largely indistinguishable from the self identity in modern society. One reinforces the other in a 'reflexive' cycle. Much of what we do that impacts the environment in a significant way stems from routine, taken-for-granted behaviours that are enacted in the course of everyday life. Thus, the culprit is not only conspicuous consumption, but also its more sinister, 'inconspicuous' cousin. What we need to get to is a situation in which 'citizens' feel that "taking care of the environment is an integral part of both my identity AND my everyday doings."

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This is a very well written and thought provoking report.

One of the hardest lessons of my undergraduate studies and early brushes with environmental behaviour change was that what seemed obvious and necessary to me was at best irrelevant and at worst irrational to people I wanted to influence. The world is simply a different place depending on your journey through it so far. I can now recognise that my values go right back to childhood experiences, inspirational role models, and all the years in between. There are only a fraction of people around who've had a similar journey and we all struggle to consistently reflect those values in behaviour due to the way our society is set up.

One way of thinking about values is that they are the rules of thumb that work for most people, most of the time, in keeping a community or society going (whether or not it is ultimately ecologically, socially and economically sustainable in its context).

People like 'us' who do see a crisis and want to promote change are something of an immune response (hopefully not pathological) to where are society is heading. Because values and context are interdependent, to realise our environmental values we have to somehow positively engage with and influence the vast majority of people who are nothing like 'us'. Social marketing seems a tool for doing that, which side steps the huge values inertia that lies in the differences between environmentalists and rest.

So I ask, given the diversity of people, and the factors influencing sustainable behaviour, does a values based approach cut to the heart of robust, self-sustained and adaptable behaviour changes, or risk neglecting all we've learnt about the importance of supporting specific, local and individually relevant engagement on a mass scale? Do the values of mainstreamed sustainability exist yet? What would they look like, and are they the same as an environmental activists values?

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The report makes the case that reliance upon encouraging people to take 'simple steps' (urging them to switch to energy-efficient light bulbs, for example) is unlikely to lead to the necessary scale of changes in the way that we live. Some evidence points to people often 'resting on their laurels', rather than being encouraged to engage in ever more ambitious changes. What's your experience?

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