Worst excuses for sustainability non-action.

These four excuses appear repeatedly in our conversations with business leaders, public debates, and media coverage of the green transition.

They shut down conversations in favor of business as usual.

We must overcome them to create a just, sufficient, and fast green transition.

So, here they are, including a few tips on how to counter them.

01 The Leakage Effect

"If we go all in on sustainability, jobs will move to a cheaper country/competitor, and they will do it worse than us."

→ The leakage effect is never 100%. Plenty of studies prove that.

→ If you do good, it will have an impact. Not all of the "saved footprint" will leak elsewhere.

→ The leakage effect is particular to your industry, country, region, international legislation, and legislation in the other countries where your competitors are based. And it's not static; you can affect it too.

→ If curious, read our explainer, "The Leakage Effect" in the Open Hub.

02 Big Is Always Better

"We must grow bigger; we can't make a difference if we're small."

→ There are at least 8 ways to scale impact. Growth is only one.

→ Fx, see how Ecosia has pioneered corporate tree-planting/forest conversation with roughly 1% market share, how Reduction Roadmap started by 3 small firms has gotten an entire industry to campaign for stricter climate legislation, or how companies like iFixit and FairPhone have stood side-by-side with NGOs, such as Greenpeace, in the campaign of the Right to Repair leading to new legislation in the EU.

→ If curious, read our explainer "8 ways to scale impact" in the Open Hub.

03 Grow or Die

"If we don't grow, we will die."

→ Not true for everyone; stats from the EU show that roughly 90% of companies do just fine in a steady state phase.

→ If your company is privately owned or steward-owned, growth is a

choice, not a necessity (if publicly traded, it's a different story).

→ If curious about steward ownership, read our explainer "What Is Steward Ownership" in the Open Hub.

04 The "Cave" Argument

"If we go all-in on sustainability, we might lose revenue, and if everyone does that, the society won't function, we will all end up living in caves - DO YOU WANT THAT?" 

(and yes, people in the West using this argument get a little aggressive in the end; the caps are not a mistake)

→ The tongue-in-cheek answer from researchers who have looked into this goes: "Yes, perhaps, but these caves have highly-efficient facilities for cooking, storing food and washing clothes (...) 50L of clean water per day per person with 15L of it heated; air temperature of around 20C all year (...) a computer with access to global ICT networks (...) and are also served by substantially larger caves where universal healthcare is available and others provide education (...) the amount of people's lives that must be spent working would be substantially reduced" (Quote from a piece by researcher, Julia Steinberger)

→ In simpler terms, with the right policies implemented, we can prioritize radical sustainability and maintain (or perhaps even improve) levels of well-being. 

→ If curious, read the papers "Southern thought, islandness and real-existing degrowth in the Mediterranean" by Kallis et al. (2022), "Providing decent living with minimum energy: A global scenario" by Millward-Hopkins et al. (2020), "Cars and Carrots: Funding Pensions in a Degrowing Economy" by Antoine Monserand (2019), or "Post-Growth in the Global South? Some Reflections from India and Bhutan" By Gerber & Raina.