Wired UK - 11.2019

EDITOR’S ESSAY 018

Our planet is on

the threshold – but

businesses can pull

us f rom the brink

ILLUSTRATION: GREGORI SAAVEDRA

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Greg Williams

Editor

You might not have heard of the

Stockholm Resilience Centre (SRC), but

the non-profit research group based in

the Swedish Capital is responsible for

one of the most important concepts

of the modern age. In 2009, the SRC

convened a number of environmental

scientists and other academics to

identify the planetary life support

systems that are essential for human life

• and the impact of humans upon them.
  They identified nine Earth system
  processes so fundamental that, should
  a threshold be crossed, it could affect
  the planet’s ability to sustain life. These
  are: ocean acidification; stratospheric
  ozone depletion; biodiversity loss and
  extinction; chemical pollution; climate
  change; the global hydrological cycle
  (the functioning and distribution of fresh
  water); land system change (such as the
  loss of forests to agriculture); nitrogen and
  phosphorous flows to the biosphere and
  oceans; and atmospheric aerosol loading.
  Six years after the planetary boundary
  framework was created, the journal

found itself consumed for over three

years with a single issue. Taken on one

level, three years doesn’t seem like a

great deal of time. Yet, that three years of

UK governmental gridlock, combined with

a corresponding lack of urgency from

other global leaders, is an indictment

of the political class when it comes to

the most pressing issue of our time.

The impact of Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro

and a US President committed to rolling

back environmental regulations and

protections enacted by his predecessor,

does little to lift a darkening mood that

humankind is destined to one day

represent little more than a layer in a

rock formation for a geologist to discover.

However, the absence of political

leadership has left a vacuum into which

a series of academics, entrepreneurs,

business leaders – and, yes, some politi-

cians – have stepped to take on signif-

icant challenges. In this issue of WIRED

we profile two of them. The economist

Mariana Mazzucato has developed a

framework for government and the

private sector to pursue “moonshots” to

solve some of the planet’s most signif-

icant challenges, and has challenged the

idea of how we think about innovation.

Elsewhere, we look at the work of

Jochen Zeitz, the former CEO of Puma

and executive at the luxury goods

powerhouse Kering, who has proved

that a sustainable, ethical, long term

approach to business is compatible with

profitability. He has also walked the walk

when it comes to his beliefs – he has

rewilded 20,000 acres in Kenya working

in partnership with the local community.

The tech-for-good and B Corp sector

is booming, and even asset managers

• under pressure from investors – are
  questioning the practices of extractive
  businesses that describe pollution
  and environmental destruction as an
  “externality” to their business model.
  And a new era of startups focused
  on energy, foodtech, carbon capture,
  recycling, mobility, social inclusion and
  manufacturing could help the billions
  of people who still do not have the
  essentials of life as defined by the UN
  Sustainable Development Goals.
  History suggests that the switch to
  new energy sources initiates eras of
  prosperity – the move from burning
  wood to coal, and from coal to oil and
  electricity, all marked eras in which
  innovation increased prosperity. As
  economies switch from carbon-based
  to renewable sources of energy, and
  a growing movement of people come
  together to act on sustainable devel-
  opment that benefits humankind and the
  planet, there is still much to be hopeful
  about – while keeping an eye on the clock.

Science published a paper by 18 eminent

scientists, showing that four bound-

aries had been crossed: climate change;

loss of biosphere integrity; land system

change; and biogeochemical flows of

nitrogen and phosphorous.

One of the many tragedies of the Brexit

fiasco is that the UK government has

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