How Billionaire Greed Ruined a Perfectly Good Strategy Called Corporate Sustainability. (Part 1)

If only billionaires had paid more attention to the valuable kindergarten lesson on sharing then maybe the environment and our democracy would not be collapsing.

Where has corporate Sustainability and its cousins; CSR, Impact Investing, Profit with Purpose, and Social Innovation actually taken us? Some may argue that it’s delivering a cultural shift in how we conduct business and some might argue that it’s a slow process and that we just need more time. But the harsh truth is that despite all of the positive inputs that are being added to the capitalist recipe, the end product is becoming more brutal and difficult to swallow.

Environmentally, it’s getting worse; every major ecosystem on the planet is in decline. In 2018 CO2 emissions hit their highest level in recent history, plastic pollution continues to get worse and is now in our food chain, biodiversity loss is accelerating, and at no time (under our watch) has the rate of species loss been greater.

Social impacts are equally worrisome. We’re experiencing the worst inequality in 100 years — take note of this shocking statistic, in 2017, 82% of all wealth created went to the top 1%. Capitalism is…