Trouble Level 0  No trouble at all

Global warming is a fad, or a hoax.  Energy and raw materials will continue to be as abundant as we are accustomed to.  Humanity is in no danger of seriously disrupting the Earths environment.  Advances of technology will naturally allow indefinite development.

Sustainability business opportunities: Even if the world doesn’t need saving, reducing waste can make a company more profitable, and green marketing can have public relations benefits.

Action required: Leave well enough alone.  Avoid needlessly disrupting the marketplace.  Consider looking for ways to profit from a passing fad.

Motivation for change: Profit and competitive advantage.

Perceived danger: Needless change.  Fraud. 

Potential under-appreciated danger: Political rigidity.  Failing to see a danger just because you don’t like the messenger.

Trouble Level 1  Abstract trouble sometime in the future

Global warming and limits to growth are real, but are abstract.  They are not a direct threat to me today.  But if I’m definitely on-board, and am willing to make contributions to the cause, as long as they’re reasonable.  In fact, since being “green” often means reducing waste, I can even find ways to contribute to the cause while also reducing my costs and being more profitable.  Green is a great marketing and branding opportunity.

Sustainability business opportunities:  Be a green market leader.  Fully capitalize on the potential wave of interest in green products and services.  Implement carbon markets (Cap and Trade), but NOT a carbon tax.  Level 1 may be the sweet spot for business in terms of maximum return for minimum investment or disruption.  Level 1 emphasizes economic opportunity for the general purpose of promoting a more sustainable society.

Make products and services green by offsetting with carbon or energy credits.

Action required: Recycle.  Buy a hybrid car.  Look for ways to reduce waste in your business.  But don’t get religious about it.  Start a green-branded business.  Any modest change in a positive direction is good.

Motivation for change: Do well while doing good.

Perceived danger: Getting religious about it.  Allowing perfect to be the enemy of good.

Potential under-appreciated danger: Failing to act in a sufficiently urgent way.  Wasting precious time.  Generating a false sense of progress.

Trouble Level 2  Real trouble, but nothing we can’t handle (maybe)

Global warming and limits to growth are real, they are severe threats, and they are upon us now or in the very near future.  Only radical improvements in efficiency coupled with radical reductions in greenhouse gas output can avoid catastrophe.  But there is still time for a full application of business, government, and civil society to re-tool our industrial processes from top to bottom.  There’s money to be made in a Level 2 scenario, and the profit motive can be harnessed to drive the necessary changes.  There is a reasonable migration path to bring Level 0 and 1 approaches up to Level 2 magnitude.  If successful, this strategy results in a world with fundamentally the same global corporate structure we are accustomed to. The overall framework of society stays the same, but all the equipment and best practices get radically improved.  A bright future, but only if we act very boldly right now. 

Sustainability business opportunities: Renewable Energy Certificates.  Biomimicry-based technology.  “Clean tech.”  Big, but sustainable agriculture.  Make products and services green by redesigning for radical resource efficiency and biomimicry.  Grid-tied solar (generates money).  Create radical new technological solutions to the sustainability challenge.  Become the Exxon of Wind, or the Shell Oil of Solar.  Blaze the trails and create whole new markets for real deeply-sustainable products and services.  Level 2 presents tremendous opportunity for business, but at high development and implementation cost as well as a high level of general disruption.

Action required: Radically reduce CO2 emissions by any and all means.  Any combination of Cap and Trade or a carbon tax would help achieve the primary goal, so choose whatever is possible and get it into place quickly.  Implement large-scale carbon sequestration technology.  Implement large scale renewable energy infrastructure.  Implement the principles of Natural Capitalism and Cradle to Cradle product design.  Re-internalize externalized costs through integrated bottom line accounting.  Rethink public transit and the design of urban areas.  BE BOLD, and transform the system from within.  Saving the world includes saving the global economy in its current magnitude.  Level 2 emphasizes an urgent environmental imperative, and encourages the use of economic opportunity to achieve the necessary environmental goals.

Motivation for change: Play big.  Save the world, do it profitably, and don’t needlessly upset the social order of things.  But save the world, or profit and social structure won’t matter.

Perceived danger: Economic and environmental collapse.  A “cliff” that we must avoid stepping off of.  Don’t give up, and remain within the bounds of professionalism and good corporate citizenship.

Potential under-appreciated danger: Too much faith in the system as it exists.  Failure to prepare for a chaotic “slope” instead of a binary “cliff”.   A shortage of contingency visions for partial (but not total) collapse.

Trouble Level 3  Real trouble, big enough that things break

Global warming and limits to growth are real, they are severe threats, and it’s already too late to avoid some kind of collapse.  Economic disruption from the combination of climate change and peak oil cause the macro structure of our global corporate society to fail, leaving communities or state-sized regions to fend for themselves.  The big delivery truck stops coming to your local grocery store with any kind of dependable regularity. 

Sustainability business opportunities:  Off-grid solar (generates energy for personal, local use).  Heirloom seeds.  Hand tools.  Small agriculture.  Education.  Make products and services green by removing overdependence on national or global infrastructure and distant corporations.  Re-invention of community-based support structures.  Constructive Level 3 business opportunities are not easily defined in today’s terms.  Arguably, companies that are presently selling large quantities of fear-based survival supplies like dehydrated food and ammunition are addressing Level 3 perception.  But because of the general breakdown of large business that defines the difference between levels 2 and 3, business in the modern sense may be fundamentally challenged.

Action required: Transition Towns.  Re-localization of all necessities of life. 

Prepare to produce all of your food and energy within 20 miles of home, or prepare for transportation without fossil fuel.  In a Level 3 scenario, the macro structure of global industrialized society breaks down.  Decide what size community you want to preserve:  Just you?  Just your family?  Just your town?  Your region?  Decide whether you want to be fear-based (guns) or hope-based (gardens).  But decide, and have a strategy, and have a community. The men presently in charge of everything become much more remote and marginalized, or even irrelevant.  Local political and economic structures must fill the vacuum.

Motivation for change: Sheer necessity.  Fear.

Perceived danger: Starving in the dark.  Being caught unprepared by a breakdown of broader society.

Potential under-appreciated danger: Fear itself.  Under-valuing the utility of sound Level 2 solutions.  Romanticizing a return to simpler times and missing the opportunity to minimize needless collapse.  It is difficult for comfortable urban dwellers to realistically strategize in the space between Level 2 and Level 3. 

Trouble Level 4  We’re finished

Global warming and limits to growth are real, and multiple tipping points have already been irreparably passed.  Like any other natural system that goes through a period of exponential growth, we can expect a complete or near-complete collapse.  No useful fragments of macro or micro society will continue to function, and the Earth will have a major extinction that will take hundreds of thousands if not millions of years to return to normal. 

Near relatives of Level 4 perspective are the growing evangelical “end times” and more recent 2012 movements.  In all of these cases, there is a fundamental and inescapable end to history coming soon.  Actions to try to prevent that end are in vain, although actions to prepare for a chaotic final remaining time can considered.

Sustainability business opportunities: Preparation for survival.  Long-term food storage.  Personal defense.  In this context, “sustainability” means “survivability”.

Action required: Carefully choose geographic location.  Stockpile food and survival gear.  Either enjoy the remaining time or prepare for a discontinuous jump to a (possibly metaphysical) existence beyond the end.

Motivation for change: Nothing to be changed.