Humanity is facing deep challenges (the poly-crisis, some call it).
But as my Net Positive co-author Paul Polman put it so powerfully in a recent post to mark Earth Overshoot Day…
“The most dangerous thing we face isn’t the scale of the crisis — it’s the growing sense that it’s too big to solve.”
I’d go further: it’s not just quiet despair or people sitting it out. There’s a loud and growing group of people in sustainability saying it’s all pointless — that nothing we’ve done matters.
There’s too much to unpack here in a short post, but let me just say this:
We can fully grasp how bad things are — climate, biodiversity, inequality — and how broken our systems remain…
And still choose to act.
To keep going in the face of exhaustion.
We can bring more people to the conversation (yes, meeting them where they are which is really hard), push for deeper change in business even against a system propelling us over the cliff, keep building the cleaner world we want, work to elect people who get it, and more.
I can’t boil this down to one word, but “hope” comes closest.
[See discussion on this post on LinkedIn]
- If you enjoyed this post, please pass it on. Subscribe to get all of Andrew’s articles in your in-box.
- Follow Andrew on LinkedIn and BluSky
- Please check out my new TED Talk on Courage
- Join the Net Positive movement or to expand your learning, check out my new LinkedIn Learning class, two Net Positive online classes, and other executive education offerings.
2515
