The Zeronauts

John Elkington has been at the forefront of environmental thinking since the 1970s, and is the inventor of the term triple bottom line. Here he invents another term, the sustainability barrier, as an encouragement to break through in our ecological and economic policies. A Zeronaut is a new breed of innovator, entrepreneur and investor intent on promoting wealth creation while driving environmental indicators on carbon, toxic substances and poverty to zero. The book contains a roll of honour of such people with a mixture of well-known and less well-known people. Most CEOs and political leaders have failed to grasp the magnitude of the challenges we face in the next 50 years, which 'demand fundamental changes in our mindsets, behaviours, cultures and paradigms.' This throws up the need for transformational, systemic change. Elkington sees the 2020s as our detox decade and presents three possible scenarios of breakdown, change as usual and breakthrough in five key areas: citizens, corporations, cities, countries and our civilisation as a whole. Drawing on his experience of total quality management, he introduces a five-stage pathway to zero model consisting of Eureka, experimentation, enterprise, ecosystems and the economy. He then focuses on the five key challenges of population growth, pandemics, poverty, pollution and WMD proliferation.

If we are to break through to transformational change, then we will need 'wider framings, deeper insights, higher targets and longer timescales.' Our current situation is nicely summed up in a vignette by Heerad Sabeti: 'imagine a dozen apes sitting around the table in Geneva, with their mobile phones and laptops, dressed in suits, contemplating the negative and unsustainable impact of their species on the planet and future generations – and plotting a strategy to reorganise the behaviour of apes all around the world. It would be comical, but that's where we've come to.' The book is exceptionally well written and set out, making it essential reading for both visionaries and businesspeople. It draws on inspirational examples of best practice, thus stimulating both the imagination and a sense of hope without in any way underestimating the scale of our challenges.