As part of BCorp month, throughout March 2026 we are posting daily on LinkedIn our Words from the Wise – a collection of selected critical book summaries, plus our own interviews with some of the most important sustainability commentators.

Click the links below.

Rounding up our Words From The Wise throughout BCorpMonth.

How do we summarize the combined thoughts of over 30 experts, the reading of 80 books on the subject, and 20 hours of interview wisdom? Here goes…

In the literature from the last decade, the issues remain the same, albeit articulated in slightly different ways.

• Climate change
• Environmental degradation
• Global inequality and insecurity
• Intergenerational inequality

All remain to the fore, stretching a finite planet and pushing every tipping point.

The causes are:

• man-made
• quite recent
• flying in the face of science and rationality
• all accelerating rather than decreasing

Barriers to progress include:

• Oil companies
• Petro states
• Billionaires
• Those pursuing and funding a denial agenda
• Thoughtless politicians
• The marketing machine behind excessive consumption
• Individuals refusing to change their behaviour
• Cakeism remains the norm

Frustratingly, the solutions are all there if those in powerful positions were sufficiently right-minded to make them happen. Polluter pays is a fundamental pillar in this. We continue to need intelligent activism to push for change. The shock v. hope message still pertains, but with a diminishing shelf life as we overshoot planetary boundaries daily. Making ethical investment attractive and viable needs to run hand in hand with suitable consumer incentives.

We need a new generation of intelligent, right-minded politicians and corporate leaders to think and legislate for the long term. This will need radical reform in many parts of the world.

Meanwhile the ‘collaboration of the curious’ in the sustainability community must keep pushing, with a broad-minded agenda that steps well beyond any eco chamber talking to itself.

Will genuine progress ever be made on all these issues? We may well ‘need’ or experience a cataclysmic trigger to provide the catalyst – sadly, something on the scale of a 9/11, a war close to home, or another pandemic to break the “It’s not really affecting us” syndrome.

So what could be done to create drastic change?

• Make it mandatory that anyone becoming a billionaire must hand over a substantial proportion of their wealth – 50%? This would eradicate world poverty in one simple step.
• Make it mandatory that big business pay taxes in full, robustly enforce the legislation and convict executives who avoid tax? Use the funds to improve infrastructure in broken economies and level up social injustice.
• Make it mandatory that governments have legally binding commitments in their constitutions to look after people and the planet responsibly? Put mechanisms in place to ensure that they cannot renege on their obligations later.
• Put attractive incentives in place so that the so-called ordinary people are positively encouraged to change their behaviour for the benefit of all? Everyone needs a nudge.

What do you think?