Sustainability
Needs a Soul
Essays on meaning, motivation, and the animating force sustainability currently lacks.
We have the science, the solutions, the policy frameworks. What's missing is a sense of purpose strong enough to make us care, commit, and keep going.
What does it mean to have a soul?
The climate crisis is the most thoroughly documented emergency in human history. We have the science, the models, the solutions. We know what needs to change and broadly how to change it.
And still, the gap between knowing and doing grows. Sustainability efforts stall at compliance. People burn out or disengage. Companies retreat from previous commitments. The urgency is real — but the motivation doesn't last.
This is not a knowledge problem. It's a meaning problem. This project seeks to explore that gap — through story, metaphor, purpose, and practice — asking what it would actually take to give sustainability the animating force it's been missing.
My Story
I’ve spent most of my career making meaning out of things. That’s what it means to be a marketer: take a product, a brand, an experience — and give it a story, an identity, an emotional life. Create a world that people want to live in.
Sustainability doesn't fail for lack of data or policy or business cases. It fails for the same reason any system fails when you strip away its soul: the work becomes compliance instead of commitment. Obligation instead of devotion. A thing people do because they must, not because it matters to them in some felt, identity-level way.
I've spent my career learning how to create the animating force in things that were missing it. To imbue brands with a sense of purpose that created an invitation for people to participate in the worlds they had created. This is my attempt to apply those same principles to the practice of sustainability. Because it matters now more than ever.
