3M was a very good company to learn how to begin the process towards sustainable development. They had been working on 3P, Pollution Prevention Pays, since 1975. Their corporate culture revolved around innnovation and corporate social responsibility. We did good works then, and helped reduce the company’s negative impacts while improving its bottom line. We developed some model sustainable development projects. However, in real terms, it was not sustainable because the company continued to grow.

If you look at natural systems, you see natural growth patterns that take an organism or system up to a natural set of limits. Then growth stops – or the organism overshoots and dies. In a world of physical limits where the laws of physics prohibit us from creating something out of nothing, we cannot have unlimited growth.

Now, there are natural (and artificial) models where growth within limits can take place. For instance, we need more clean energy production in the USA. Solar, wind, geothermal and other energy producers can growth their businesses as fossil fuel energy producers scale back their production until they no longer exist. That kind of growth is what we see in the real world of nature. It’s a sort of dynamic homeostasis. It’s an ebb and flow within the limits of an ecosystem.

So when one talks about growth on this finite planet, there must be limits and balance. In the case of human operations, if we do not control the growth ourselves, the laws of nature will – and nature tends to be somewhat ruthless. Our civilizations over human history have grown and collapsed. Usually those collapses are pretty tough on communities – lots of horrible times. Our irrational commitment to growth in a finite world is setting our global civilization up for another collapse. We see examples of what that sort of collapse can be like in events unfolding in East Africa.

So – the laws of physics and the lessons of history have clearly demonstrated that you cannot grow sustainably on a finite planet with limited resources – unless something else declines to make room for your growth. Then, you or your business must also decline at some point to make room for the growth of other businesses. It’s only natural – and we all are part of nature.