One of the best things about a holiday is the opportunity it provides to tackle that pile of books that has been building up menacingly since the last one. What more appropriate place to read Mark Lynas’s latest book, The God Species, than in the Maldives, given the author’s part time role advising the President of that threatened country on climate change and sustainability. Given the amount of technical information crammed into the book, it’s an easy read, if slightly uncomfortable in that it pulls no punches in challenging some of the sacred cows of large parts of the green movement. I think it’s the most important thing I’ve read for some time, although I can hear the knives of some colleagues being sharpened when I say that, by and large, I find the basic assumptions of the book compelling and its recommendations for the green movement and beyond it equally so.

Lynas didn’t endear himself to many environmentalists when he participated in a Channel 4 documentary, What the Green Movement Got Wrong, just over a year ago. Indeed, it was a pretty poor programme, followed by an even poorer studio debate. I don’t intend to get detained for long by the most polarizing elements of The God Species here; the arguments for and against nuclear power and, similarly, GM technology have been well rehearsed by people more qualified than me. Suffice to say I am not dogmatically for or against either, and I don’t think the planet can afford to rule out anything given its perilous state. That peril is brilliantly articulated in The God Species, making the relatively inaccessible research and views of highly respected scientists readable for those of us unlucky enough not to have been born with scientific brains. It’s high time environmentalists thought like engineers and scientists, not policy campaigners, says Lynas. Reading the numbers, it’s hard to disagree.

Lynas is the first to acknowledge the concept of planetary boundaries is not his own, but he views himself as the transmitter of its tenets. He uses his journalistic flair to do so, to great effect. Reading his polemical prose it struck me as odd that in the discourse about business sustainability, the planetary boundary concept has yet to achieve much traction. Laid out as it is by Lynas, it seems so blindingly obvious.

For those unfamiliar with the approach, it essentially identifies nine key planetary boundaries the world cannot afford to breach. These cover climate change, nitrogen flow, land use, biodiversity, aerosols, ocean acidification, toxics, ozone depletion and freshwater.  For each, the Planetary Boundaries Group of scientists has identified the acceptable limit. For climate change, 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, an extinction rate of 10 per million species per year, and so on. The calibre of the scientists involved (led by Johan Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre and including NASA’s James Hansen) suggests one would either need to be supremely confident or utterly foolhardy to challenge their assumptions too much.

As each problem is laid out, Lynas exposes the idealistic wishful thinking that makes progress in limiting our collective footprint seem like a pipe dream. He freely admits to changing his mind on both GMO and nuclear, and it is soon easy to see why. Indeed, one of his strongest detractors in the Channel 4 debate was George Monbiot, who has of course since changed his mind on nuclear too. There is nothing wrong with changing one’s mind and increasingly history may judge those who refuse to more harshly than than those who have. If it is true that opposition to nuclear power is responsible for a billion extra tonnes of CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere, then hardline greens certainly seem to have a lot to answer for.

My interest in the planetary boundaries approach is not in revisiting these old debates, but in what business can do to adopt this commonsense approach when thinking about its own impacts, at both single business and wider sector level. If we accept that the planet can only tolerate so much of a particular destabilizing activity (such as disruption to the nitrogen cycle, black carbon or methane release from the seabed), then it follows that businesses, not just governments, must think in these terms when considering their own activities. The tired old waste and carbon reduction measures won’t really cut the mustard given the challenges we now face. The God Species is one of the best accounts of those challenges produced in recent years.

 Lynas is brutal about the blanket orthodoxies on carbon offsetting, nuclear and GMOs that have in his view made the green movement unfit for purpose. He scorns initiatives such as Earth Hour, and sees little hope for mass consumption reductions in the form of ‘behaviour change’. Here I find myself nodding vigorously. And I share Lynas’s view that hoping that developing world nations will somehow develop their aspirations and wellbeing differently to how we did so is naïve and bordering on the idiotic. As Lynas points out, saying we need two more planets to live as we do now is rather a waste of time, as we aren’t going to find them. The question is how to use technology, policy and, of course, business behavior to make existence on this planet both profitable and sustainable. Lynas is no pessimist – he believes we can still turn the corner (only three of the nine boundaries have so far been breached).

For a business wishing to adopt this way of thinking, there could be rich pickings. Although traditional life cycle assessment is a useful tool in identifying where the big wins are in tackling the footprint of a particular product or behaviour, the planetary boundaries concept, applied globally, may offer a great deal more. It’s something I plan to explore in more detail. If we can adapt the scientific wisdom of the Planetary Boundaries Group to commercial thinking, get the environment movement to drop some of its potentially counterproductive stances, and build a framework for companies based on what we can and can’t sustain, we may yet find a diversion from the catastrophic course upon which we are currently embarked. It’s well worth a try.

Naturally, the planetary boundaries framework remains to be universally accepted. And its implications in terms of ‘techno fixes’ will divide politicians, businesses and the green movement for years to come. But it can’t be ignored. I strongly suggest you read The God Species and draw your own conclusions. 

Here's the regular round up of our founders' latest thoughts on sustainability issues and trends. In this issue, Peter Ainsworth on the anti capitalist protests, Tony Juniper on the big new word for 2012 and Matt Prescott on an innovate blueprint for an alternative economic model. You can view the update here. http://tiny.cc/vitre

My latest column for Ethical Corporation is here http://tiny.cc/4ohfb 

In it I set out the principles I believe should guide any engagement between NGOs and companies, especially as the behaviour of some NGOs comes under ever greater scrutiny. 

A brief update to Friday's post on John Sauven's expulsion from Indonesia. First, you can read John's own account of the bizarre episode here http://tiny.cc/6m6jp

There is still to my knowledge no officially detailed reason for the decision, despite John having planned meetings with government officials and big Indonesian companies. Meanwhile, my Twitter feed has received the attention of a follower purporting to work in the Indonesian 'government field'. It all started off in a mundane enough way, stressing how much havoc Greenpeace is causing in Indonesia (not as much havoc as cutting down all the rainforests, I venture) and that the government is trying to crack down on the organisation and so on. All legitimate debate, although some very senior and respected Indonesians seem to be on Greenpeace's side on this one - more on that in the Jakarta Post here http://tiny.cc/e59fr

Then my Twitter dissenter posted something utterly extraordinary. The reason Sauven was deported, he wrote, was because of a secret intelligence document showing he was planning a protest at an Indonesian nuclear reactor. I know for a fact that this is utter nonsense. Greenpeace UK does not campaign on the Indonesian nuclear industry - they have their hands full enough with that issue at home. Clearly this line was not sanctioned officially, and I have not been able to discover which part of the government this individual works for. It does reveal the confusion in Indonesia itself about what has transpired in the last few days. 

On the subject of utter nonsense, a new saga has been developing involving Andy Tait, another Greenpeace UK campaigner. The Jakarta Globe has that story here http://tiny.cc/vua07 Messy, at best.

Whoever is behind these moves, they are not helping Indonesian business or the Indonesian government one jot. Of course, many senior figures in busines and government know this. So presumably they will now use their influence to stop further embarrassment. 

John Sauven, who runs Greenpeace UK (and very well he runs it too), is a brilliant campaigner. Under his leadership, Greenpeace UK has changed the direction of several multinational companies across several sectors. His organisation is widely regarded as the most effective campaigning NGO in Britain. I agree. 

John is also savvy enough to be able to deal in a grown up and sophisticated way with companies and governments. He is a tough negotiator, but commands the respect of many business people, including people in the businesses who have been on the roughest end of Sauven's campaigns. In fact, especially those people. 

John is not a terrorist or anarchist. He doesn't disrupt public order for the sake of it. He has often found himself on the right side of the argument in some rather high profile battles with government. And he has helped build some remarkable progress in businesses where such progress once seemed impossible. 

The deal on palm oil deforestation between Greenpeace, the Forest Trust and Golden Agri Resources (GAR), was one such example. GAR is owned by Sinar Mas, which also own the notoriously hopeless Asia Pulp and Paper (APP). GAR is now starting to emerge as something of a leader in its sector, and as a result is winning back some of the customers it lost at the height of the palm oil issue's media profile last year. John can take much of the credit for this progress. 

It was presumably to follow up on this success that Sauven planned this week to visit Indonesia, the country in which he married, meeting companies and government officials to further advance the effort to tackle deforestation in the country. Plenty of Indonesians, in companies and government, were planning to meet him, and he had no trouble getting a visa for his trip. 

Odd then, that upon arrival in Jakarta yesterday, he was denied entry and immediately deported. See the Jakarta Globe's coverage of that at http://tiny.cc/9lxyr There are dark forces at work here. The only question is who is behind them. The line being put out is that John's activities are in some way a threat to the national sovereignty of Indonesia. This is of course nonsense - the GAR deal is a big win for Indonesia. Not to mention the fact that one of the greatest threats to Indonesia is the continued loss of its rainforests. 

One can only speculate at how a planned trip with full official approval was so suddenly derailed. The most likely conclusion is pressure from one or more of the companies that have not yet seen eye to eye with Greenpeace on deforestation issues. Ironically, had the visit gone ahead, it would probably have received little or no attention. In deporting Sauven as soon as he entered the immigration hall, Indonesia has scored a spectacular own goal, in the same way that banning advertisements always ensures they are seen by more people than had they been aired in the usual way. 

Should it emerge that this bad decision was the outcome of Indonesian companies applying pressure on the government, those firms will lose even more customers than would have been the case already. That won't do Indonesia any good at all. Time will tell. I have a funny feeling this sinister episode marks the beginning of a new and ugly chapter in a saga that has already gone on for far too long. One day, the full truth will out. It always does.

We've just released the first of six (free!) annual updates from the Robertsbridge Group. In this edition, we explore the potential for a sustainable ICT sector, the proposed UK planning reforms, the ethics of choosing clients and the challenges facing the NGO movement. We also pay tribute to Ray Anderson and Wangari Maathai, two giants of the sustainability movement.

We know how annoying unsolicited emails can be, and we like to comply with the law, so if you're interested in these bulletins, please do sign up for them! You can do that here  http://bit.ly/nkgSMD and the bulletin itself can be viewed here http://tiny.cc/oaxob

If there are sustainability topics you'd like to hear about from our founders in the future, please let us know and we'll try to include them in future issues. 

In recent weeks Asia Pulp and Paper (APP)  seems to have all but given up on PR (getting others to say you're good) and reverted to the time honoured tradition of buying up as much advertising space as possible (you saying you're good). My Saturday must-read, The Week magazine, is now defaced by whole page 'APP Cares' ads on biodiversity in every issue. Sky TV, whilst in partnership with WWF on rainforest conservation, runs greenwashing spots from APP at every opportunity. In Australia, APP has resorted to the blunt and aggressive (and counter-productive), as you can see here: http://tiny.cc/y5zbi Could this per chance have anything to do with the loss of one of APP's biggest customers down under in recent weeks? Metcash deserves wholesome praise for doing the right thing and acting fast. See http://tiny.cc/4t8yz

Writing from Holland, my mother informs me that the APP greenwash fiesta is in full swing on Dutch TV. The old 'we plant trees' joke, apparently. She makes the point that no Dutch consumers have ever heard of APP (the same applies throughout Europe) and asks why they would spend so much advertising a brand no-one can buy directly. 

I have no answer to this. One of the many mysteries of APP's communications strategy (see past posts) is that in raising its profile among audiences to whom it was previously unknown, it recruits new foes almost by the hour, since anyone who looks up APP after seeing one of their nonsensical ads will instantly see for themselves what this charade is all about. If I were APP, I'd shut up about the environment.

This company is fast becoming a major embarrassment to the whole Indonesian corporate sector. Perhaps the Indonesian government will exert some pressure and make its bosses see sense.

Meanwhile, a Texas-based advertising agency seems totally oblivious to the nonsense they are peddling for their client. Presumably APP couldn't find an ad agency in any of America's coastal cities. WARNING - don't read this if you're already in a bad mood. http://tiny.cc/4j88v Too ghastly for words really.

So, do keep your eyes peeled for more APP greenwash in the weeks ahead. They seem to think it helps them. And do encourage broadcasters and print media not to take this tarnished advertising revenue.  I had hoped APP might have moved in the right direction by now, as customers continue to look elsewhere and NGOs expose an ever worsening tale of greenwash. Sadly it seems we shall have to wait a little longer.