1. Learn to grow your favourite vegetables 
2. Find the word in every human language there is or has ever been for 'respect'
3. Adopt a pet or two from a shelter (or pay to foster some in a shelter)
4. Be your own boss
5. Read Catch-22 (several times)
6. See Petra at sunset
7. Sleep in a tent in the pouring rain with someone you love
8. Write 100 letters to supermarkets demanding they only sell responsible products and get your friends to do the same
9. See whales in the wild
10. Listen to Rachmaninov's second symphony

Sometimes I can barely keep up with the pace of the sustainability debate. After the great response to my open letter to Asia Pulp & Paper (see http://tiny.cc/sac5j ), no sooner had I put the finishing touches to that blog post when news reached me that Sky is currently running adverts for APP, whilst promoting a 'partnership' with WWF to save rainforests. In turn this coincided with last night's UK Channel 4 Dispatches programme, 'Conservation's Dirty Secret', in which WWF and Conservation International (see http://tiny.cc/e2u09 ) were, to put it charitably, embarrassed, not helped by dismal media performances from their respective leaders. The upshot: when WWF's UK CEO is not on national television saying turtles are amphibians, his organisation is taking money from a conservation partnership with a broadcaster taking advertising revenue from one of the greatest enemies of rainforest conservation in the world. This can't go on. And an awful lot of people are saying so, at least in private. 

 Some people would use this perfect storm to turn on the conservation movement. They would hijack this PR misfortune as proof that the green movement is full of hot air and bad science. That is the wrong reaction. We must not abandon conservation, or the (good) organisations that promote it, but we must do a lot better. My colleague Charles Secrett offers a manifesto blueprint for change in the NGO movement in today's Guardian. You can read Charles's open letter to the green movement here http://tiny.cc/xkvex 

Big NGOs risk becoming a total irrelevance if they do not take a long hard look at themselves. Not only are they jeopardising hard won victories through poor leadership, bad communication and a lack of ideological coherence. They are playing into the hands of those who would like the environment movement to disappear, allowing the world's worst firms to carry on their exploitation of the planet's dwindling resources unhindered. 

Today, I went to a stakeholder forum convened by L'Oreal in London. Their sustainability director, Francis Quinn, was infinitely more eloquent about global challenges and the conservation agenda than most NGO leaders and, needless to say, all politicians. It depressed me that it should take a cosmetics firm executive to reaffirm my commitment to sustainability at a time when its greatest public champions are letting down the cause so terribly badly.  I could have listened to Quinn for hours, whilst I found my finger on the off button for most of last night's Channel 4 documentary. I only stayed with it in the way you stay with a dreadful reality show – you wait for the car crash moment to happen. It did last night, long before the programme ended, along with my respect for big NGOs who take the corporate shilling. 

 In the end, business will tackle these issues and resolve as many of them as possible, for their own self interest. And yes, they will do so in partnership with NGOs. But it will be the NGOs who are truly independent of vast corporate financial relationships, or those that deliver grassroots, ground level, measurable conservation improvement. I'll be backing the kinds of groups in those two categories. Where that will leave the new NGO behemoths, I'm really not sure. 

Dear Asia Pulp & Paper,

It really is high time that you changed course. And let me pre-empt some of your now standard counter arguments to what I am going to say from the outset. The first is that I am unashamedly pro business. I have worked with very large multinational businesses (as well as NGOs) for many years. I believe business is our best (and possibly only) hope in tackling the planetary crisis.

The second is that I understand that developing nations have different pressures from developed ones. I also understand a little of Indonesia's history and challenges. My late father was an AFP foreign correspondent in Jakarta for four years and after his expulsion by Suharto in 1972, wrote a rather celebrated book, 'The Indonesian Tragedy'. It was banned in Indonesia until Suharto's downfall and used to be smuggled in from Singapore. It has been reprinted six times in the past 30 years. So my family as a whole feels a great affinity with Indonesia. It is a wonderful and fascinating country.

The third is that I do not believe NGOs and campaigners are always right. As you will see here, http://tiny.cc/46vvj  I sometimes criticise NGOs quite strongly. 

I have followed APP's sustainability 'journey' for many years and from many different vantage points. I find it almost incredible that all this time, as you have hemorrhaged the goodwill of customers, NGOs and media, you have continued your arrogant denial that there is any problem with your business practices. You have thrown money at public relations and advertising that has contributed absolutely nothing to your rehabilitation. You have surrounded yourself with completely the wrong advocates and made claims that are simply untrue. You have shown a blatant disregard for customers, and for the people you claim your business serves. So let's take some of these issues and tackle them head on. 

1.You and those who speak on your behalf claim that 'western NGOs' do not understand or care about poverty and development in Indonesia. This is a falsehood on two counts. The first is that western NGOs do, of course, care about poverty alleviation. The second, as you know very well, is there are plenty of Indonesian NGOs who share the collective horror at the destruction of old growth forests in which you have, for years, been implicated. 

2.You give the impression that you are a green company with a deep-rooted commitment to sustainability. If this is the case, why do you feel the need to endlessly advertise your green credentials in print and on television sets around the world? Is it a case of 'the lady doth protest too much'? Your homepage is designed to give the impression you are nothing but a large commercial conservation organisation. It is nonsense, and everybody knows it. Why don't you spend some of your marketing budget on the poverty alleviation you claim people like me do not understand? 

3.You cite independent reports and have been publicly attacked by some of your auditors for abusing information and exaggerating it. You have consistently embellished 'independent' findings about your sourcing practices, with the groups you have hired having to issue embarrassing clarifications about your use of data. 

4.You have lost countless multinational customers around the world. Are they all wrong? Do you really think they are so stupid that they simply take a line from Greenpeace and unravel whole supply chains at great resource cost to themselves? Or do you think it is in fact because in an age where supply chain resilience and security is absolutely key, you have little or nothing to offer?

5.You deploy the arguments of front groups that have no credibility – it is a sign of true desperation that you would see Alan Oxley's efforts as helping you. How do you think this strategy has helped you over the past few years? Are customers and NGOs all falling into line now, on the back of this bogus neo conservative drivel that is pumped out on your behalf? Do you really think that deforestation is good because children need books, one of the more laughable themes of some of your friends in recent years? 

6.Now you are using a new tactic of dialogue and social media, through your nice new Rainforest Realities blog. My views on this foray into thedigital world are here. http://tiny.cc/np998

7.Your parent company, Sinar Mas, is making some progress now that Golden Agri Resources is working with The Forest Trust. So progress can indeed be made. Why don't you follow their lead? 

8.You think that creating an 'eco tourism' village with Habitat for Humanity and tsunami relief will help create the impression that you are a responsible company. They won't, and the first is a risible gesture, by the way.  

I have worked with companies that are far from perfect. I actually enjoy it. But where they differ from you is that they admit this, and they are involved in deep, lasting, behavioural change. They also communicate nothing on sustainability until they have actually done something. You seem to be adopting the opposite approach. Until that changes, it is clear to anyone other than the small inner circle of advisors you deploy, that your reputation and commercial viability with many of your most important customers will continue to free-fall. So many companies and NGOs want you to change, and would be the first to praise you and buy from you if you did so. I yearn to write a blog that heaps praise on your change of direction. So do many others.

But in the APP bunker, it seems this is not understood. I suppose you will carry on as you have been. I suspect you will gradually find most PR and advertising firms close the door on you, as some have already. They won't want to be tarnished by association given many of their other clients are your former customers. WWF, Greenpeace and others are not your enemy – ask the countless companies who have moved from confrontation to collaboration with them. To pretend that this is some western NGO political agenda against poor Indonesians is not only a distortion of the truth, it is a huge insult to your customer base, not to mention the communities you purport to serve. Your communications strategy is a disaster - a global case study on how to get nearly everything wrong at the same time. That is because behind all the greenwash there are too many unanswered questions.

As I have written before – people like me who make a living out of advising companies take something of a risk criticising brands in public. In your case, it is one I am willing to take. The world is changing, and increasingly you will find the most helpful consultants are also campaigners, who take the view that if we sit in silence in the hope of picking up a scrap of business here and there, we have already devalued the advice we have to offer. They are able to judge when to stay silent, but also when to speak out. I have spoken out, not because I want your business. I really don't. But I really want you to change, as do so many others. I write with no agenda, and on behalf of no company, NGO or publication. But it's time you listened to the clamour for progress that is all around you. If that means ridding yourself of some of the internal and external advisors who have done you such damage, then so be it. They are doing more harm to your image than you seem to realise.

Yours sincerely,

Brendan May

Today I write no more than 50 metres from the sea, in a house overlooking the English Channel. It is right on a pristine pebble beach. There is a clear blue sky, with Brighton and Bognor Regis peering at us far from the distance to my left. This house, which belongs to my wife's family, was built by her grandfather in the early 1970s – a shared family summer retreat that has given three generations and an army of cousins and friends pleasure over countless summer months. 

The next generation of the family may not be so lucky. The one after that almost certainly not. In 50 years' time, the chances are that if I am still blogging and wanted to return to my current location, I'd either be drowning or sitting in a boat. Even the British government isn't pretending that this stretch of coastline is one they can protect. If this little row of beach houses is lucky enough to survive at all, few would be willing to pay the buildings insurance premiums that will surely be demanded. Which presumably means that the balcony from which I write will, perhaps in my lifetime, be gone. 

The harsh realities of what is likely to come have never been starker than in recent days. We've had a report from Oxfam predicting that food prices are likely to double by 2030. The International Energy Agency has revealed that greenhouse gas emissions rose by a record amount last year, despite the global recession, leading to the highest carbon output in history. Limiting global warming to a two-degree rise (the generally accepted threshold for avoiding catastrophic climate change) is therefore probably now a pipedream rather than a possibility. We've seen the effect of a drought devastating crops throughout the UK. Water is being sprayed like mad on the fields behind this house. The National Ecosystem Assessment confirmed that nature's services are worth billions of pounds to the UK, yet around 30% of those services are being degraded. Greenpeace activists are bravely trying to stop the Arctic being destroyed for our lethal addiction to oil, which is the chief culprit for so much of the climate crisis in the first place. 

I fear too many people are sleepwalking through this crisis. In most businesses, governments and indeed in some NGOs. The general public is definitely asleep on the ticking clock whose warning alarm grows ever louder. The media doesn't help. The amount of news space given to Cheryl Cole not getting a job on a television programme in America and then repeating her misfortune in the UK actually symbolises a national disease, far more lethal than the new E-coli strain whose origins will doubtless at some stage be linked to some human interference with nature too. The column inches (not to mention BAFTA accolade) given to a troupe of incredibly stupid people from Essex says a lot at a time when any decent maker of drama, comedy or factual documentary is struggling to get anything of quality commissioned for mainstream television. 

Sitting in the sun as the waves lap over the sun kissed pebbles, a happy wet dog at my feet and a wife reliving her childhood memories, it's hard to get too down about anything frankly. But this simple scene, with its modest homes, quiet community life and gentle seascape masks a calamity that will probably wash this place away forever. It's worth thinking about when you choose your next car, buy your next washing machine, and decide which brands, politicians, media and NGOs deserve your loyalty in the coming years.