Sustainability = Innovation

In the September issue of Harvard Business Review, they featured an article entitled “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation.” The authors, distinguished professionals all of them, provided anecdotal solutions for businesses to become more environmentally conscious.
The buzz across the media and blog world is that sustainability and innovation are the driving forces of a lower carbon economy. What this spark fails to ignite is that those who control the means of production control where the innovation is heading and those that don’t end up writing articles about it.
The oil and gas companies dominate energy innovation. Their money creates cutting edge horizontal probes that can scan the crust of the ocean floor and are controlled by the retinas of engineers. Yet a better solution to concrete in buildings which emits 9% of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has still not been developed.
If innovation is going to be equated with sustainability we must address what it is we are trying to sustain. Sustaining resource extraction and the dependency on a fossil fueled economy isn’t what we’re reading about but the majority of innovation dollars are thrown in that direction. The oil and gas companies are perpetuating behavior that is far from sustainable. Innovation in the form of energy policy and regulation needs to occur for sustainability to mean more then just profit margin.