Sustainability and substitution

It seems that one of the main characteristics of our democratic consumption society is the substitution property of money, goods, abilities and opinions. I mean that any amount of money can be changed into another currency or an equivalent value of any goods. Most goods only exist thanks to their "desire" value, not thanks to their "use" value. Any American, French or English ability can be substituted by a Chinese or Indian one. And any opinion can be substituted to another as they are said to be equivalent, no matter if they are accurate or not. Even in the democratic process, where opinions are just added to make a vote, they count for their quantity, not their quality. These substitution properties are a concern regarding the ability of our societies to care for common good.
In some extent, the implementation of certain sustainability principles may temper this concern : for example, implementing industrial ecology networks, caring for food miles or goods miles,or are acting for employability of local workers help giving non-substituable value to activities in terms of money goods and abilities, and consequently to opinions.

A new business model for car industry ?

Most people think that the next generation of hybrid or electrical vehicles will save the car industry, solve its environmental problems and tackle the externalities of its fabrication process.Well, I don't.This industry suffers from many issues among which are an inefficient revenue structure, and a huge waste entropy in both the fabrication and use of cars. The whole business cycle has to be revised to find new revenues and reach high environmental efficiency.

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6 steps for natural capitalism

Natural capitalism theories appear to me as giving a good thinking basis to work on service economies and new business models.
Let's remind that Natural capitalism values and integrates ecosystems services by :
> Dramatically increase the productivity of natural resources = Getting much more value from less
> Implement whole system design = Considering a larger perimeter to solve problems
> Adopt innovative technologies = Picking environment-friendly technologies
> Redesign production according to biological models = Implementing closed-loop manufacturing
> Move to a solutions-based business model = Delivering value as a flow of services
> Reinvest in natural capital = Restoring ecosystems to sustain eco-services

Green revolution ?

We cannot understand coming changes if we just see them as a green revolution. Having just a green revolution would just modify the order of top environmental priorities. It would change nothing to related social problems.