Sustainability. A buzzword in the corporate world, in the press and in global guidelines. Many people talk about it, some explain it in their own way, but few understand it. This is not the case with our guest, Marcelo Kós. A chemical engineer by training and an entrepreneur by trade, Kós develops products and services aimed at corporate and family sustainability. The FAUSTO interviewee, who has a holistic view of the subject, emphasizes the importance of dealing with it in a way that is closer to people, making it an individual responsibility. In this interview, Marcelo went to the heart of this widely-used, yet poorly-explained, concept.
FAUSTO — How can we approach the issue of sustainability beyond a corporate fad, like ESG?
Marcelo Kós: Sustainability is not a fad and is not far from the reality of people or companies. For any person or entity, sustainability simply means keeping something running, but sustainability began to be understood as an environmental issue and, as other issues came into play, such as ESG [the acronym for environmental, social and governance], companies realized that it went beyond the environmental. However, it is not just the company that needs to function, individuals also need to; that is, they need to be able to earn a salary, support themselves and, to do so, they need to work, eat — all of this, if we look closely, is linked to quality of life; that is, factors that allow us to live a more dignified life. I address sustainability from the perspective of what the word means, which is to keep something running.
Why has the concept of sustainability become empty?
In fact, the concept has become so complicated that people have stopped thinking about it. It has become boring, full of details and technicalities, and as a result, people have lost sight of what we are talking about. It has become something distant from everyday reality. I try to show that sustainability is not a marketing tool. The challenge, most times, is to explain it so that people know what to do and, from there, take the initiative, executing the necessary actions.
When it comes to sustainability, public debate tends to focus on macro issues. How can we think about the issue on a more local and individual scale?
Few people have a macro view of life; most people have a micro view, a day-to-day, short-term vision. If we start talking about projects that will take twenty or thirty years, perspective is lost. Many people barely know what their day will be like; therefore, long-term planning is very difficult for a lot of them. If you imagine that sustainability is macro, based on the concept that has been adopted, which is environmental protection, people get lost, because they can’t even see the sustainability of their own day-to-day lives, they don’t know how they’re going to pay their bills. But if we bring the issue closer to people’s reality, sustainability starts to make sense to them.
Can you give us an example?
For most people, family is the most important thing in life, so let’s talk about family sustainability. The guy starts saving money to make his daughter’s dream of becoming a medical doctor come true. That’s how, as a doctor, she will maintain her life and try to give her family a better quality of life. That’s an action of family sustainability. And people understand that.
And following the UN guidelines, people tend to expect more from the State and do nothing, right?
They expect more from the State because it is the State that does the big things, and they imagine that sustainability is something very big.
Do people who tend to raise issues such as environmental ones tend to feel morally superior?
Some people use it as a way to gain some kind of advantage. They don’t believe in environmental issues, but they take up the issue to enhance their own value. They want to be seen as defenders of the environment. And it’s not just about environmental issues; there are those who do the same thing with social issues. Sometimes their discourse is detached from reality.
Is sustainability also an existential issue?
Sustainability is a condition that the universe imposed so that life could exist. It is necessary because the universe is becoming increasingly complex. We know, through cosmology, thermodynamics and quantum physics, that it expands and, therefore, becomes more complex. The laws of the universe, however, require sustainability to maintain the conditions for the development of life — a process that has taken billions of years. Sustainability maintains the stability of the system — in this case, the Earth’s system — and this for an enormous amount of time, billions of years, all so that we can have life here. Our life is a necessary condition that the universe establishes. It asks us to be sustainable, because the more sustainable we are, the more we contribute to the stabilization of the universe. We have a unique, beautiful, wonderful planet, the only one that we know supports intelligent life. So, our responsibility is absurd, monumental.
Does increased complexity make human beings more skeptical or more radical?Increased complexity should make human beings wiser. According to what I understand about how complexity occurs, more resilience and flexibility would be necessary. I do not believe that human beings will become more radical in the sense of not accepting diversity; on the contrary, perhaps they will become more radical in the sense of not accepting it when diversity is not incorporated into a given system. Less complex things are considered to be something worse. We have the instinctive notion that everything that is better is more complex. When we break a glass, the shard of the glass is less complex than the whole glass.
Are the benefits provided by artificial intelligence proportional to the problems it generates?
Artificial intelligence is like any other technology, with the difference that it can become a self-aware intelligence. And we discovered this when we studied complexity: life is nothing more than a complexity that can perpetuate itself and, from there, create a condition of self-evolution. I see artificial intelligence as a possibility for improving many processes, which can bring great benefits, as well as a series of problems.
Does anything like this worry you?
What worries me the most is the current level of maturity of our society to use it. Technology has no morality: morality and ethics are given by the user. If we use it badly, we will feel the effects in a few years and society will fall apart. On the other hand, if it is used well, we will have the feeling that society will perhaps have answers to a series of questions that it never had before, and in a very consistent way, because it is showing itself to be increasingly capable of performing different functions in relation to our limitations as human beings. Depending on the level of complexity that we reach in a few years, with a level of quality of life much better than we have today, artificial intelligence will be a very necessary technology to achieve certain goals. However, if it is used badly, it can destroy the quality of life we want to have, in a sustainable way. It all depends on the user — and the level of maturity of the user today is very low.
Do you consider yourself an optimist?
I used to be more optimistic, but today I am more realistic. I used to be more optimistic in the sense that I thought it would be easier to convince people to be, for example, sustainable. However, the level of complexity that our society is experiencing, with the dizzying growth of technology, is causing an ever greater disconnection of values. This imbalance scares me: values are not keeping up with the technological tools that are being provided.
How can we address urgent issues such as sustainability in an era of narrative construction?
People today are very superficial, because there is so much information flowing around. When I try to talk about sustainability, I focus on complexity and quality of life, and I try to show that everything that becomes more complex is better. However, what I have noticed is that people have become simplistic. They increasingly want a quick solution — because things are becoming more and more complicated. They are impatient, insecure, and not interested in broader issues, especially because their daily lives change so quickly. Existence is forcing us to try to catch up with very rapid changes every day. However, in order to be able to live in this context, we have to understand the broader picture. The biggest secret is to be able to find the right communication tools and examples to show people that they need, in some way, to understand what sustainability is, so that they can improve their lives or try, at the very least, to help future generations to improve — or at least maintain the quality of life they already have.
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