Alan Atkisson writes an article which puts a lot of things in perspective and acts as a guide to the future to the people “in our line of work”. He says, “The phrase “our line of work” refers to people working in a professional capacity on the issues of sustainable development, or in training to do such work.”

He suggests that climate change has hit bit big time for three reasons. One, Hurricane Katrina; Two, Al Gore’s ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and Third, the Stern Review on Climate Change. Now the situation is in the political and economic realm.

Due to the Climate Change issue, the sustainability field and the professionals working in this field have a great new task ahead. To stop convincing people about the issue and “rolling up our sleeves, and working on scaling up implementation.”

The most important thing is,

…that professionals in sustainability will have to offer in the future is not ready-made solutions, but an ability to improvise, adapt, innovate, and dream up still more visionary-yet-feasible ideas about how to transform a global civilization or rescue ecosystems in trouble. This is going to require even more exertion, more creativity, more risk; celebrating victory and going home is not an option.

Here’s the summary: In the next few years, people who have been working on sustainability, especially where it touches the climate-and-energy nexus, are going to be seriously tested — not by resistance to their ideas, but by the ever-increasing demand for them.

Alan is so right. Even in my simple job things are changing. What was not possible in 2006 is becoming much needed in 2007. The talk is about implementation, about ideas, about what can you do?

When I decided to train myself to work in the Sustainability field at the start of my MBA (almost two years back) most of my friends thought I was a fool, especially from the money point of view.

However, things have changed in the last two years. I can see the momentum building. There is a greater need for people to work in this area and the leaders; both companies and individuals; who will be part of the solution at this point in time will have a great future in the coming years and decades.