Taking stock halfway through 2007.

Is it presumptuous to take stock of this year's development (towards sustainability) only halfway through? Yes, it is, but anyway!

Something remarkable has happened this year: sustainability and climate change are on the agenda and will remain so, no matter what. No doubt the trigger (or the ratchet) was Sir Nicholas Stern's review and the way it framed the issues in both political and economic terms. A framework that also enabled businesses to see their role in the game, their threats and their opportunities.

One clear sign that we have reached new levels of insight is that the political world has the issues on their agenda for all summit meetings in spite of the fact that world crisis of all sorts demand their attention. Another sign in the political sky is that many politicians demand action instead of reports, a thing that we (their obedient servants) must learn to deal with.

Another clear sign is that businesses are gradually more and more aware that "greenwash" is not doing them any good. Customers may not be able to see into all details of what is offered to them, but they can smell rat a long way off.

There is, and will hopefully remain, criticism of some statements. Also of this blog. If everybody thinks the same it may very well end up that nobody thinks.

Also in the criticism, though, there are traces that suggest the signposts are moving. Some economists, like Martin Weitzman, criticise the Stern review, but more for the methods than for the conclusions. He relies in his criticism on William Cline, who already claimed scepticism in 1992 towards global warming and the measures, but ended up with the conclusion that paying to avoid the damage was like any other insurance: you pay for it in hope that nothing will happen, but it enables you to limit the damage if something does happen.

One thought that we should not dismiss is that we (readers and writers on this blog) can all partly to take credit for the movement! The sociologist Manuel Castells in his huge work "The information age" postulated that the networking society with its new media (this was before the blog was born) was a tremendous force for change towards the better rather than the worse.

So, let us all take a breath, relax a bit and then come back after the summer with even more force to create a sustainable world!