Vincent Dert 

A series of papers was pre-printed explaining the prior published patent application for a first-principals-based sustainability measurement system. In addition to measuring environmental and human condition impacts, the Impact Measurement And Conservation System (IMACS) automatically applies conservation to participating products sold by participating retailers and purchased by participating consumers, such that all damaging impacts are neutralized and the consumer takes home a 100% sustainable product. Under default model conditions, global warming would be reversed in 40 years. Fresh water withdrawals would be limited to sustainable available amounts, restoring the fresh water flows through watersheds, using reverse osmosis systems to provide the balance of fresh water needed. Wildlife areas would be restored to the scientifically required area fractions for each ecoregion in the same 40-year period, but it would likely take 1 – 2 centuries for global biodiversity to stabilize around the new lower biodiversity level. Except for the actual implementation, all technical aspects needed for this global restoration system are already fully developed or sufficiently developed to start their use now (DACCS, remote sensing of impacts). The existing approach to protect biodiversity and reduce global warming relies entirely on government action, varies strongly per country and is largely ineffective; extinction rates are about 100 times higher than background extinction rates, while global warming will not be limited to 1.5 oC, further increasing extinction rates. Implementation of IMACS would add a bottom-up approach by asking consumers to buy more sustainable products. The critical assumption made is that there is enough consumer demand to drive the growth of consumer participation in IMACS from 0% to 100% in 20 years. In this paper, I review the marketing aspects of selling more sustainable products and services. Under IMACS, the sustainability transition is in part driven by cost savings throughout the supply chain due to the use of roof PV solar, geothermal heat pumps, and electric transportation. These cost savings are much larger than the retailer’s cost to provide conservation and the remaining savings can be split between consumers (lower prices) and retailers (higher profit margins). For non-participating retailers and non-participating consumers, the costs of utility provided energy are expected to increase due to the need for intermediate (days – weeks) and seasonal energy storage (H2 electrolyzers, H2 storage and H2 fuel cells). This difference in costs of energy by itself will create an incentive for IMACS participation in addition to motivation based on environmental and human condition aspects. The conclusion is that there is already a large consumer demand for sustainable products globally. Consumers are even willing to pay higher prices for products that are more sustainable or that are made under acceptable or better human conditions. Since under IMACS participating consumers pay the same price as non-participating consumers, the percentage of consumers willing to participate would even be larger than when the more sustainable products were more expensive. The model assumptions of a 5% annual increase in consumer participation appears therefore conservative and a return to pre-industrial atmospheric conditions in 40 years appears feasible.