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Paul Gilding (born 4 January 1959) is an Australian environmentalist, corporate advisor, entrepreneur, and author. He was born in Adelaide and has lived across Australia and in the Netherlands, he now lives in Tasmania with his wife..

His career has seen him serve in the Australian military, be global head of Greenpeace International, teach and research at the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership and advise global corporations. He is considered one of the world’s most experienced and respected authorities on the implications of sustainability and climate change for business strategy and the economy.

As an advocate for change that shifts the global economy away from infinite economic growth, Gilding published The Great Disruption in which he describes the challenge and opportunities that will arise from this profound shift. This led to an invitation to share his philosophy as the opening speaker at TED 2012, in his talk The Earth is Full.

Activist
Gilding started his career as an activist campaigning against apartheid in South Africa and for First Nations Land rights. From there he worked as a union organiser for the Builders Labourer Federation. After having 2 children he joined the Royal Australian Air Force. After several years in the RAAF, he found himself spending his weekends campaigning for nuclear disarmament, leading to a mutually agreed separation from the RAAF.

After several years campaigning against nuclear armed warship visits to Sydney he moved to Greenpeace Australia in 1989, working as the Coordinator of the Toxics Campaign and ran the Clean Water Clean Seas Campaign. Following the campaign’s success, he was appointed Executive Director of Greenpeace Australia in 1990. After 2 years in this role, Gilding was promoted to the International Executive Director of Greenpeace based in Amsterdam. He took with him a willingness to work with companies, rather than only against them to drive change, arguing that there were good and bad companies and by working with the good ones Greenpeace could undermine support for the bad ones. This approach was not aligned with the Board’s vision on the direction for the organisation and as such he left Greenpeace in 1994.

Social Entrepreneur
After leaving Greenpeace Gilding formed his own company ‘Ecos Corporation’ in 1995 to continue to test his theory that working with business and the market could accelerate social change. This led to engagement with major businesses across the globe on how sustainability could drive change while also creating value for the companies. During Ecos’ 12 years of operation, Gilding published numerous papers and thought pieces about sustainability in business, such as ‘Single Bottom Line Sustainability’ and about the progress of the world towards sustainability, including ‘Scream, Crash, Boom’ and ‘The Great Disruption’. His central argument was that sustainability must be a driver for business success, not an ideology if we wanted business to truly engage with it.

In a venture focused on using carbon trading to drive mass consumer action on energy efficiency, in 2005 Ecos acquired the ambitious but struggling start-up Easy Being Green. Over the next 2 years Easy Being Green installed energy efficiency products in over 600,000 households saving 4.3 million tonnes of CO2 from entering the atmosphere. In 2007 following the collapse of the NSW state carbon price, both Easy Being Green and Ecos Corporation were sold. Over the next few years Gilding focused more on his research and writing, including his book The Great Disruption and on teaching at the University of Cambridge.

In 2015 Gilding formed Disruptive Consulting with Joakim Bergman, supporting leading sustainability companies to drive disruption within their own markets.

Academic
In 2002 Gilding was invited to join the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) Core Faculty. Gilding is the Prince of Wales Business and Sustainability Programme (BSP) Lead for Australia, where he teaches on seminars to business executives. Paul has published several papers through CISL including Quantifying the implicit climate subsidy received by leading fossil fuel companies with Chris Hope and Jimena Alvarez, The Climate Emergency assessing the scale, timing and urgency of risks posed by climate change and whether an emergency response is necessary and feasible and most recently Methane, Markets and Food with Pablo Salas and Emily Cracknell reviewing the need to urgently focus on methane emissions and the impacts this will have on the food and agricultural industries.

Philanthropy & Strategic support

 * Changing Markets Foundation which he co-founded with Joakim Bergman in 2017. The foundation works to finance and support campaigns working on sustainable solutions by leveraging the power of market forces.
 * 1 Million Women (1MW) in 2009 - a campaign founded by Natalie Isaacs, with the support of Michelle Gilding (Paul’s wife), Gilding joined as founding Director alongside Murray Hogarth. As women make 70% of consumer decisions the team worked to educate women on how to reduce their emissions by simple easy steps, with the goal of 1 million women reducing 1 tonne each. In under a year 1MW had one of the highest membership numbers of the environmental organisations in Australia
 * Inspire Foundation in 2007 – Led by Jack Heath, Gilding supported the establishment of this online mental health service called Inspire Foundation, now known as ReachOut. At the time it was the world’s first online mental health service for young people. The service capitalised on the growing potential of the internet and is now accessed by more than 2 million people each year, Paul was chairman for many years.
 * Gilding has advised and written for groups such as Extinction Rebellion and the Climate Mobilisation, as well as being a contributor of Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration where he has published ‘War - What is it good for?’,’ Climate Emergency Defined’ and ‘Climate Contagion’.

Writing
Gilding has written a book as well as various articles for institutions, journals, magazines and more. Collected below are some of his most important and influential pieces.

‘The Great Disruption’ Book
In 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner and NYT writer Tom Friedman wrote about Gilding’s ‘The Great Disruption’ thesis. This triggered Bloomsbury to invite Gilding to write a book expanding on his 2009 letter, which was published in 2011. In the book, Gilding explains how soceities obsession with growth has led it to this critical moment in human history, the end of the growth-based economic model. He discussed humanities capacity to radically shift to a more sustainable model, whilst innovating and adapting to the challenges they now face. He explores both the consequence of inaction and the limitless potential of humanity to create a better future.

Single Bottom Line Sustainability
Published by Ecos in 2002, the report argues that only sustainability which provided financial benefit will be consistently undertaken by companies, breaking away from the “triple Bottom Line’ status quo which argued for action based on responsibility.

Scream Crash Boom
A letter to Ecos clients, in 2005, arguing how a global ecosystem crash was inevitable, leading to a new industrial revolution and transforming the global economic system. The letter detailed 3 stages of what Gilding believed would be the future. There would initially be a Scream, which represented the calls for change, followed by a Crash of the global ecosystem and economy, which would lead to a Boom, resulting in a ‘new’ industrial revolution, leading to a radical transformation of global systems.

'The Great Disruption' Letter
A follow up letter to Scream Crash Boom sent out in 2008, where he outlined why he believed the ‘Crash’ was underway. The strong response to this letter fostered the creation of the ‘Cockatoo Chronicles’, Gilding’s blog in which he continues to publish observations of the system collapse, as well as how he envisions the world adapting.

One Degree War Plan
Written in 2010 with Professor Jorgen Randers, this journal article sets out a response to the climate crisis and the steps to be taken for a successful transition to a net zero world, and the war like mobilisation required from government and business to prevent the collapse of the global economy from climate change.

The Mother of All Conflicts
Published in The Brown Journal of World Affairs, in 2012 assessing the conflict between chasing infinite economic growth and the finite resources of our planet.

Why I Welcome a Climate Emergency
Published in Nature in 2019, discussing the opportunity the climate crisis presents for mobilisation of technology and policy to address climate change which could have a transformative impact.

Climate Contagion
Published in 2020, detailing the pending shift in global market sentiment to recognising and acting on the climate crisis which leads to sweeping contagious action.

Methane, Markets and Food
Written in 2022 with Pablo Salas and Emily Cracknell and published as a Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, the discussion paper reviews the need to urgently focus on methane emissions and the impacts this will have on the food and agricultural industries.