Somehow, the public’s opinion has started caring about sustainability of the products we buy and use, and it’s not just based on cost. And companies are responding to that, so there’s something at work here other than pure economic pressure.

The pattern seems to be: The public conscience drives demand, which drives corporate attitudes, which drives them to strategies that entrench themselves early as leaders in “something good,” which leads them to want legislation that gives them a competitive advantage because they’re already leading in doing the right thing.

If we could bottle this and replicate it, we might actually have a formula for getting ourselves out of a lot of messes that can’t be addressed with traditional supply-demand curves.