This is the first blog in a ‘Sustainability Insight' online series created by the Society for Sustainable Business - a group of business and academic professionals motivated to provide leadership to accelerate the change to an economically viable, environmentally sustainable and socially healthy society.

As the pressure to be green and to do green heats up, we run into two major questions: what criteria do we use to choose the route we follow, and how do we know that we are successful?

Let's deal with the criteria. Any green measures may have pluses and minuses. We are working with a system that is not just the region, the state or the nation, but one that is ultimately global. How can we get to a level where the decisions we take are in the best interests of people everywhere and the environment?

There is only one way that I have found, and that is to define an Ideal Vision for the world that we and our grandchildren's children would be happy to live in. This was the idea of Professor Emeritus Roger Kaufman of Florida State University in 1992. Kaufman has tested this proposition on five continents with different political systems, different religions and different races, and has found an amazing degree of unanimity about the future that people really want.

So what do they agree on? They agree on: no war, no disease, no crime, no accidents, and they want health, happiness and a chance to live out their potential. There is also a growing concern for the environment.