The Great Transition Campaign’s roots go back to the 1980s debate about the meaning and implications of sustainable development. Then, as now, sustainability’s abstract call for a just and enduring mode of development found broad adherence, but little consensus on specific goals and strategies. Broadly, views have fallen into two distinct camps: reform and transformation.
The reform strategy relies on market adjustments and policy measures to hasten green technology adoption and poverty reduction. Critics of this mainstream approach find it inadequate for the task, as it treats the symptoms of unsustainability instead of the underlying disease. They fear it cannot overcome powerful countervailing forces: the growth imperative of conventional development, the resistance of vested interests, and the spread of consumerist culture. Hence, advocates of a transformational strategy seek deeper cultural shifts, a new sustainability paradigm to drive and guide development.
In 2003, to engage a far larger group in clarifying the meaning and communicating the urgency of a Great Transition, the Global Scenario Group segued into a new effort: the Great Transition Initiative. For over two decades, it served as a forum for enriching the scenarios, sharpening the theory of change, and spreading the word through scholarly essays, quantitative analysis, and public outreach.
In 2025, the fight for a Great Transition embarked on a new phase with the launch of the Great Transition Campaign. GTC inherits from GTI two unique resources—a rich body of scholarly ideas and the thousand-strong international assembly called the Great Transition Network (GTN). Inheriting this legacy provides GTC with a dynamic point of departure for a new phase of work that shifts the focus from ideas to action.
Timeline of Major Developments
Energy Systems Research Group (ESRG)
Founded as a nonprofit research and policy center on resources and the environment
Program Expansion
ESRG conducts thousands of projects throughout the US and the world
Brundtland Report
ESRG contributes to the UN's landmark sustainable development report Our Common Future
Tellus Institute
ESRG gets a new name to reflect the planetary, systemic scope of its mission
Partnership with Stockholm Environment Institute
Tellus conducts its international program in conjunction with SEI
PoleStar Project
Development of a conceptual framework and computer tool for quantifying alternative global scenarios
Global Scenario Group (GSG)
A diverse international collaboration on the prospects for world development in the twenty-first century
Great Transition Essay
GSG's valedictory publication, Great Transition: The Promise and Lure of the Times Ahead
Great Transition Initiative (GTI)
A platform of ideas and international network for shaping our global future
GTI Journal
New publication for exploring theory and practice of a Great Transition
Journey to Earthland
Paul Raskin updates and expands the 2002 GT Essay in Journey to Earthland: The Great Transition to Planetary Civilization
Great Transition Campaign
A new phase begins that shifts the emphasis from ideas to action
