Al Gore has taken on the root cause of most of our modern societal ills: unsustainable business practices. He and David Blood, a partner with Gore in  Generation Investment Management, have written a Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism:

Before the crisis and since, we and others have called for a more responsible form of capitalism, what we call sustainable capitalism: a framework that seeks to maximize long- term economic value by reforming markets to address real needs while integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process.

Such sustainable capitalism applies to the entire investment value chain—from entrepreneurial ventures to large public companies, seed-capital providers to institutional investors, employees to CEOs, activists to policy makers. It transcends borders, industries, asset classes and stakeholders.

And how would this work? And will capitalists willingly change their ways? Generation has also written a more in depth white paper on Sustainable Capitalism that makes a clear argument: the rejection of short-term thinking is necessary to increase long-term value creation. To allow capitalists to make a transition to a long-term timeframe in their thinking, we have to change the way the game is played. Specifically they recommend five key actions: