Buried in a survey of sovereign-wealth funds in the Economist is this sexy graph.
It shows the extent to which those obsessed with sustainable development, one planet living, energy security and peak oil have to set their sights firmly on the financial markets.
The graph shows how much the value of equities outdid oil between 1985 and 2007.
And it tells a simple story:
Better for an exporter to sell as much oil as it can today and invest the proceeds, than to leave the stuff in the ground in the hope of spreading production over the decades.
In other words, produce now while the going is good.
In my work in urban development, I'm starting to work on ways and means in which financial products linked to property might induce a more sustainable, efficient and healthy local market.
But the graph from Morgan Stanley suggests that innovation of consumer products is almost beside the point.
Financial performance of major listed companies and the relationship between sustainability and shareholder value is what matters.
And elsewhere in the Economist, there's bad news.
In a survey of corporate social responsibility, the magazine reports that two of the best-known indices - the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good - under perform the market.
And that AccountAbility, a British think-tank
admits to the inconvenient truth that its 2007 ranking of the Fortune Global 100 companies by their progress on building sustainability into their business shows no connection with their financial performance.
There is a message in this.
Unless and until we find ways to boost the price and value of virtue, sustainability may remain a composite, common sense, piecemeal phenomenon, rather than a critical object of competitive advantage.
