The science of sustainability is a mess. In 16 years it seems to have gone backwards as the world rushes on towards a frankly terrifying future. It is time it got its act together. Earlier this month, I attended a week-long blue-chip scientific workshop on measuring sustainability, organised by the Ernst Strungmann Forum in Frankfurt, Germany. Some of the best boffins in the business were there to discuss how sustainably we use, or could use, water, land, energy and materials - what you might call the four horsemen of environmental apocalypse. But no-one could agree. Nobody even knew how we could measure whether we are moving backwards or forwards. It sounded at times like some gruesome postscript to Jared Diamond's book Collapse, on how civilizations fail. Because maybe that is what it was . . .