Boris Johnson - remember him - was regularly seen calling the leader of her Majesty's Opposition "Captain Hindsight". Given the message below, it inspired the naming of Extinction Resilience's very own Captain Insight.
It is a delight to introduce you to Iain Hossack, the visionary managing director and founder of Extinction Resilience. Iain, who holds a PhD in sustainability, is not only a Chartered Environmentalist but also brings over three decades of rich experience in sustainability research and practice. His academic journey in this field spans an impressive 30+ years. But here's a fun fact: before embarking on this path, Iain was a DJ!
A DJ - yes, really. For nine years, Iain worked in nightclubs and radio, including Scot FM (now Heart) driving forward new and alternative music. Then in 1994, somewhere between the basslines and the night lights, he had an epiphany: sustainability wasn’t just important, it was urgent. He changed tracks. He’s been working to save lives - rather than just playing songs about it - ever since.
But This is No Laughing Matter
The photograph shared here on the right was taken just before the UK’s first Covid-19 lockdown in March 2020. It shows Iain wearing an N99 mask - not just a casual face covering, but one scientifically proven to filter out 99% of airborne particulates. And here's the crucial point: he didn't just buy a mask. He bought a year's supply of filters. He documented it and took a date-stamped photograph. He knew it would matter.
This was February 7, 2020. At that point, very little was known about the virus in the UK. And yet, insight - not panic - drove the decision. Insight that came from education and pracademic experience. Insight that told him the government’s response to Covid would likely fall short.
And it did.
Within a few weeks of this image, PPE shortages were biting hard. Some care homes received out-of-date PPE. NHS workers were forced to buy their own protection. One ICU nurse reportedly spent £100 of her own money on essential kit. Meanwhile, the general public was told to wear cloth “face coverings"; a very distinctive term because "coverings" as opposed to "masks" only offered about 24% protection, according to well-documented scientific studies in the years following. Who knew? Captain Insight did.
Iain saw it coming. He didn’t need a government memo. He knew it was a respiratory illness, and that masks would matter. So he acted. And he recorded the moment to make the point that all that subsequently emerged was preventable.
Before the covid crisis, in 2017 the UK Government were informed from different sources about risks from our unpreparedness towards potential pandemic threats. On March 27th 2020 The Guardian newspaper - closely followed by The Independent - quoted a minute they obtained from New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group (NERVTAG).
NERVTAG advises the government on the threat posed by new and emerging respiratory viruses. The minute from 2017 states the Government were warned by NERVTAG of a lack of adequate supply of PPE and how, in the event of a pandemic, the costs of providing such supply could rise “four- to six-fold”.
Recommendations on PPE were made to what is now the Department of Health and Social Care. However several newspapers reported science-based recommendations were changed. The Guardian highlighted that the department wrote to NERVTAG “to clarify the detail of their advice ...”. NERVTAG's advice was then changed and the PPE recommendations significantly reduced.
Iain, foreseeing the challenges very early during covid's emergence, not only equipped himself with essential protection but also documented it, understanding the government's response would, with a very high probability, be lacking. His insight underscores the importance of preparedness, a core tenet of Extinction Resilience's message.
Not Hindsight. Insight.
This isn’t about a single prescient act. It’s about what it represents.
The UK, like many - if not all - countries, suffers from a chronic undervaluing and misunderstanding of what sustainability expertise actually is. Let’s be clear: a true sustainability expert is not a local authority officer handed a green brief and told to stay in their lane. Nor are they the corporate sustainability leads buried inside marketing departments.
A sustainability expert - done properly - is not a PR function. They are a radar. A forward-scanning, cross-disciplinary interpreter of complex systems: social, environmental, economic, historical, and behavioural. They don’t make all the decisions—but they can see the patterns before others do. And they speak truth to power. Or try to, if power’s listening.
And here’s the deeper truth: this kind of knowledge didn’t come from academia, and it didn’t come from government either - because neither have studied the system deeply enough to produce it. That’s why Iain recognised a long time ago that pracademia was necessary. It had to be built in the space between; from inside the machine, not just observing it. It’s rooted in lived institutional experience, cross-sectoral analysis, and years of applied sustainability-based analysis.
This is Iain's uniquely forged insight. This isn’t just thinking about systems; it’s operating inside them, recognising failure points in real time, and knowing when and how to act. Ten years in university and ten years pracademic experience in all levels of Scottish governance and UK liaison. Hard-won experience in both the academic and political trenches. This is not about claiming authority - it’s about showing what qualifies someone to act as an early warning system, and to be believed when the alarm is sounded.
If Others Existed, They’d Have Acted
Some ask: where were the others? Why weren’t more people acting early?
The answer is uncomfortable. If others with this kind of capability had been present - within government, advisory groups, or corporations - they would have done the same. But they didn’t. Because they weren’t there.
This skillset will, in time, become standard in all major institutions. But it is not standard now. And because it is so rare, most decision-makers don’t yet know what to look for. The function doesn’t appear in hiring frameworks. It doesn’t fit into a procurement line. It isn’t taught in most MBAs. So how can leaders select it if they don’t know it exists?
That’s why this intervention matters.
Iain is not just offering insight—he is showing what insightful leadership looks like, and why it must be embedded.
The Call to Institutions
Every system - corporate, civic, or governmental - needs internal radar. That radar must come from those with true sustainability fluency - not just theoretical knowledge, but the ability to act ahead of the curve. For Iain, that fluency wasn’t stumbled upon. It was earned. He made the deliberate decision to step beyond the limits of academia and into the real machinery of governance. He chose to go where no one else did, to gain pracademic experience - not because it was obvious, but because it was necessary. And had others done the same, they might have seen what he saw. But they didn’t.
That’s why the photograph matters. It wasn’t taken out of fear - it was taken to raise the alarm. To begin a new conversation. To show what real sustainability insight looks like in practice, and to start embedding it where it belongs: at the heart of our institutions.
That voice must be given the right to speak truth to power—and the expectation that power will listen.
This isn’t an optional function for the future. It’s a core capability for surviving what’s ahead.
Conclusion: Insight Is the New Currency
In a world of escalating uncertainty, hindsight is always too late. What institutions need now isn’t just generic preparedness; it’s qualified insight. That means embedding sustainability expertise that’s real, rare, and grounded in action—the kind of insight that can’t be picked off a shelf or hired through a job description, because most organisations don’t yet recognise what it truly requires.
That’s what Captain Insight represents: a one-of-a-kind capability forged through decades of hard-earned experience across governance, research, and applied systems change. Whether it’s helping leaders recognise and recruit the right talent, or directly applying this insight to reshape governance from within, Iain brings what others don’t even know to look for.
Let Captain Insight help build the internal systems your organisation will soon realise it can’t afford to be without.
Notes:
Extinction Resilience originally published the above article in January 2021, deliberately delaying posts about N99 masks. given the shortage of medical grade Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). The NHS were reported to be struggling to obtain supplies at the time. Iain Hossack took a responsible decision to stay silent until N99 grade masks were readily available again.
Iain Hossack PhD CEnv has been a public speaker for over thirteen years within many fora and festivals. It is well documented that he not only predicted the rise of populism, witnessed throughout the last decade, but for over twelve years has also highlighted significant panic buying events relating to, among other things, toilet paper and fuel.