Wanted to add the insights of Neil Gershenfeld which I think is how we should frame these problems:

We've already had a digital revolution; we don't need to keep having it. The next big thing in computers will be literally outside the box, as we bring the programmability of the digital world to the rest of the world.

He was talking about personal fabrication in this context, but the 'digitization' of the physical world is applicable to the sustainability goals I mentioned. Using operations research, loosely-coupled distributed architectures, nature-inspired routing algorithms, and other tricks of the IT trade applied to natural resources, we can finally transition to a sustainable world.