At the risk of sounding too anti-establishment and Damn-the-Man-ish: Business needs to change. If it doesn’t, then you can kiss this planet and all life on it good-bye. Current growth is limited by carrying capacity, and we have already surpassed ours. Business needs to re-design its drawing of material flows and energy from this planet to fit within the very finite and limited energy input the planet receives. If not, we will lose countless species of life until we reach the “final loss” point—the point in which our destruction of the planet will become a natural process and no longer need our participation [think of removing blocks from a wall--remove enough and you no longer have to pull blocks before the whole wall comes down of its own accord]. Though we only draw benefit from a mere one percent of the species known to us, “every species potentially plays the role of the canary in the coal mine, signaling not merely its own demise, but possibly our own.” [The Ecology of Commerce, Hawken]
Taken in a field west of Sacramento, spring 2010.
So, what then, you may ask, does this have to do with business? Why should a gizmo company in Poughkeepsie change its ways in order to save a freshwater clam in Tehran? It is in a corporation’s best interest to maintain life on this planet as long as possible, whether that be through conservation of raw materials, or environmentalism for the sake of the people. If there are no more raw materials to work with, or people to sell products to, how will that business do business? Who knows, that clam may hold the answer to curing cancer, or could be the last species keeping the planet in order.
The products we buy are not only artificially cheapened by government subsidies, but do not reflect the true cost of that product. The price of your Thneed may be $20, but does it take into account the persons displaced in developing countries in order to extract the raw materials, the lost topsoil and biota from the strip-mining techniques employed, the waters [and subsequent marine life] poisoned with petro-chemicals, the habitat and species loss? No. It’s nigh impossible to place a monetary value onto something as difficult as a plant species or topsoil, let alone the natural systems they support, so corporations refuse to do so. What would the price of your Thneed be if all that were taken into account?
Not quite a McWhopper: Buffalo sliders [left to right]: smoked cheddar with chipotle aioli,
avocado ricotta spread, stout marinaded with bleu cheese.
Let’s think of it in different terms: You are a business. You would like to live long enough to see that your great-grand progeny are raised properly with “character” and “old timey values.” But you love a greasy burger. We all know that a steady diet of double McWhoppers with fried cheese and taters on the side washed down by a half gallon of carbonated sugar water is a one-way ticket to becoming fertilizer. But it is oh so delicious, and oh so convenient, seeing as cholesterol dispensaries are on every corner of the civilized world. This is the way current businesses are doing business: the cheapest, most convenient way possible [got to make those profits!] But, if kept on that track, one day soon enough, you would find that not enough Lipitor in the world could save you. Eventually you will have polluted your body with cholesterol beyond its carrying capacity and it will cease to function. Exercise and fists-full of Lipitor might get you an extra couple of years, but it is not treating the root of the problem: delicious greasy beef piled high with cheese, bacon, onions, and lettuce. Businesses nowadays tout “green products” and “efficiency” but this is tantamount to exercise or medication. Business needs to restructure itself to fit within the natural systems from which it takes. This is not to say that it needs to change to an organic system, but more to act as an organism would. It takes only what it needs, and there are no wastes. What is not used within the organism becomes fuel or fertilizer for something else. All of the organism’s by-products are inherently good for its environment. Wouldn’t it be great if the effluent from a chemical plant was of better quality than that of the water going in? How sweet would it be for a carpet company to require no more raw materials to maintain production—to create new products by recycling existing used carpets, pads, and piles? How amazing would it be to meet the population’s food requirements without the use of petro-chemicals, fertilizers, pesticides, or over-watering? These are all practices that currently exist, and the companies that employ them are showing that it is not only more-profitable, but provides better products, improved working conditions, and a safer environment for the people and their communities.
I am not here to offer solutions to the problems of business, for I have few if any. I am merely here to offer opinions on what I, and others, have recognized as the key to truly affecting climate change in a necessary and positive manner.
Get a job hippy! ha ha ha ha! just kidding, good blog.
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