One last quotation I wanted to put from Paul Hawken:
"Our comfort and abundance is the foundation for the great differences we see in public debate and private discussions about the environment. From business and government, we are presented with the concerned but optimistic "so far, so good" assessment, a school of thought that biologist E. O. Wilson calls exemptionalist. This line of thinking relies on the ability of human beings to overcome ecological "laws" through invention, ingenuity, and gumption. For every problem presented by environmentalists, optimists have an answer: desalinization, fusion, deep-sea mining, space, and bio-engineering. Their conjectures are easier to swallow than the alarmist voices of environmentalists who say we are outstripping the earth's means to sustain the human species. Ever since the Reverend Thomas Malthus wrote his "Essay on Population" in 1798, there has been a dispute as to when or whether humankind would exceed the capacity of the earth to provide our daily bread. Books such as Limits to Growth and The Population Bomb have enlivened the controversy, not only because they were based on research and science, but because the arguments were made forcefully and dramatically. The concept of doomsday has always had a perverse appeal, waking us from our humdrum existence to the allure of a future harrowing drama. Yet another view held by a small group of writers and journalists (very few scientists, however) proclaims that environmentalism is a hoax, that we have been unnecessarily frightened, that environmentalism is a delusional scam from the political fringes to coerce others into a liberal agenda. A large and anxious audience is quite ready to wake one morning and find that, much like the thermonuclear cold war, our environmental bad dream is over, the opposing sides having made peace, and that we needn't worry anymore.
The view I choose is this: The underlying principles informing such cautionary predictions are largely correct, while the timing and nature of humankind's destiny with earthly limits is still unknown. This means that the optimists who say we will be taken care of in the future will be correct for the time being, until the day they are wrong, when we will all be in big trouble. The environmentalists, warning of impending catastrophe, will usually be wrong with regard to specific predictions, but are right in principle. What does this tell us ? It suggests we find a path of existence that honors both camps; that recognizes limits while using our innovative capacity to invent and reimagine our world to increase eficiency, decrease harm, improve our existence. In other words, we need to create an economy and way of relating to our material world that is not an either/or argument, but a means to create the best life for the greatest number of people precisely because we do not know the eventual outcome or impact of our current industrial practices. In other words, we need an economy based on more humility."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The inestimable gift of a future").
Showing posts with label A: Hawken Paul. Show all posts
Showing posts with label A: Hawken Paul. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Democratic capitalism
"the cash register is the daily voting booth in democratic capitalism."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The inestimable gift of a future").
It is good to remind ourselves of that. We can blame companies for polluting, exploiting workers, and other mischiefs, but often they do that because we ask for it: we care more about the price of the goods than about how the goods were produced and what impacts they have on the environment. Changes will come from people first. Use your power: be an informed and conscious consumer !
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The inestimable gift of a future").
It is good to remind ourselves of that. We can blame companies for polluting, exploiting workers, and other mischiefs, but often they do that because we ask for it: we care more about the price of the goods than about how the goods were produced and what impacts they have on the environment. Changes will come from people first. Use your power: be an informed and conscious consumer !
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Tragedy of the commons
"Biologist Garret Hardin's now-famous metaphor for the deterioration or "tragedy" of the global commons begins with the notion of a pasture open to everyone in a given village. In such a situation, the herder who overgrazes the most benefits the most, and the person who grazes a herd that consumes only his "share" of the pasture's yield is effectively penalized. But eventually the entire pasture deteriorates. In this case, when overgrazing becomes the "rational" norm, you are punished for doing the right thing, rewarded for the wrong, and all suffer in the end. This outcome fulfills what philosophers going back to Aristotle have foreseen: "What is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it." Hardin's pasture, however, is not technically about a commons, but an "open access" system where anyone is free to take as much as they want. Commons have historically been extremely well controlled and regulated by the communities to which they belonged; not until colonization and industrialization have they been widely degraded and destroyed.
Nevertheless, the solution to Hardin's dilemma of a deteriorating open access system would be a pasture utility, one that operated independently of the specific grazing and herding needs of the villagers. The utility would be managed to maximize income from grazing fees, and therefore would have no economic interest in overgrazing, since any form of degradation would reduce the value of the utility to its owners. The pasture utility would monitor usage by grazers so that income was maximized. The utility would pay careful and constant attention to yield, growth, rotation, and fencing. The commons would not deteriorate under such a guardianship, and the natural predilection to overgraze would be thwarted.
The pasture utility is a useful model for a mechanism to guard our own commons, whether local or global. Such a utility can maximize the strenghts of both the private and public sectors, without succumbing to the failings of either. Utilities are hybrid enterprises because they combine two unusual features. First, they are regulated by their constituencies through public utility commissions or other forms of public sector input. In return for accepting regulation, they are given monopolies and are guaranteed a certain level of profit. In other words, by allowing some form of public control, they receive a guaranteed return on their investment, a relationship that allows them to create and execute long-term projects, and attract capital while paying low interest rates."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Pink salmon and green fees").
An example of such a utility would be the Earth Atmospheric Trust (see also this post) for the global commons that our atmosphere is, and where the utility members would be every person on Earth !
Nevertheless, the solution to Hardin's dilemma of a deteriorating open access system would be a pasture utility, one that operated independently of the specific grazing and herding needs of the villagers. The utility would be managed to maximize income from grazing fees, and therefore would have no economic interest in overgrazing, since any form of degradation would reduce the value of the utility to its owners. The pasture utility would monitor usage by grazers so that income was maximized. The utility would pay careful and constant attention to yield, growth, rotation, and fencing. The commons would not deteriorate under such a guardianship, and the natural predilection to overgraze would be thwarted.
The pasture utility is a useful model for a mechanism to guard our own commons, whether local or global. Such a utility can maximize the strenghts of both the private and public sectors, without succumbing to the failings of either. Utilities are hybrid enterprises because they combine two unusual features. First, they are regulated by their constituencies through public utility commissions or other forms of public sector input. In return for accepting regulation, they are given monopolies and are guaranteed a certain level of profit. In other words, by allowing some form of public control, they receive a guaranteed return on their investment, a relationship that allows them to create and execute long-term projects, and attract capital while paying low interest rates."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Pink salmon and green fees").
An example of such a utility would be the Earth Atmospheric Trust (see also this post) for the global commons that our atmosphere is, and where the utility members would be every person on Earth !
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Strategic planning
Below is the fundamental argument I made to myself long before reading Paul Hawken's book, that made me choose my position regarding global warming even if, as a scientist in an Earth science, oceanography, I know too well that the models that are used to predict climate have too coarse resolutions and sometimes questionable parameterizations of the unresolved processes:
"From a strategic point of view, the choice is clear. Whenever you are faced with two different paths, each with its uncertainties and unknowns, the cardinal rule in strategic planning is to take the path that allows you to shift to the other path should your initial decision prove wrong. As futurist Peter Schwartz advises in his book The Art of the Long View, choose the option that gives you the most options in the future. Even granting status-quo defenders their argument that we know too little about global warming to warrant changing from a hydrocarbon- to a solar-based economy, even granting them their dream that technology will come up with ingenious ways to solve many of the problems with the innate toxicity of hydrocarbons, maintaining the present course is a mistake.
If we continue on the same path and find out forty, fifty, or one hundred years from now that the scientific projections about global warming were correct, it may be too late to mount an effective counter-strategy. On the other hand, if we choose to make the transition to an economy that runs on perpetual solar income and we later find out the CO2 buildup was less a problem than anticipated, we are still ahead on every count. We have eliminated hundreds of billions of tons of pollution from the air, ground, and water, and improved health worldwide. We have engendered a myriad of new, safer, and friendlier technologies to replace those deposed. We have not poisoned the planet or our bodies with the toxins produced in a hydrocarbon-based economy. We have created hundreds of thousands of new companies and many more jobs than we lost, while moving toward a world whose work and money are infused with meaning and vision, toward a just and constructive future. Plus we will still have all of the coal and oil that we didn't burn up, extending the life of current reserves far into the future of humankind."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Pink salmon and green fees").
"From a strategic point of view, the choice is clear. Whenever you are faced with two different paths, each with its uncertainties and unknowns, the cardinal rule in strategic planning is to take the path that allows you to shift to the other path should your initial decision prove wrong. As futurist Peter Schwartz advises in his book The Art of the Long View, choose the option that gives you the most options in the future. Even granting status-quo defenders their argument that we know too little about global warming to warrant changing from a hydrocarbon- to a solar-based economy, even granting them their dream that technology will come up with ingenious ways to solve many of the problems with the innate toxicity of hydrocarbons, maintaining the present course is a mistake.
If we continue on the same path and find out forty, fifty, or one hundred years from now that the scientific projections about global warming were correct, it may be too late to mount an effective counter-strategy. On the other hand, if we choose to make the transition to an economy that runs on perpetual solar income and we later find out the CO2 buildup was less a problem than anticipated, we are still ahead on every count. We have eliminated hundreds of billions of tons of pollution from the air, ground, and water, and improved health worldwide. We have engendered a myriad of new, safer, and friendlier technologies to replace those deposed. We have not poisoned the planet or our bodies with the toxins produced in a hydrocarbon-based economy. We have created hundreds of thousands of new companies and many more jobs than we lost, while moving toward a world whose work and money are infused with meaning and vision, toward a just and constructive future. Plus we will still have all of the coal and oil that we didn't burn up, extending the life of current reserves far into the future of humankind."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Pink salmon and green fees").
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Good design
Here is the follow-up on the previous post.
"In any endeavor, good design resides in two principles. First, it changes the least number of elements to achieve the greatest result. Second, it removes stress from a system rather than adding it. Bad design is pinning our hopes for environmental and cultural survival on a change in human consciousness and behavior alone, because we therefore depend on the highest number of uncontrollable elements--people--to undergo a great change. Likewise, bad design is having to institute several hundred thousand rules and restrictions under the jurisdiction of the government and expecting business to know them all, much less obey them.
Good design makes things easier and simpler. Good design seems natural, unaffected, and appeals to common sense. Good design for the commercial system accounts for and appeals to the innate behavioral modes of both governance and commerce. Let governance govern with a minimum of intrusion and with a genuinely "conservative" approach; let business be business at its best: humane and creative and efficient.
One of the ways to further this goal is to invert the old values and reverse the traditional cost-price incentives. We need a predictable and consistent market that recognizes the true, full costs of doing business and reassigns them to the marketplace, where they belong. We require a market economy that rewards the highest internalized cost, an economy in which business prospers when it is responsible both socially and ecologically. We need business to thrive by exceeding regulatory standards rather than by challenging or circumventing them. Businesses should literally compete to be more ecological, not only on moral or ethical grounds or because it is "the right thing to do", but because such behavior squarely aligns with their bottom line. In short, we must design a marketplace that obviates acts of environmental destruction by making them extremely expensive, and rewards restorative acts by bringing them within our means. If we do this, environmental restoration, economic prosperity, job creation, and social stability will become equivalent."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Restoring the guardian").
"In any endeavor, good design resides in two principles. First, it changes the least number of elements to achieve the greatest result. Second, it removes stress from a system rather than adding it. Bad design is pinning our hopes for environmental and cultural survival on a change in human consciousness and behavior alone, because we therefore depend on the highest number of uncontrollable elements--people--to undergo a great change. Likewise, bad design is having to institute several hundred thousand rules and restrictions under the jurisdiction of the government and expecting business to know them all, much less obey them.
Good design makes things easier and simpler. Good design seems natural, unaffected, and appeals to common sense. Good design for the commercial system accounts for and appeals to the innate behavioral modes of both governance and commerce. Let governance govern with a minimum of intrusion and with a genuinely "conservative" approach; let business be business at its best: humane and creative and efficient.
One of the ways to further this goal is to invert the old values and reverse the traditional cost-price incentives. We need a predictable and consistent market that recognizes the true, full costs of doing business and reassigns them to the marketplace, where they belong. We require a market economy that rewards the highest internalized cost, an economy in which business prospers when it is responsible both socially and ecologically. We need business to thrive by exceeding regulatory standards rather than by challenging or circumventing them. Businesses should literally compete to be more ecological, not only on moral or ethical grounds or because it is "the right thing to do", but because such behavior squarely aligns with their bottom line. In short, we must design a marketplace that obviates acts of environmental destruction by making them extremely expensive, and rewards restorative acts by bringing them within our means. If we do this, environmental restoration, economic prosperity, job creation, and social stability will become equivalent."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Restoring the guardian").
Sunday, April 20, 2008
The guardian and the commercial
"In her book Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs proposes that society can be viewed as encompassing two moral syndromes, the "guardian" and the "commercial". Jacobs argues that the guardian system, or governance, arose in territorial and hunting societies, cultures that guarded their boundaries, were suspicious of outsiders, and were deeply protective of their possessions. The guardian system is conservative and hierarchical, adheres to tradition, values loyalty, and shuns trading and inventiveness. The commercial system, on the other hand, is based on trading, and functions well when it is open, trusting of outsiders, innovative, positive, and forward-thinking. It values collaboration, contracts, initiative, and optimism.
Jacobs' thesis is that, ideally, society should separate these two functions as completely as possible. Trouble ensues when the two systems become confused about their roles and take on the functions--and therefore the behavioral traits--of the other. The virtues of one system become vices when exercised by the other. When the guardian syndrome--governance--intrudes with its hierarchical, bureaucratic assumptions into the realm of commerce, it founders, because it is no match for business in quickness and creativity. The S&L* fiasco in this country resulted directly from business's outwitting governance. Instead of insisting that industry create its own insurance system for depositors, government guaranteed that protection directly and thereby gave private institutions every incentive to choose the riskiest investments for depositors' money. [...]
Of course, the opposite situation also occurs, in which business attempts to take on the role of guardianship and governance. Every time it tries to do so, we suffer. In the context of the arguments of this book, the process might be described as follows: Business assumes the role of guardianship viv-à-vis the ecosystem and fails miserably in the task; governance steps in to try to mitigate the damage; business tries to sabotage this regulatory process and nimbly sidesteps those regulations that are put on the books; governance ups the ante and thereby becomes a hydra-headed bureaucratic monster choking off economic development while squandering money; business decries "interference in the marketplace" and sets out to redress its grievances by further corrupting the legislative and regulatory process in an attempt to become de facto guardian, if not de jure.
In the political arena, this struggle plays out in virtually every industrialized country in the world as the classic two-party schism of liberal and conservative. When liberals are in power, they understandably propose controls and regulations on business; in the more extreme forms, liberal thought tries to unite the guardian and commercial responsibilities with the guardian role predominant, producing socialist enterprises of marginal efficiency. When conservatives are in power, they attempt to reverse the regulations and give business carte blanche, invoking pious homilies to the free market and human enterprise, creating the future seeds of backlash, while avoiding the real issues of health and habitat. Conservatism has its own radical school of thought, wherein guradian and commercial roles are united but with commercial powers in the primary role. This experiment has not been tried in quite so thorough a fashion as the socialist ideology, but if it ever were attempted on a wide scale in the industrialized West, the fate of the ecosystem would be sealed.
Guardianship and commerce are trapped in a positive feedback loop, and neither is likely to solve the problems of ecological degradation and scarcity when reacting only to the excesses of the other. All of us suffer the consequences. When patterns of behavior in business repeat themselves again and again, as they do, and when the reaction of governance is another round of regulations, we would do well to consider whether "bottom-line" blame should be placed on "unruly" business or "incompetent" government, rather than on the design of the system within which they function."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Restoring the guardian").
* I think it stands for the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States (but I can't tell for sure since there are no notes in the book for that).
About how to improve the design of the system, see next post.
Note the description of the guardian (represented by the liberals) as conservative and traditional, and the description of the commercial (represented by the conservatives) as trusting of outsiders and innovative. Don't you think the names given to the political parties should have been switched ?
Jacobs' thesis is that, ideally, society should separate these two functions as completely as possible. Trouble ensues when the two systems become confused about their roles and take on the functions--and therefore the behavioral traits--of the other. The virtues of one system become vices when exercised by the other. When the guardian syndrome--governance--intrudes with its hierarchical, bureaucratic assumptions into the realm of commerce, it founders, because it is no match for business in quickness and creativity. The S&L* fiasco in this country resulted directly from business's outwitting governance. Instead of insisting that industry create its own insurance system for depositors, government guaranteed that protection directly and thereby gave private institutions every incentive to choose the riskiest investments for depositors' money. [...]
Of course, the opposite situation also occurs, in which business attempts to take on the role of guardianship and governance. Every time it tries to do so, we suffer. In the context of the arguments of this book, the process might be described as follows: Business assumes the role of guardianship viv-à-vis the ecosystem and fails miserably in the task; governance steps in to try to mitigate the damage; business tries to sabotage this regulatory process and nimbly sidesteps those regulations that are put on the books; governance ups the ante and thereby becomes a hydra-headed bureaucratic monster choking off economic development while squandering money; business decries "interference in the marketplace" and sets out to redress its grievances by further corrupting the legislative and regulatory process in an attempt to become de facto guardian, if not de jure.
In the political arena, this struggle plays out in virtually every industrialized country in the world as the classic two-party schism of liberal and conservative. When liberals are in power, they understandably propose controls and regulations on business; in the more extreme forms, liberal thought tries to unite the guardian and commercial responsibilities with the guardian role predominant, producing socialist enterprises of marginal efficiency. When conservatives are in power, they attempt to reverse the regulations and give business carte blanche, invoking pious homilies to the free market and human enterprise, creating the future seeds of backlash, while avoiding the real issues of health and habitat. Conservatism has its own radical school of thought, wherein guradian and commercial roles are united but with commercial powers in the primary role. This experiment has not been tried in quite so thorough a fashion as the socialist ideology, but if it ever were attempted on a wide scale in the industrialized West, the fate of the ecosystem would be sealed.
Guardianship and commerce are trapped in a positive feedback loop, and neither is likely to solve the problems of ecological degradation and scarcity when reacting only to the excesses of the other. All of us suffer the consequences. When patterns of behavior in business repeat themselves again and again, as they do, and when the reaction of governance is another round of regulations, we would do well to consider whether "bottom-line" blame should be placed on "unruly" business or "incompetent" government, rather than on the design of the system within which they function."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Restoring the guardian").
* I think it stands for the Savings and Loan crisis of the 1980s and 1990s in the United States (but I can't tell for sure since there are no notes in the book for that).
About how to improve the design of the system, see next post.
Note the description of the guardian (represented by the liberals) as conservative and traditional, and the description of the commercial (represented by the conservatives) as trusting of outsiders and innovative. Don't you think the names given to the political parties should have been switched ?
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Competition vs. cooperation (again)
Sorry to always come back to the same subjects, but the purpose of this blog is to gather a data base of quotations from my readings on the subjects I like.
"The concept that one business succeeds because another does not is part of the same thinking that has created the dichotomy between consumer and customer. But, in fact, there is a large and overwhelming body of evidence demonstrating that competition in human culture, whether it be in business or other endeavors, does not improve the species, but is maladaptive and far from being the most intelligent cultural strategy. The country we admire, fear, and dislike the most in economic matters is Japan, a country that places an unusually high, even extraordinary emphasis on cooperation, collaboration, and harmony. That does not mean that Japanese companies do not compete, but it does mean that they do so within the larger cultural imperative of harmony. One of the reasons we in this culture compete actually has nothing to do with business, but rather is the addiction to winning, to beating an opponent. If the purpose of this competition and winning is an enlarged ego system, then it goes without saying that we will pursue it endlessly because, as all winners know, the joy is short-lived, the hunger endless. A restorative economy will have as its hallmark a business community that coevolves with the natural and human communities it serves. This necessitates a high degree of cooperation, mutual support, and collaborative problem-solving. It depends on very different skill-sets than those that are being drummed into us in sports, movies, and business schools. Competition for the consumer or between businesses is impractical, wasteful, expensive and degrading to all involved. It imitates an immature ecosystem, and in this day and age, that is retrogressive, not progressive."
Paul Hawken, in The ecology of commerce. A declaration of sustainability, chapter "The opportunity of insignificance".
"The concept that one business succeeds because another does not is part of the same thinking that has created the dichotomy between consumer and customer. But, in fact, there is a large and overwhelming body of evidence demonstrating that competition in human culture, whether it be in business or other endeavors, does not improve the species, but is maladaptive and far from being the most intelligent cultural strategy. The country we admire, fear, and dislike the most in economic matters is Japan, a country that places an unusually high, even extraordinary emphasis on cooperation, collaboration, and harmony. That does not mean that Japanese companies do not compete, but it does mean that they do so within the larger cultural imperative of harmony. One of the reasons we in this culture compete actually has nothing to do with business, but rather is the addiction to winning, to beating an opponent. If the purpose of this competition and winning is an enlarged ego system, then it goes without saying that we will pursue it endlessly because, as all winners know, the joy is short-lived, the hunger endless. A restorative economy will have as its hallmark a business community that coevolves with the natural and human communities it serves. This necessitates a high degree of cooperation, mutual support, and collaborative problem-solving. It depends on very different skill-sets than those that are being drummed into us in sports, movies, and business schools. Competition for the consumer or between businesses is impractical, wasteful, expensive and degrading to all involved. It imitates an immature ecosystem, and in this day and age, that is retrogressive, not progressive."
Paul Hawken, in The ecology of commerce. A declaration of sustainability, chapter "The opportunity of insignificance".
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Will is the soil from which hope arises
"In the movie Awakenings, there is a scene in which an elderly woman sits motionless, confined to a wheelchair because of childhood encephalitis. The Oliver Sacks character in the movie, played by Robin Williams, fails to get any response from this woman through conversation or standard stimuli until he accidentally drops an object into her lap. She immediately reaches out to catch it. Sacks pauses to consider what has happened. He then steps back and tosses a tennis ball, with the same result: a precise catch by a woman who heretofore has been silent and immobile. When pressed by his supervising clinician as to how and why this woman can dexterously catch a tossed ball, Sacks replies that she has borrowed the "will" of the ball.
I have seen the movie again and it is this particular phrase that has stuck with me. We all borrow will: from our parents as we grow up, from coaches or mentors, even from stars and famous personages with whom we connect in less immediate ways. It is our will that is the substance of our life. When we lose it, we are on a path to a kind of death, since will is the soil from which hope arises."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The opportunity of insignificance").
I have seen the movie again and it is this particular phrase that has stuck with me. We all borrow will: from our parents as we grow up, from coaches or mentors, even from stars and famous personages with whom we connect in less immediate ways. It is our will that is the substance of our life. When we lose it, we are on a path to a kind of death, since will is the soil from which hope arises."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The opportunity of insignificance").
Sunday, April 13, 2008
On advertisements
"Author Joanna Macy writes of a type of despair that people feel when they experience the gulf between the grotesqueness of the world and the business-as-usual tenor surrounding it. At the level of the family, the gap between what a child feels and knows is right and reasonable, and what Mom and/or Dad tells the child is right, can lead to schizophrenia. A similar dysfunctionality can affect an entire society that knows the state of the world is one way, yet is told over and over again that the world is something else. That disparity finds its most powerful and pervasive form in advertisements.
By the time he or she graduates from high school, an American teenager will have seen 350,000 commercials. Children watch commercials at school thanks to Whittle Communication's Channel One, which beams two minutes of advertising for every ten minutes of video "news" piped into thousands of classrooms. The average adult sees 21,000 commercials per year. Of these, 75 pecent are paid for by the 100 largest corporations in America. In fact, corporations spend more money trying to get us to buy their products than we spend on all of secondary education in this country. Besides breathing, what do you do more than 3,000 times a day ? What you do--or, more specifically, what is done to you--is receive several thousand messages to buy something. Not all of these are TV hard-sells. Many are marketing messages on T-shirts, shopping bags, license plates, or even stenciled on your oranges and lemons. The others are billboards, radio spots, signs, movies, newspaper ads, labels on the outside of clothing, or sponsorships at operas and sporting events. When you arrive home in the evening, one of the first things you do is collect the flyers, junk mail, catalogs, envelopes from non-profit groups containing "personalized" letters, and free samples of shampoo hanging on your doorknob. Then the computer-generated junk phone calls start during dinner.
Few of the 3,000 daily marketing messages you receive are by invitation. The fact that we are free to ignore any one particular ad doesn't diminish the fact that the commercial environment as a whole is coercive. We cannot ignore it for it is where we live. There is no other place. With the newspaper readership trailing off, and book reading likewise, TV has become America's intellectual environment. Our minds are being addressed by addictive media serving corporate sponsors whose purpose is to rearrange "reality" so that viewers forgot the world around them.
Advertising is needed to inform, direct, and educate, but in its present form, it is an invasive expression of commerce. Advertising creates envy and a sense of inadequacy; it is responsible for mediocre TV programming because the lower denominators of taste produce the highest ratings; it deceives young and old alike into purchases that are inappropriate, unnecessary, or wasteful, feeding the frenzy of consumption that is responsible for civilization's overshooting present carrying capacity. It is a type of "disvalue", the removal of value from a product by transferring the monies that should go into quality to promotion and hyperbole instead. Mass-market advertising reinforces economic centralization because of the high costs required; it is anti-democratic because it is not designed to allow dissenting voices that challenge the product's value or merits, and serves no social needs. Advertising permeates our souls, and denigrates women, the intellect, and spirituality."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "When an ethic is not an ethic").
This text expresses perfectly what I feel about advertisements. So when French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced at the beginning of the year that he wanted to suppress advertisements on the French public national television channels, I for once had to applaud him. But then I was surprised to realize how many people were unhappy about that, not just people having stakes in the advertisement business, but even some people with whom I share many ideas like my friend Davy (see his post on his blog). Have advertisements brainwashed everybody ?
By the time he or she graduates from high school, an American teenager will have seen 350,000 commercials. Children watch commercials at school thanks to Whittle Communication's Channel One, which beams two minutes of advertising for every ten minutes of video "news" piped into thousands of classrooms. The average adult sees 21,000 commercials per year. Of these, 75 pecent are paid for by the 100 largest corporations in America. In fact, corporations spend more money trying to get us to buy their products than we spend on all of secondary education in this country. Besides breathing, what do you do more than 3,000 times a day ? What you do--or, more specifically, what is done to you--is receive several thousand messages to buy something. Not all of these are TV hard-sells. Many are marketing messages on T-shirts, shopping bags, license plates, or even stenciled on your oranges and lemons. The others are billboards, radio spots, signs, movies, newspaper ads, labels on the outside of clothing, or sponsorships at operas and sporting events. When you arrive home in the evening, one of the first things you do is collect the flyers, junk mail, catalogs, envelopes from non-profit groups containing "personalized" letters, and free samples of shampoo hanging on your doorknob. Then the computer-generated junk phone calls start during dinner.
Few of the 3,000 daily marketing messages you receive are by invitation. The fact that we are free to ignore any one particular ad doesn't diminish the fact that the commercial environment as a whole is coercive. We cannot ignore it for it is where we live. There is no other place. With the newspaper readership trailing off, and book reading likewise, TV has become America's intellectual environment. Our minds are being addressed by addictive media serving corporate sponsors whose purpose is to rearrange "reality" so that viewers forgot the world around them.
Advertising is needed to inform, direct, and educate, but in its present form, it is an invasive expression of commerce. Advertising creates envy and a sense of inadequacy; it is responsible for mediocre TV programming because the lower denominators of taste produce the highest ratings; it deceives young and old alike into purchases that are inappropriate, unnecessary, or wasteful, feeding the frenzy of consumption that is responsible for civilization's overshooting present carrying capacity. It is a type of "disvalue", the removal of value from a product by transferring the monies that should go into quality to promotion and hyperbole instead. Mass-market advertising reinforces economic centralization because of the high costs required; it is anti-democratic because it is not designed to allow dissenting voices that challenge the product's value or merits, and serves no social needs. Advertising permeates our souls, and denigrates women, the intellect, and spirituality."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "When an ethic is not an ethic").
This text expresses perfectly what I feel about advertisements. So when French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced at the beginning of the year that he wanted to suppress advertisements on the French public national television channels, I for once had to applaud him. But then I was surprised to realize how many people were unhappy about that, not just people having stakes in the advertisement business, but even some people with whom I share many ideas like my friend Davy (see his post on his blog). Have advertisements brainwashed everybody ?
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
Addiction
"At the core, an addiction is a way to keep ourselves from feeling. Thus, anything we do that keeps us from knowing ourselves and fully experiencing the world around us can become an addiction. Work, television, food, money, sex, sports, and other activities can all be addictive when we rely on them to avoid dealing with inner problems or deeper emotions. For every addiction there is a fix, an experience that we repeat over and over again, giving us the illusion that we are alive, while in fact numbing us to the real world and our real self, until it damages or destroys us.
The extension to corporate behavior is clear. We can become addicted to the deal, the power, the action, the excitement, the conflict, the aggression, the victories, the defeats, addicted even to the chaos and the stress, addicted to the point at which we feel empowered to do anything as long as it is legal (and perhaps not even legal), oblivious to many if not all of the effects of our actions on the environment, on society, or on ourselves."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "When an ethic is not an ethic").
The extension to corporate behavior is clear. We can become addicted to the deal, the power, the action, the excitement, the conflict, the aggression, the victories, the defeats, addicted even to the chaos and the stress, addicted to the point at which we feel empowered to do anything as long as it is legal (and perhaps not even legal), oblivious to many if not all of the effects of our actions on the environment, on society, or on ourselves."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "When an ethic is not an ethic").
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
On the role of government
"Of course, free marketeers will argue that whenever government sets prices, markets become inefficient. Indeed, it will be a long time before the world forgets the demise of the Soviet system and its conceit that trading and prices could be mediated by government. But what a government can and must do is set the conditions of the market in order to enforce the payment of costs. We no longer sell human beings in the free market, and yet all were "legitimate" market-based commodities in the previous century. Government did not wait to abolish the injustice of slavery until the market "regulated" itself for the simple reason that it could not wait. Where harm and suffering exist because of market dealings--when the real costs of that market are not factored into the price of goods and services--we require the government as representative of citizenry to step in to prevent those abuses, one way or another."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Pigou's solution").
I like the parallel with the problem of slavery, but I should add that the government itself waited much too long before dealing with the problem. President Lincoln is praised for having put an end to slavery, but in 1858 he said: "I will say, then, that I am not, nor even have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races... I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." (quoted by Howard Zinn in Passionate Declarations--Essays on war and justice, chapter "Representative government"). As Howard Zinn goes on: "In January 1865 the House of Representatives, following the lead of the Senate, passed the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring slavery unconstitutional. The representative system of government, the constitutional structure of the modern democratic state, unresponsive for eighty years to the moral issue of mass enslavement, had now finally responded. It had taken thirty years of antislavery agitation and four years of bloody war. It had required a long struggle--in the streets, in the countryside, and on the battlefield."
The problem is that government itself is often controlled by the power of money from big businesses with interests that nothing changes. Therefore it takes time and large public involvement before something actually changes. The same is happening now regarding the ecological threats...
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "Pigou's solution").
I like the parallel with the problem of slavery, but I should add that the government itself waited much too long before dealing with the problem. President Lincoln is praised for having put an end to slavery, but in 1858 he said: "I will say, then, that I am not, nor even have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races... I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." (quoted by Howard Zinn in Passionate Declarations--Essays on war and justice, chapter "Representative government"). As Howard Zinn goes on: "In January 1865 the House of Representatives, following the lead of the Senate, passed the Thirteenth Amendment, declaring slavery unconstitutional. The representative system of government, the constitutional structure of the modern democratic state, unresponsive for eighty years to the moral issue of mass enslavement, had now finally responded. It had taken thirty years of antislavery agitation and four years of bloody war. It had required a long struggle--in the streets, in the countryside, and on the battlefield."
The problem is that government itself is often controlled by the power of money from big businesses with interests that nothing changes. Therefore it takes time and large public involvement before something actually changes. The same is happening now regarding the ecological threats...
Monday, April 7, 2008
Hope (2)
"Business must change its perspective and its propaganda, which has successfully portrayed the idea of "limits" as a pejorative concept. Limits and prosperity are intimately linked. Respecting limits means respecting the fact that the world and its minutiae are diverse beyond our comprehension and highly organized for their own ends, and that all facets connect in ways which are sometimes obvious, and at other times mysterious and complex. If our economy is "limited" by inclusion as part of the greater closed system of nature, those limits are no more necessarily constricting to a sound economy than a blank canvas was to Cézanne or a flute to Jean-Pierre Rampal. The natural world of sunlight, rainfall, and photosynthesis, of topsoil and coral reefs, of raptor birds and tropical fishes, of stamens and pistils and genes is a limit which can be circumvented only at the cost of the world itself. It is precisely in the discipline imposed by the limitations of nature that we discover and imagine our lives. It is only in the fullest context of the world as it is presented to us, and not as we manipulate it, that we may celebrate our humanity and create true prosperity. Such perspectives can lead us to a very different type of economy and way of doing business, one that will be healthier for all species, not only the butterfly and the owl, but our own."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The death of birth").
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The death of birth").
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Survival of the fittest
I think it is worth pointing out this misconception of the capitalistic interpretation of Darwin's theory:
"Business often invokes the Darwinian maxim of "survival of the fittest" to defend its competitive actions. The phrase is, in fact, a misinterpretation of Darwinism. Darwin did not speak of survival of the fittest; rather, he described those who survived as fittest for a specific ecological niche. There is a big difference between those two ideas.
But this is the way of industrialism -- "the survival of the fittest" as it has been incorrectly interpreted. The "winners" are the companies that consistently overstep and exceed carrying capacity. Corporate capitalism recognizes no limit; has no habitat."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The death of birth").
"Business often invokes the Darwinian maxim of "survival of the fittest" to defend its competitive actions. The phrase is, in fact, a misinterpretation of Darwinism. Darwin did not speak of survival of the fittest; rather, he described those who survived as fittest for a specific ecological niche. There is a big difference between those two ideas.
But this is the way of industrialism -- "the survival of the fittest" as it has been incorrectly interpreted. The "winners" are the companies that consistently overstep and exceed carrying capacity. Corporate capitalism recognizes no limit; has no habitat."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The death of birth").
Monday, March 31, 2008
The death of birth
I like this quotation from poet and essayist Gary Snyder*:
"The ending of the lines of so many creatures with whom we have traveled this far is an occasion of profound sorrow and grief. Death can be accepted and to some degree transformed. But the loss of lineages and all their future young is not something to accept. It must be rigorously and intelligently resisted. Defend all these plants, bugs, and animals equally ? Little invertebrates that have never been seen in a zoo or a wildlife magazine ? Species that are but a hair away from one another ? It isn't just a case of unique lineages but the lives of overall ecosystems (a larger sort of almost-organism) that are at stake. Some archly argue that extinction has always been the fate of species and communities alike. Some quote a Buddhist teaching back at us: 'all is impermanent'. Indeed. All the more reason to move gently and cause less harm. Large highly adapted vertebrates, once lost, will never return in the forms we have known them. Hundreds of millions of years might elapse before the equivalent of a whale or an elephant is seen again, if ever. The scale of loss is beyond any measure the planet has ever known. 'Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else.'"
* The practice of the Wild (Berkeley: North Point Press, 1990).
Quoted by Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The death of birth").
Even if I don't agree with him that "the scale of loss is beyond any measure the planet has ever known", since there have been some mass extinctions in the geological past with fractions of species lost between 30 and 50 percent (see the wikipedia article on extinction), what we could experience is of this magnitude, according to a recent article in Science (Richard A. Kerr, Science, vol. 318, 23 November 2007), which reports findings from the fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: for a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial level (we are already at more than 0.5 degrees), about 10 to 15 percent of species would be committed to extinction; and for an increase of 3 degrees, about 20 to 30 percent of species would be committed to extinction. Above 4 degrees, the study reports "major extinctions around the globe". The level that we will reach depends on how much more greenhouse gases we will continue to release into the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel combustion. The optimist scenario stabilizes around 2.5 degrees at the end of this century...
"The ending of the lines of so many creatures with whom we have traveled this far is an occasion of profound sorrow and grief. Death can be accepted and to some degree transformed. But the loss of lineages and all their future young is not something to accept. It must be rigorously and intelligently resisted. Defend all these plants, bugs, and animals equally ? Little invertebrates that have never been seen in a zoo or a wildlife magazine ? Species that are but a hair away from one another ? It isn't just a case of unique lineages but the lives of overall ecosystems (a larger sort of almost-organism) that are at stake. Some archly argue that extinction has always been the fate of species and communities alike. Some quote a Buddhist teaching back at us: 'all is impermanent'. Indeed. All the more reason to move gently and cause less harm. Large highly adapted vertebrates, once lost, will never return in the forms we have known them. Hundreds of millions of years might elapse before the equivalent of a whale or an elephant is seen again, if ever. The scale of loss is beyond any measure the planet has ever known. 'Death is one thing, an end to birth is something else.'"
* The practice of the Wild (Berkeley: North Point Press, 1990).
Quoted by Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability. (Chapter "The death of birth").
Even if I don't agree with him that "the scale of loss is beyond any measure the planet has ever known", since there have been some mass extinctions in the geological past with fractions of species lost between 30 and 50 percent (see the wikipedia article on extinction), what we could experience is of this magnitude, according to a recent article in Science (Richard A. Kerr, Science, vol. 318, 23 November 2007), which reports findings from the fourth assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: for a global temperature increase of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial level (we are already at more than 0.5 degrees), about 10 to 15 percent of species would be committed to extinction; and for an increase of 3 degrees, about 20 to 30 percent of species would be committed to extinction. Above 4 degrees, the study reports "major extinctions around the globe". The level that we will reach depends on how much more greenhouse gases we will continue to release into the atmosphere as a result of fossil fuel combustion. The optimist scenario stabilizes around 2.5 degrees at the end of this century...
Sunday, March 30, 2008
No limits
We used to say "Over the limits" as a greeting ritual every time we meet with my friend Davy. But I won't any more, sorry Davy... I just can't stand any more the overall philosophy from which this concept comes from !
Here is why, which is a follow up on the previous post:
"If capitalism has one pervasive untruth, it is the delusion that business is an open, linear system: that through resource extraction and technology, growth is always possible, given sufficient capital and will. In other words, there are no inherent limits to further expansion, and those who wish to impose them have a political agenda. This cornucopian paradigm asserts that the limits before us are irrelevant, that finiteness is a Malthusian misconception, and that economic growth can be extended indefinitely into the future. Such a position would be analogous to the reindeer on St. Matthew Island having a leader who proclaimed, when the population hit 4,600, "We've proved the ecologists and doomsayers wrong: We've doubled the estimates given by the limits to growth crowd and are continuing to grow."
This counter myth of "no limits" is so powerful that it appears ironically to be gaining ground, in a reflexive, psychological reaction of denial, even as knowledge of the carrying capacity of the earth becomes more evident. Ever-expanding abundance is not a theory based on science, or history, or nature. It is based solely on self-interest. Whether willfully ignorant or unabashedly hypocritical, at some point we must ask business to look candidly at the real world and see the skull-and-crossbones posted alongside ecological pathways, so that we can begin to create real solutions instead of illusory techniques of evasion."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
Here is why, which is a follow up on the previous post:
"If capitalism has one pervasive untruth, it is the delusion that business is an open, linear system: that through resource extraction and technology, growth is always possible, given sufficient capital and will. In other words, there are no inherent limits to further expansion, and those who wish to impose them have a political agenda. This cornucopian paradigm asserts that the limits before us are irrelevant, that finiteness is a Malthusian misconception, and that economic growth can be extended indefinitely into the future. Such a position would be analogous to the reindeer on St. Matthew Island having a leader who proclaimed, when the population hit 4,600, "We've proved the ecologists and doomsayers wrong: We've doubled the estimates given by the limits to growth crowd and are continuing to grow."
This counter myth of "no limits" is so powerful that it appears ironically to be gaining ground, in a reflexive, psychological reaction of denial, even as knowledge of the carrying capacity of the earth becomes more evident. Ever-expanding abundance is not a theory based on science, or history, or nature. It is based solely on self-interest. Whether willfully ignorant or unabashedly hypocritical, at some point we must ask business to look candidly at the real world and see the skull-and-crossbones posted alongside ecological pathways, so that we can begin to create real solutions instead of illusory techniques of evasion."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
Thursday, March 27, 2008
St. Matthew Island reindeer
The following example is for me one of the most important to keep in mind when considering whether we should believe in the predictions of the scientists concerning the future evolution of our environment, or whether we should listen to the skeptics. I initially read it in 80 Hommes pour changer le monde, where Sylvain Darnil and Mathieu Le Roux quoted it from Paul Hawken's book, which is why I wanted to read this book in the first place.
"Natural and human history are full of examples in which animals or humans exceeded carrying capacity and went into steep declines, or extinction. A haunting and oft-cited case* of such an overshoot took place on St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea in 1944 when 29 reindeer were imported. Specialists had calculated that the island could support 13 to 18 reindeer per square mile, or a total population of between 1,600 to 2,300 animals. By 1957, the population was 1,350; but by 1963, with no natural controls or predators, the population had exploded to 6,000. The original calculations had been correct; this number vastly exceeded carrying capacity and was soon decimated by disease and starvation. Such a drastic overshoot, however, did not lead to restabilization at a lower level, with the "extra" reindeer dying off. Instead, the entire habitat was so damaged by the overshoot that the number of reindeer fell drastically below the original carrying capacity, and by 1966 there were only 42 reindeer alive on St. Matthew Island. The difference between ruminants and ourselves is that the resources used by the reindeer were grasses, trees, and shrubs and they eventually return, whereas many of the resources we are exploiting will not."
* William R. Catton, Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982, pp. 216-217).
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
"Natural and human history are full of examples in which animals or humans exceeded carrying capacity and went into steep declines, or extinction. A haunting and oft-cited case* of such an overshoot took place on St. Matthew Island in the Bering Sea in 1944 when 29 reindeer were imported. Specialists had calculated that the island could support 13 to 18 reindeer per square mile, or a total population of between 1,600 to 2,300 animals. By 1957, the population was 1,350; but by 1963, with no natural controls or predators, the population had exploded to 6,000. The original calculations had been correct; this number vastly exceeded carrying capacity and was soon decimated by disease and starvation. Such a drastic overshoot, however, did not lead to restabilization at a lower level, with the "extra" reindeer dying off. Instead, the entire habitat was so damaged by the overshoot that the number of reindeer fell drastically below the original carrying capacity, and by 1966 there were only 42 reindeer alive on St. Matthew Island. The difference between ruminants and ourselves is that the resources used by the reindeer were grasses, trees, and shrubs and they eventually return, whereas many of the resources we are exploiting will not."
* William R. Catton, Overshoot, The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1982, pp. 216-217).
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Ecological emergency (2)
"This is the ecological perspective of the industrial age; we cannot hold onto it indefinitely, in fact, industrialism itself may not last for even one more human lifetime. At present, to compensate for the limitations placed on production by the carrying capacity of the environment, we are speeding up the rate at which we fish, farm, deforest, and extract. In other words, rather than facing the creative challenges posed by ecosystem limits, we are temporarily bypassing the problem by harvesting resources more rapidly, by driftnetting, mechanical deforestation, and factory farming. Science and common sense both dictate that such extravagance must eventually lead to disaster. It not only borrows from the future, thus threatening human societies in the long term, but it also puts intense pressure on other species in these ecological niches which depend on the same resources. As a consequence, habitats are destroyed, species become extinct, and in the process, the productive health of the environment is compromised and decreased.
Human populations are already being severely affected by damage to the environment due to depletion and degradation of resources. For decades, scientists and experts such as Robert Heilbroner, Paul Ehrlich, and Jessica Tuchman Matthews have predicted that resource shortages would engender widespread social discord, but there were no studies to support or refute those views. Recently, however, a team of thirty researchers, assembled under the auspices of the University of Toronto and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, formed the Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict. This group examined a number of societies and countries where resource shortages were already occurring, and their findings were disturbing: «Scarcities of renewable resources are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts may foreshadow a surge of similar violence in coming decades, particularly in poor countries where shortages of water, forests and, especially, fertile land, coupled with rapidly expanding populations, already cause great hardship.» Land shortages in Bangladesh, for example, have led to mass migrations to India involving as many as 15 million people. These migrations have in turn led to fierce ethnic clashes. To those who discount such theories by arguing that resource conflicts have been an enduring element of human history, the authors warn: «We maintain ... that renewable-resource scarcities of the next 50 years will probably occur with a speed, complexity and magnitude unprecedented in history. Entire countries can now be deforested in a few decades, most of a region's topsoil can disappear in a generation, and acute ozone depletion may take place in as few as 20 years.»"
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
It is worth noting that the Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict was taking place in 1990-1993, just after the Montreal Protocol, which regulated the emissions of ozone-depleting substances worldwide, entered into force (on January 1, 1989). Since then, the atmospheric concentrations of the most important ozone-depleting substances have either leveled off or decreased, resulting in a stabilization of the global average amount of ozone depletion, and the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol (according to the wikipedia article on ozone depletion).
This is a good example when proper international coordination and regulation can solve a problem generated by human activities but detected and warned-against by science, and finally taken care of by public and political will.
Why would we not be able to do the same for the green-house gases and the environmental degradation our economy is inflicting to our world ?
Are the above-mentioned threats perceived as more benign than the skin cancers associated with the ozone hole ? That would be a very short-term perception !
Human populations are already being severely affected by damage to the environment due to depletion and degradation of resources. For decades, scientists and experts such as Robert Heilbroner, Paul Ehrlich, and Jessica Tuchman Matthews have predicted that resource shortages would engender widespread social discord, but there were no studies to support or refute those views. Recently, however, a team of thirty researchers, assembled under the auspices of the University of Toronto and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, formed the Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict. This group examined a number of societies and countries where resource shortages were already occurring, and their findings were disturbing: «Scarcities of renewable resources are already contributing to violent conflicts in many parts of the developing world. These conflicts may foreshadow a surge of similar violence in coming decades, particularly in poor countries where shortages of water, forests and, especially, fertile land, coupled with rapidly expanding populations, already cause great hardship.» Land shortages in Bangladesh, for example, have led to mass migrations to India involving as many as 15 million people. These migrations have in turn led to fierce ethnic clashes. To those who discount such theories by arguing that resource conflicts have been an enduring element of human history, the authors warn: «We maintain ... that renewable-resource scarcities of the next 50 years will probably occur with a speed, complexity and magnitude unprecedented in history. Entire countries can now be deforested in a few decades, most of a region's topsoil can disappear in a generation, and acute ozone depletion may take place in as few as 20 years.»"
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
It is worth noting that the Project on Environmental Change and Acute Conflict was taking place in 1990-1993, just after the Montreal Protocol, which regulated the emissions of ozone-depleting substances worldwide, entered into force (on January 1, 1989). Since then, the atmospheric concentrations of the most important ozone-depleting substances have either leveled off or decreased, resulting in a stabilization of the global average amount of ozone depletion, and the ozone layer is expected to begin to recover in coming decades, assuming full compliance with the Montreal Protocol (according to the wikipedia article on ozone depletion).
This is a good example when proper international coordination and regulation can solve a problem generated by human activities but detected and warned-against by science, and finally taken care of by public and political will.
Why would we not be able to do the same for the green-house gases and the environmental degradation our economy is inflicting to our world ?
Are the above-mentioned threats perceived as more benign than the skin cancers associated with the ozone hole ? That would be a very short-term perception !
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Ecological emergency (1)
"Another measure of our wholesale plunder of the ecosystem is provided by estimating the net primary production (NPP) of the planet, defined as the sum of all photosynthetic production minus the energy required to maintain and support those plants. The annual figure arrived at is in the area of 225 billion metric tons of wood, grass, fiber, and food. Of this total, 60 percent is produced on land and 40 percent in the oceans. An oft-quoted study* suggests that our human economy currently utilizes, consumes, converts, burns or clear cuts annually 40 percent of the total NPP on land. In short, one species - our own - out of 5 to 30 million species (no one is sure how many there are) is directly and indirectly claiming 40 percent of the earth's production for itself. This fact alone should give businesspeople pause when they think their taking of water, forests, land, or minerals has minimal impact. If, as predicted, our population doubles sometime in the next forty or fifty years, we will usurp 80 percent of the primary production of the planet, assuming no increase in the standard of living. If our standard of living doubles in the next forty years - the accepted projection - we will quadruple our impact, a physical impossibility.
In fact, we may have already reached the diminishing point. We are already seeing many dangerous signs of this usurpation of planetary production, foremost of which is the loss of other forms of life - extinctions. Before we reach 60 or 70 percent utilization of the NPP, we will witness an ecological crash. Hundreds of thousands of species will vanish, because they will not be able to compete with us for food. These newly depleted ecosystems will be reduced to soil substrates into which we will have to force increasing amount of chemicals to grow decreasing amounts of food."
* P. Vitousek, P. Ehrlich, A. Erhlich, and P. Matson, "Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis", Bioscience, June 1986, 36-6.
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
In fact, we may have already reached the diminishing point. We are already seeing many dangerous signs of this usurpation of planetary production, foremost of which is the loss of other forms of life - extinctions. Before we reach 60 or 70 percent utilization of the NPP, we will witness an ecological crash. Hundreds of thousands of species will vanish, because they will not be able to compete with us for food. These newly depleted ecosystems will be reduced to soil substrates into which we will have to force increasing amount of chemicals to grow decreasing amounts of food."
* P. Vitousek, P. Ehrlich, A. Erhlich, and P. Matson, "Human Appropriation of the Products of Photosynthesis", Bioscience, June 1986, 36-6.
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "The death of birth").
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Issues... and solutions
"Business has three basic issues to face: what it takes, what it makes, and what it wastes, and the three are intimately connected. First, business takes too much from the environment and does so in a harmful way; second, the products it makes require excessive amounts of energy, toxins, and pollutants; and finally, the method of manufacture and the very products themselves produce extraordinary waste and cause harm to present and future generations of all species including humans.
The solution for all three dilemmas are three fundamental principles that govern nature. First, waste equals food. In nature, detritus is constantly recycled to nourish other systems with a minimum of energy and inputs. We call ourselves consumers, but the problem is that we do not consume. Each person in America produces twice his weight per day in household, hazardous, and industrial waste, and an additional half-ton per week when gaseous wastes such as carbon dioxide are included. An ecological model of commerce would imply that all waste have value to other modes of production so that everything is either reclaimed, reused, or recycled. Second, nature runs off of current solar income. The only input into the closed system of the earth is the sun. Last, nature depends on diversity, thrives on differences, and perishes in the imbalance of uniformity. Healthy systems are highly varied and specific to time and place. Nature is not mass-produced."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "A teasing irony").
The solution for all three dilemmas are three fundamental principles that govern nature. First, waste equals food. In nature, detritus is constantly recycled to nourish other systems with a minimum of energy and inputs. We call ourselves consumers, but the problem is that we do not consume. Each person in America produces twice his weight per day in household, hazardous, and industrial waste, and an additional half-ton per week when gaseous wastes such as carbon dioxide are included. An ecological model of commerce would imply that all waste have value to other modes of production so that everything is either reclaimed, reused, or recycled. Second, nature runs off of current solar income. The only input into the closed system of the earth is the sun. Last, nature depends on diversity, thrives on differences, and perishes in the imbalance of uniformity. Healthy systems are highly varied and specific to time and place. Nature is not mass-produced."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Chapter "A teasing irony").
Monday, March 17, 2008
The urge to create beauty
"Government, business, and environmental organization cannot create a sustainable society. It will only come about through the accumulated effects of daily acts of billions of eager participants. Some think humans are predatory by nature. I cast my vote with those who feel humans take the shape of their culture, and that shifts in culture can occur in rare moments with remarkable speed and vigor. Good design can release humankind from its neurotic relationship to absurd acts of destruction, and aim it toward a destiny that is far more «realistic» and enduring. The urge to create beauty is an untapped power, and it exists in commerce as well as in society."
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Preface).
Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce. A Declaration of Sustainability.
(Preface).
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