A lot of people are interested in preserving the Environment. I admit I don’t do much about it (I’m more the armchair sort), but I am interested in it. To those who are out there doing it (planting trees, spotfixing etc.) - more power to you!! You have my respect. This post has nothing to do with you. This is about the people who are corporate bitches of the “sustainable Business practices” variety. I will say this out loud and clearly – That shit don’t work. Let me explain why.
What does “sustainable business practices” mean? It means that we will continue to do business with just about enough tweaks to it so that it allows the self-same business to run a little longer. If the tagline gets us a few tax breaks, so much the better. I don’t know of any company which has drastically changed business models or made business decisions on the basis of sustainability. Sustainability is good PR, but it is faaaaaar down the table from the bottom line. The jobs I referred to exist for posterity, and to employ mavericks who are willing to work for low salaries and pointless objectives.
Think about it. In the first place, the concept that we can somehow undo the damage we have done to the environment is kind of suspect. We can stop it from getting worse if we abandon all polluting activities right this instant, but the ecology of a planet is an immense beast, and is not easily turned from its path. Apart from that, the scale at which we are screwing things up is huge. Optimizations to the existing products/processes can only buy some time before the jig is up. Besides, let’s face it – corporates don’t truly care about environment. This is not to say that people working there don’t care, but usually when “The firm comes first”, clean air comes last.
Henry Ford (the first) said – “For an idea to work, it has to be right in time, and it has to be right in price”. Meaning someone making very expensive horse-buggies in 1900 would be wrong in price, and someone making very cheap horse-buggies today would be wrong in time. Neither would work. Today, the idea of environmental conservation is right in time, but I think that it is still wrong in price. We simply do not have economically viable substitutes for most of the stuff that is going wrong. This is why I firmly believe that the tide will turn not by activism, but by technology.
Activism is a fine thing, but it is not the solution here. It simply does not scale well. What we need is new, clean technology that performs at least as well as the current polluting setup. Only once we have these alternates is when the battle can be joined in the earnest by switching businesses to use them and making the enterprises actually sustainable.
New products that are cheap and yet eco-friendly will be immensely disruptive to the existing system. This is historically consistent (significant changes in living conditions occurs with significant change in technology) and the only hope that we have of turning the development juggernaut on its head and setting it in the right (or at least somewhat) direction. But since it is disruptive, it will face opposition, and THEN we will need environmental managers to carry the standard into boardrooms. But first that solution(s) that can be peddled has to be discovered.
So, here’s my tuppence – If you truly, deeply care about environment, go study the sciences. Try to actually solve the problem. Don’t waste your time and effort getting a corporate degree in Environmental Practices (or whatever they call it). It will be irrelevant and useless.
What does “sustainable business practices” mean? It means that we will continue to do business with just about enough tweaks to it so that it allows the self-same business to run a little longer. If the tagline gets us a few tax breaks, so much the better. I don’t know of any company which has drastically changed business models or made business decisions on the basis of sustainability. Sustainability is good PR, but it is faaaaaar down the table from the bottom line. The jobs I referred to exist for posterity, and to employ mavericks who are willing to work for low salaries and pointless objectives.
Think about it. In the first place, the concept that we can somehow undo the damage we have done to the environment is kind of suspect. We can stop it from getting worse if we abandon all polluting activities right this instant, but the ecology of a planet is an immense beast, and is not easily turned from its path. Apart from that, the scale at which we are screwing things up is huge. Optimizations to the existing products/processes can only buy some time before the jig is up. Besides, let’s face it – corporates don’t truly care about environment. This is not to say that people working there don’t care, but usually when “The firm comes first”, clean air comes last.
Henry Ford (the first) said – “For an idea to work, it has to be right in time, and it has to be right in price”. Meaning someone making very expensive horse-buggies in 1900 would be wrong in price, and someone making very cheap horse-buggies today would be wrong in time. Neither would work. Today, the idea of environmental conservation is right in time, but I think that it is still wrong in price. We simply do not have economically viable substitutes for most of the stuff that is going wrong. This is why I firmly believe that the tide will turn not by activism, but by technology.
Activism is a fine thing, but it is not the solution here. It simply does not scale well. What we need is new, clean technology that performs at least as well as the current polluting setup. Only once we have these alternates is when the battle can be joined in the earnest by switching businesses to use them and making the enterprises actually sustainable.
New products that are cheap and yet eco-friendly will be immensely disruptive to the existing system. This is historically consistent (significant changes in living conditions occurs with significant change in technology) and the only hope that we have of turning the development juggernaut on its head and setting it in the right (or at least somewhat) direction. But since it is disruptive, it will face opposition, and THEN we will need environmental managers to carry the standard into boardrooms. But first that solution(s) that can be peddled has to be discovered.
So, here’s my tuppence – If you truly, deeply care about environment, go study the sciences. Try to actually solve the problem. Don’t waste your time and effort getting a corporate degree in Environmental Practices (or whatever they call it). It will be irrelevant and useless.
