About two weeks prior to Amtrak-training up to this year’s Green Build Conference, a copy of The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken beckoned to me from a shelf of un-read books. Now, on the other side of visiting almost 3,000 exhibit hall booths while in the mega Boston conference building, it is striking to me how many ideas Hawkens presented in his published writings of 1993 that are coming to fruition today.
And despite my initial feelings of grief over the 15 year disparity, it is beside the point to be disheartened by the amount of time it has taken for industry and the public to create the progress I saw evident in Boston. There is no time like the present to educate ourselves about the emerging options and do what we each can to support emerging green industry and technology. I particularly enjoyed the life-cycle booths, which were businesses working to help assess the impact of products, as well as businesses in place to connect waste products from one industry to material needs in another, thus diverting potential waste into another stream of production.
Check out Hawken’s newest body of work: www.blessedunrestthefilm.com
For all those wondering if the ‘economy’ can ever be an entity with morals, here are some segments from the book commenting on the situation: “To argue today that the free market should control the extraction and sale of natural resources ignores the state of the commons and the free market. The market works to the benefit of the whole of society when it includes all costs and benefits. Only when the market accurately reflects the replacement costs of a resource (a virgin forest or salmon or Arctic oil) and the social costs of its consumption (tobacco being the most obvious) will society begin to respond to the market in a rational way.”
“The marketplace of old was consigned to a specific place within a town, it was conducted on certain days, on others not at all. But most importantly, it occurred within the context of daily life, to be observed, experienced, and modified. A high degree of social interaction prevented the market from becoming a monopoly, from becoming unfair, from becoming anti-social. The market of today is free, but in an entirely different way, because its freedom is partially immune to community accountability.”
“Competition in the marketplace should not be between a company wasting the environment versus one that is trying to save it. Competition should be between which company can do the best job in restoring and preserving the environment, thereby reversing historical price and cost incentives of the industrial system that essentially send the wrong signals to consumers. The ultimate point of cost/price integration is to fully enfranchise all businesses into the process of environmental restoration.”
“Business can provide meaning for workers and customers but not until it understands that the trust it undertakes and the growth it assumes are part of a larger covenant. As long as nature, children, women, and workers are abused by institutions espousing free-market theories, the real deficit will continue to grow – the difference between value added and value subtracted. For most people meaning is derived from just the opposite relationship, one in which one gives more than ones takes, where one’s life is intricately bound to the promotion of the common good.”
“If adding value is what business is, or should be, all about, then it follows that you can’t contribute values unless you have them. Our personal values, which have become so distant and removed from teh juggernauts of commerce, must become increasingly important and, finally, integral to the healthy functioning of our economy. Business offers us rich and important ways to improve the world. Every transaction in the scheme of things is small, incremental, seemingly inconsequential, but each moment has the potential to create real change.”
Recent Comments