A Declaration of Sustainability
The problems to be faced are vast and complex, but come down to this: 6.5 billion people are breeding exponentially. The process of fulfilling their wants and needs is stripping the earth of its biotic capacity to produce life; a climactic bust of consumption by a single species is overwhelming the skies, earth, waters, and fauna. As Lester Brown patiently explains in his annual survey, State of the World, every living system on earth is in decline. Making matters worse, we are in the middle of a once-in-a-billion-year blowout sale of hydrocarbons. They are being combusted into the atmosphere at a rate that will effectively double-glaze the planet within the next fifty years, with unknown climatic results. The cornucopia of resources that are being extracted, mined, and harvested are so poorly distributed that 20 percent of the earth's people are chronically hungry or starving, while the rest of the population, largely in the North, control and consume 80 percent of the worlds's wealth.
Since business in its myriad forms is primarily responsible for this plunder, it is appropriate that a growing number of companies ask themselves, how do we conduct business honorably in the latter days of industrialism and the beginning of an ecological age? Companies are coming to realize that they may succeed according to conventional standards and still be violating profoundly important biological and natural systems. The question is, can we create profitable, expandable companies that do not destroy, directly or indirectly, the world around them?
A hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, it did not seem urgent that we understand the relationship between business and a healthy environment, because natural resources seemed unlimited. But we now know that we have decimated ninety-seven percent of the ancient forests in North America; every day our farmers and ranchers draw out 20 billion more gallons of water from the ground than are replaced by rainfall; the Oglala Aquifer, an underwater river beneath the Great Plains larger than any body of fresh water on earth, will dry up in twenty to thirty years at present rates of extraction; globally we lose 25 billion tons of fertile topsoil every year, the equivalent of all the wheat fields on Australia. These critical losses are occurring while the world population is increasing at the rate of 90 million people per year. Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy. We know that every natural system on the planet is disintegrating. The land, water, air, and sea have been functionally transformed from life-supporting systems into repositories for waste.
There is no polite way to say that business is destroying the world.
Having always been environmentally conscious, I thought I understood the nature and the extent of the problems we face. But as I reviewed much of the new literature in the field, I discovered that the more I researched the issues, the more disquieting I found the information. The rate and extent of environmental degradation is far in excess of anything I had previously imagined. The situation was like the textbook illusion in which the viewer is presented with a jumble of halftone dots that reveals an image of Abraham Lincoln only when seen from a distance. Each of the sources I looked at was one such dot, not meaningless in itself, but only a part of the picture.
The problem we face if far greater than anything portrayed by the media.
I came to understand well the despair of one epidemiologist who, after reviewing the work in her field and convening a conference to examine the effects of chlorinated compounds on embryonic development, went into a clinical depression for six months. The revelations of that conference were worse than any single participant could have anticipated: The immune system of every unborn child in the world will soon be adversely and irrevocably affected by the persistent toxins in our food, air, and water.
From this perspective, recycling aluminum cans in the company cafeteria and ceremonial tree plantings are about as effective as bailing out the Titanic with teaspoons. While recycling and tree planting are good and necessary ideas, they are woefully inadequate. How can business itself survive a continued pattern of worldwide degradation in living systems? What is the logic of extracting diminishing resources in order to create capital to finance more consumption and demand on those same diminishing resources? How do we imagine our future when our commercial systems conflict with everything nature teaches us?
Constructive changes in our relationship to the environment have thus far been thwarted primarily because business is not properly designed to adapt to the situation we face.
Since business in its myriad forms is primarily responsible for this plunder, it is appropriate that a growing number of companies ask themselves, how do we conduct business honorably in the latter days of industrialism and the beginning of an ecological age? Companies are coming to realize that they may succeed according to conventional standards and still be violating profoundly important biological and natural systems. The question is, can we create profitable, expandable companies that do not destroy, directly or indirectly, the world around them?
A hundred years ago, even fifty years ago, it did not seem urgent that we understand the relationship between business and a healthy environment, because natural resources seemed unlimited. But we now know that we have decimated ninety-seven percent of the ancient forests in North America; every day our farmers and ranchers draw out 20 billion more gallons of water from the ground than are replaced by rainfall; the Oglala Aquifer, an underwater river beneath the Great Plains larger than any body of fresh water on earth, will dry up in twenty to thirty years at present rates of extraction; globally we lose 25 billion tons of fertile topsoil every year, the equivalent of all the wheat fields on Australia. These critical losses are occurring while the world population is increasing at the rate of 90 million people per year. Given current corporate practices, not one wildlife reserve, wilderness, or indigenous culture will survive the global market economy. We know that every natural system on the planet is disintegrating. The land, water, air, and sea have been functionally transformed from life-supporting systems into repositories for waste.
There is no polite way to say that business is destroying the world.
Having always been environmentally conscious, I thought I understood the nature and the extent of the problems we face. But as I reviewed much of the new literature in the field, I discovered that the more I researched the issues, the more disquieting I found the information. The rate and extent of environmental degradation is far in excess of anything I had previously imagined. The situation was like the textbook illusion in which the viewer is presented with a jumble of halftone dots that reveals an image of Abraham Lincoln only when seen from a distance. Each of the sources I looked at was one such dot, not meaningless in itself, but only a part of the picture.
The problem we face if far greater than anything portrayed by the media.
I came to understand well the despair of one epidemiologist who, after reviewing the work in her field and convening a conference to examine the effects of chlorinated compounds on embryonic development, went into a clinical depression for six months. The revelations of that conference were worse than any single participant could have anticipated: The immune system of every unborn child in the world will soon be adversely and irrevocably affected by the persistent toxins in our food, air, and water.
From this perspective, recycling aluminum cans in the company cafeteria and ceremonial tree plantings are about as effective as bailing out the Titanic with teaspoons. While recycling and tree planting are good and necessary ideas, they are woefully inadequate. How can business itself survive a continued pattern of worldwide degradation in living systems? What is the logic of extracting diminishing resources in order to create capital to finance more consumption and demand on those same diminishing resources? How do we imagine our future when our commercial systems conflict with everything nature teaches us?
Constructive changes in our relationship to the environment have thus far been thwarted primarily because business is not properly designed to adapt to the situation we face.