Category Archives: green business

Is Sustainability Still Possible?

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SOW13 CoverFor many years now, I’ve been reviewing the Worldwatch Institute’s State of the World annuals in Natural Life Magazine, because they are cogent reports on how environmental, social, and economic factors are impacting each other and our Earth. This year’s report is particularly interesting, I think. State of the World 2013 asks Is Sustainability Still Possible? – i.e. can we get there, and what happens if we fall short?

The word “sustainable” has become practically meaningless and is used mostly as a marketing term. Most “sustainable” products are just less bad than conventional alternatives. Because of the power of what the Worldwatch Institute calls “sustainababble,” the world has largely ignored the rich spectrum of political, cultural, and technological changes that would set us on the path to a truly sustainable future. Although the science of sustainability is clearer than ever, we still face the question of whether transforming our society into one guided by sustainability is even possible – i.e. have we passed the tipping point and if not, is there the will to do what is necessary?

This year’s book features contributions from Worldwatch Institute staff as well as from environmental thought leader David Orr; freshwater expert Sandra Postel, ecological economics pioneer Herman Daly, The Story of Stuff author Annie Leonard, science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson, and others. And, in doing so, it joins a growing chorus of voices suggesting that we do activism differently.

“Environmentalism, first and foremost, continues to be a game of defense – working to reduce overall carbon emissions, chemical releases, and forest loss – rather than a battle to transform the dominant growth-centric economic and cultural paradigm into an ecocentric one that respects planetary boundaries,” says Worldwatch Senior Fellow and State of the World 2013 co-director, Erik Assadourian. “The environmental movement will require a dramatic reboot if it is going to reverse Earth’s rapid transformation and help create a truly sustainable future.” This book points us in that direction.

We Need to Do More With Less

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wind farmSome of the principles behind Natural Life Magazine since we launched it in 1976 have been conservation, doing-more-with-less, and small-scale, personal solutions to the world’s environmental, economic, educational, and social problems. Sometimes that grassroots, personalized approach has seemed insufficient, even futile relative to the size of the problems. So I’ve always championed – in addition to individual change – the ability of “green” business to be part of the solution, at least to the environmental and economic issues. But as much as I’d like to hope that corporations and governments will eventually do the right thing on their own, I increasingly have my doubts.

And now, there is evidence from Germany that my doubts are well-founded. This article – The Price of Green Energy: Is Germany Killing the Environment to Save It? – describes how the German government’s rapid expansion of renewable energies like wind, solar, and biogas to replace nuclear power is taking a toll on Nature. The issue is also causing a rift in the German environmental movement, pitting “green energy” supporters against ecologists.

Clearly, we need to find ways to use less energy rather than just shifting from producing more using a different industrial process. There are some innovators doing that, including in the green building industry. But we have a long way to go. And the job starts with us in our every day lives.

Eco Nomics

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dollar signsEco Nomics is the name of a new column I’m writing for Natural Life Magazine, beginning with the current March/April issue. In a nutshell, it’s about nurturing your life and the planet, while making a living. The title comes from an understanding that the Greek word for home – oikos – is also the root word of both ecology and economy. It leads us to strategies for taking care of our home (and, by extension ourselves and our families) and the Earth, using new ways of thinking about economics and ecology. Or, as economist, author, and critic of corporate globalization David Korten puts it: “Imagine an economy in which life is valued more than money and power resides with ordinary people who care about one another, their community, and their natural environment. It is possible.”

In my exploration of this new economy, I’ll be looking at both self-reliant and community-based solutions for covering our families’ expenses. Some of the solutions will be new and innovative, others will recycle old, tried and true ways of thinking. They will encompass both self-reliance and conviviality. They will allow us to balance – no, to integrate – work and family, and to decompartmentalize our lives. They will involve both making money and reducing the need for it.

This is a topic I’ve been passionate about since the mid-1970s, when Rolf and I launched the home-based social enterprise that still publishes this magazine. I explored it a decade later when I became an advocate for telecommuting and home-based business, and then in the ’90s when I trained low-income women in self-employment and wrote a book called Bringing it Home: A Home Business Start-Up Guide for You and Your Family. In the past few years, I have written extensively about how new strategies of education, such as unschooling/life learning, are helping young people prepare to flourish in a new, decentralized, sustainable economy. Along the way, I’ve also been involved in a number of non-hierarchal, community-based alternatives in an attempt to change the page on the way we look at sustaining ourselves and the Earth.

I have learned many things from these experiences, including that when we make the shift to understanding money as a tool that can be used however we want – for good or evil – we begin to see the almost unlimited possibilities for using it to create change in our own lives and in the world. In other words, Eco Nomics is about addressing our own material needs (and a few well-considered wants as well) while keeping our local Main Street economies green and healthy too….and enjoying ourselves in the process.

I have also learned that there are myriad ways in which we can reduce the need for money in our lives – ways that can increase our connection to each other and the Earth, ways that eliminate greed and maximize the amount of time that can be spent living our lives.

So among the topics I’ll be writing about are the concept of right livelihood, Unjobbing and dejobbing, stretching our spending power and downsizing our expenses, home business and telecommuting, co-ops, food clubs and community kitchens, ethical investing, locavore economics, lending circles and micro-loans, green business, social enterprise, community ownership, alternative economic indicators, barter, local currencies, crowd- funding, redefining our relationship with money, and much more.

I’ll not only be discussing the principles behind these ideas and initiatives, but also providing examples of people who are making them work in their own lives and communities.

Coincidental to the start of this column, I recently read about the regressive new policy at Yahoo! where CEO Marissa Mayer has ordered that all employees who work at home relocate to company facilities. “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home,” read the memo to employees from HR head Jackie Reses. Um, no. Aside from how that’s pretty weird coming from a technology company, and the fact that there are many studies indicating that quality and productivity increase when people work at home (meaning it makes good economic sense), working from home is good environmental practice and is used a lot by working parents.  That is just one topic that I’ll be covering in the magazine column! Hope you’ll join me.