Matt Bai, writing in the NYTimes today, asks a question that is on many minds in the aftermath of the Tucson tragedy, “Is the Anger Gone?” For anyone who hoped that the tragedy in Tucson might jolt the political class into some new period of civility and reflection, suddenly subduing all the radio ranters and acid bloggers, the days that followed brought a cold reality. He, like many others, is referring to the superficial tone of all public, not just political, rhetoric. If it were more civil, it would enable a wider range of responsiveness, but the apparent civility would… Read More
Continue ReadingSo Much for CSR
I often write about the failure to move towards sustainability in spite of the best intentions of the actor. What is advertised as some kind of greening activities or a form of corporate social responsibility (CSR) turns into greenwashing whether intended or not. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel prize for creating and providing microcredit, a rare and outstanding example of the business sector providing a model with the primary goal of alleviating poverty, one of the most critical steps in moving towards sustainability. Yunus’s model, which was build on a new form of bank that he founded in Bangladesh, was… Read More
Continue ReadingFree Will and Violence?
The aftermath of the Tucson shootings continues to demonstrate that our [public] understanding of why people do what they do still rests on an old model. To say that people’s actions are entirely internally motivated is to ignore much evidence to the contrary. I am not writing this to take aim at the specifics nor partisan aspects of the discussion, but to argue that all are off target. To say that one is not responsible for the consequences of some action is not the same as saying that societal norms play no part. Anthropologists and sociologists have long noted that… Read More
Continue ReadingWhy are we so angry?
David Brooks argues today that it’s a mistake to attribute the shooting in Tucson to political vitriol. The shooter, he writes, shows every sign of being a violent schizophrenic, motivated by something other than the current angry political rhetoric. Thus, it is a case of overkill (intended) to blame one’s political opponents and their spokespeople in the media for the tragedy. He writes, In short, the evidence before us suggests that Loughner was locked in a world far removed from politics as we normally understand it. Yet the early coverage and commentary of the Tucson massacre suppressed this evidence. The… Read More
Continue ReadingA Plague on Both Your Houses
Shakespeare foresaw the tragedy of unmitigated anger to innocents caught in the ties of family conflicts. Gabrielle Giffords was a member of the extended political family we call our two-party system in the US. Political, like family, feuds can end up in bloodshed and harm, whether real or fictional. Anger is a powerful emotion that is commonly ascribed to action that leads to violence and produces harmful results. According to many observers, we live in a particularly angry time. Stories of domestic violence or global terrorism are daily news. Efforts to calm seem less and less effective. One reason for… Read More
Continue ReadingThe End of Consumption[, as We Know It].
Ali commented on the last post that reducing consumption will not solve the problem of over-consumption, defined as consuming at rates that cause significant damage to the environment. His argument is that reducing consumption, ceteris paribus, has to be accompanied by increased savings that, unless they are stuffed into a mattress, re-enter the economy and produce more consumption somewhere else. This appears to be a variant on the Jevons paradox or rebound effect where efficiency gains show up as increased consumption. Again if all other things were the same, reduced consumption can be viewed as a kind of personal efficiency… Read More
Continue ReadingElectric Vehicles May Be Good But They’re Not Perfect
The new all- electric vehicles from Chevrolet and Nissan are attracting a lot of attention, as is appropriate for such a new entry into the automobile market. There’s no question that they are better for the environment than a Hummer, but not as much as most of the articles I have read claim. Slate reports: According to the EPA, the Leaf gets the equivalent of 99 miles per gallon—106 MPG in the city and 92 MPG on the highway, with an estimated annual electricity cost of $561. That would make the Nissan Leaf (shown in the photo) about twice as… Read More
Continue ReadingGrowing Inequality–An Addendum to Yesterday’s Blog Post
In another example of synchronicity, I stumbled into this excellent series of articles on inequality by Timothy Noah. The link is to the first of 10 separate articles. The whole series is available as a pdf. Noah presents a lot of good data showing the growth of inequality since about 1979. The gist of the trends are nicely displayed in a short slide show. There is much too much in the series to reduce to blog size. Noah ends with these couple of paragraphs. I find myself returning to the gut-level feeling expressed at the start of this series: I… Read More
Continue ReadingOut With the Old, In With the Old?
Another year, another yowler. I looked back at the year-end and beginning blogs from the last two years as a jumping off place for this new year. Not much solid ground right now, so whatever jumping off I do has to be quite modest. Sustainability still has not entered our collective consciousness in spite of the torrent of its use and that of its distant cousin, green. The world of business and government moves merrily along selling its meager efforts as sustainability, avoiding any meaningful appreciation of the phenomena involved or any actions that would make a difference. Meanwhile signs… Read More
Continue ReadingBest Wishes for 2011
I’m going to take a break until after New Years. I need some time away to get refreshed. I wish all a happy and productive 2011. But before I go, I have a few thoughts coming from my teaching at the Marlboro College Graduate Center MBA in Managing for Sustainability. I have just finished teaching my course on sustainable consumption. The experience has been both illuminating and chastening. I have discovered that the treatment of consumption on which I based a significant part of my book, Sustainability by Design, is too simplistic to account for all the intricacies behind consumption–sustainable… Read More
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