Here’s to Old Year past, with all its doom and gloom. Let’s sweep out its remnants with a brand new broom And bury old troubles in a tightly sealed tomb. The new days of 2010 have begun to loom As they begin to fly from Future’s womb With a resounding swish and echoing vroom. It helps little to look back in anger, and fume, But complacency and denial lurks in my room. Even as I’ve avoided the swine flu’s rheum, I worry about the next coal-fired smoke plume, And all that needless junk we rush to consume. I wonder if… Read More
Continue ReadingSeason Greetings
I’ll be taking a few days off to visit family in Maine and to give my faithful readers a break as well. It’s difficult to leave with an upbeat message with hopes for real progress on the sustainability front scattered to the winds in Copenhagen. I have tried to find something to cheer about, but even those who have reached far to find something positive are not convincing. Tom Friedman’s c[olumn today](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/23/opinion/23friedman.html?ref=opinion) was a great example of good and bad news. The bad news was that Copenhagen “was a bust.” The good news is that the Danes have been able… Read More
Continue Reading[Un]social Media
One of my colleagues in the change community sent me a [link to a video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8), extolling the explosion in social media activities. The rapidity of adoption is truly astronomical, but growth doesn’t necessarily mean improvement. Numbers are always a diminished indicator of the consequences of whatever has been growing. Growing GDP does not mean higher quality of life, and now appears to be causing just the opposite, as the social and natural structures that create that growth are being strained beyond their capacity to recover from inevitable stresses on the system. I am concerned we will come to realize a… Read More
Continue ReadingLearning from the Past
Atul Gawande has a fascinating piece in the New Yorker with an unusual argument on how to do health reform. I see the piece as also an insightful window on any of our “big” problems, like climate change, or even sustainability. He argues, against all the talk coming out of Washington, that the present messy Senate bill is built on a sound and successful precedent, although not deliberately or maybe even without any sense of the past. His reference is the history of reforms to our (and other) agricultural systems. His central message is > So what does the reform… Read More
Continue ReadingStrategy and “Collapse”
Driving home from the weekend at Marlboro College, I started reflecting on the experience. Unlike texting while driving, I can keep my attention on the road while thinking. The last class I attended was a wrap-up of a course on Strategy Synthesis with an emphasis on integrating sustainability. The time was spent debriefing and discussing the experience of the three student projects. One of the questions that ran through all three was, essentially, what is strategic? Looking at standard business school strategy courses is not terribly helpful in the sustainability context. Most interestingly, the first assignment in this course was… Read More
Continue ReadingRemembering the Wizard of Oz
I have been away for a few days visiting my daughter and family in Arlington, VA. I rarely read the Washington Post, but find it a good read whenever I am there. On last Sunday, I saw an [article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/04/AR2009120402605_pf.html) on the front page that jumped out at me. The headline read, “To really save the planet, stop going green.” Given all the ballyhoo about greening in the business news and environmental media, I thought for a moment that this was some ironic device to catch the readers’ attention. No, the author, Mike Tidwell, was serious. The gist follows a line… Read More
Continue ReadingVegans in Hummers or Beef Eaters in Priuses
Michael Pollan dropped a one-liner at the recent PopTech conference that took me by surprise. He said, “I hope I’ve driven home the point that our meat eating is one of the most important contributors we make to climate change. A vegan in a Hummer has a lighter carbon footprint than a beef eater in a Prius!” So much of the chatter I read about greening has been focused on artifacts of one kind or another. Food kind of slips by unnoticed in the great green accounting system. I suppose that’s because we tend to think of food as an… Read More
Continue ReadingSolid as a Rock
I came across an [article](http://www.alternet.org/story/144204/our_lives_are_filled_with_worthless_crap_that’s_destroying_the_earth:_here’s_what_you_can_do?page=entire) today on [Alternet](http://www.alternet.org/) touting durability as a potential partial solution to the energy drain. The summary says, “The way to lower the quantity of energy required to make and distribute short-lived consumer goods is to make them durable, repairable and upgradable.” This is a lot more genteel than its headline, which read, “Our Lives Are Filled With Worthless Crap That’s Destroying the Earth: Here’s What You Can Do.” In spite of the provocative headline, the article is well-done and draws on some excellent and authoritative sources. Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin, the author, includes one of my favorite… Read More
Continue ReadingRe-entry Blues
I’ve been back from my travels to Turkey for four whole days and am slowly becoming re-immersed in the culture I passionately believe has to change if we are to find sustainability. I think my generation’s (grandparents’) chances to see a world where this possibility looms large are somewhere between very small and nil. I see signs, small and large, everywhere that shout wake up, but without much effect. It took just this short time back to tune into the current news and find this conclusion inescapable. It shows up in little things, like trying to compensate for the serious… Read More
Continue ReadingTurkey Is No “turkey”
I am just back from a fantastic trip through Turkey. First thanks to my son, Tom, who filled in for me while I was traveling. I have invited him to continue as a permanent guest. The pejorative sense of “turkey the bird” is absolutely not justified by any reference to Turkey the country. Admittedly short on the history of the region before I left, I was continually stunned by the richness of the civilizations that dwelled there over 6-7000 years or more. The first evidence of human habitation dates from around 20,000 BCE, and by 10,000 BCE settlements existing on… Read More
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