The Right Way to Flourish

In my book, sustainability is defined as the possibility of flourishing. This means that each species, other than humans, maintains its evolutionary population levels within an ecosystem. It does not mean that the population is constant, but exhibits resiliency — it can recover from shocks to the system to return to its historic levels. Today many species are threatened or endangered under this definition. The human species, as a life form, is subject to the same category of threats to their existence and has responded to such challenges historically by devising technological and institutional systems to counter such threats. Because… Read More

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A few posts ago, I used the Chinese word for crisis as meaning the combination of danger and opportunity. Gena Rotstein pointed out that this interpretation is not quite right. She linked me to an article by a Chinese language expert, Victor Mair, that explains: > There is a widespread public misperception, particularly among the New Age sector, that the Chinese word for “crisis” is composed of elements that signify “danger” and “opportunity.” . . . the damage from this kind of pseudo-profundity has reached such gross proportions that I feel obliged, as a responsible Sinologist, to take counteraction. .… Read More

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A friend pointed me to an article in the Atlantic with this title, written by the theologian, Harvey Cox. Although now 10 years old, it is right on target. Written with a heavy dose of irony, it still makes great reading. I found the concluding paragraphs an apt coda for my last post. > Disagreements among the traditional religions become picayune in comparison with the fundamental differences they all have with the religion of The Market. Will this lead to a new jihad or crusade? I doubt it. > > It seems unlikely that traditional religions will rise to the… Read More

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It is very important to carefully parse the headline of this recent [article](http://www.alternet.org/story/128920/%22consumerism%22_is_dead_–_can_obama_lead_us_to_a_downscaled_lifestyle/) in Alternet. > **Consumerism” Is Dead — Can Obama Lead Us to a Downscaled Lifestyle?** Anyone that follows my book’s theses, would think I would be jumping for joy since I see consumerism as resting at the base of the present state of unsustainability. Here’s the gist of the column. > Among the questions that disturb the sleep of many casual observers is how come Mr. O doesn’t get that the conventional process of economic growth — based, as it was, on industrial expansion via revolving credit… Read More

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One of the factors behind the rampant hyper-consumerism that so characterizes our culture is the ever-increasing presence of marketeers and the corporations that employ them. Ads appear everywhere — even as tattoos on shaved or bald heads, as I pointed out recently. Now Gail Collins, writing her regular op-ed column in the NYTimes, discusses the increasing use of product placement and mentions on television shows. We have long since gotten used to the idea that movies are awash with product placements, that the basketball game we’re watching is part of, say, the Doritos Home Classic at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center.… Read More

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Here’s the skinny on a both widely debated and widely ignored topic. > Talk about an energy drink. The first comprehensive and peer-reviewed energy analysis of a bottle of water confirms what many environmentalists have charged. From start to finish, bottled water consumes between 1100 and 2000 times more energy on average than does tap water. [ScienceNow](http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/), the news magazine of the AAAS reports on a new study by Peter Gleick, President of the [Pacific Institute](http://www.pacinst.org/), and a colleague, Heather Cooley. Not only does this report confirm the outrageous disregard for the fundamental wasteful practice of drinking bottled water in… Read More

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Although I blanch at the overall idea of Greener Gadgets, it is encouraging that the sponsors of this year’s Conference recognize that what they are promoting is only relatively better that what is now available in the marketplace. A couple of years ago, this conference would almost certainly have been advertised as Green Gadgets. The program itself is not so discerning with sessions on MEASURING YOUR HUE OF GREEN and GREEN DESIGN FOR GOOD. Maybe in a few years, these folks will recognize that gadgets are part of the problem, not the solution. It is probably too much to expect… Read More

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Here’s a novel way to start putting CSR into play. The writer, [Scott Cooney](http://greenoptions.com/author/scottcooney), was suggesting a strategy for dealing with the economic crisis. Cooney calls it a counterintuitive strategy. > Try this: empower your employees. Give them even more reign over your company. Task them with righting the ship. Elevate them, during this time of crisis, to the level of partner. Ask them to think like an owner. It may not resemble the usual CSR programs, but think about it–isn’t this the essence of responsibility to one of the critical set of stakeholders, the employees. I don’t think it… Read More

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Reading Ben Barber’s piece, [A Revolution in Spirit](http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090209/barber) in the *Nation*, questioning the future of capitalism, as we know it, woke me to an situation that was not available to me when I wrote my book. My underlying strategy in the book for transforming our present hyper-consumerist culture is a modest, subversive process to change present beliefs and values by encoding a sustainability set into commonplace artifacts and collective decision processes. My argument, a few years ago, was that there was no big crisis apparent in the public consciousness. I did believe such a crisis of unsustainability was indeed present,… Read More

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The New York Times magazine had a fascinating story this week about the effort that is going on to preserve the whooping crane, long a threatened species. The story covers tales of people dressed in crane suits and guiding young cranes by flying ultralights along their migration route. These are cranes hatched and raised for quite a while in a strange sort of captivity, being cared for, but at the same time being kept away from contact with human beings, at least from human beings not outfitted in a suit designed to mimic the cranes. The story about the cranes… Read More

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