The headline refers to the futility of taking meaningless steps in the face of an impending catastrophe. Much of what goes for "greening" could be described in this way. But this one takes the cake.

"Fort McMurray launches plastic bag ban" is the headline of an article in the Edmonton (CANADA) Journal. Sounds great? Yes, this is a good idea, but it pales when one realizes that Fort McMurray is the center of the Alberta tar sands project. The ban is but a minuscule effort that will reduce damage to the environment by virtually zero compared to the effects of the oil project, one that has been called the most destructive project on earth. Perhaps some exaggeration here as the appellation was given by the Canadian environmental advocacy organization, Environmental Defence, but the point still holds.

Perhaps some might argue that the ban is a symbolic act signaling local opposition to the project. The background given in the news about the ban indicates it was primarily designed to assist Fort McMurray to meet a previously set landfill waste reduction goal for 2012. For me and many others, it is a symbolic act, conveying the failure to understand the Earth system and the denial that economic promises produce. The project is a boon to a formerly relative poor part of Canada. The economic value of the project is huge says an article I found on the web, but whose source is obscure, obviously a supporter.

The Alberta tar sands, more formally known as the Athabasca tar sands, are an invaluable resource to the Canadian people are must be free of environmental restriction. These tar sands are processed for oil, which is sold, traded, used and bought from people all around the earth. These tar sands have transformed a have-not province, to one of the richest in the country, provided hundreds of thousands of jobs, made immense profits and should be allowed to continue without environmental restrictions.

This is just one of many similar situations when an action to do something "good" for the Earth and its inhabitants comes in the midst of a much larger set of problems and needs for action that are out of sight and out of the mind of the actors. Most of business greening efforts fall into this category. Green consumers almost universally fall into this bin. The actions are always touted as doing something positive, but the benefits are not large enough to offset the ultimate damage wreaked by ignoring the real cause. The Titanic did sink after all.

A tip of the hat to Anders Hayden, who pointed out the newspaper article. Anders in a member of SCORAI, a network of researchers, advocates, and academics in North America, working under the rubric of sustainable consumption

My last post on mindfulness elicited a comment pointing me to a recent article in the Guardian on pretty much the same idea. It was an interview with a Zen Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, who has recently published a book, The World We Have--A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology.

He has a far more elaborated approach than the very rudimentary one I wrote about yesterday, but the ideas lead to the same place. I haven't had time to read the book--I will--so I will crib some squibs from the Guardian.

He discusses in the book how he sat and consulted with the Buddha for many hours and came away with the recognition that we could be facing the end of our civilisation unless we can achieve a spiritual awakening and change our individual and collective behaviour.

"In my mind I see a group of chickens in a cage disputing over a few seeds of grain, unaware that in a few hours they will all be killed," he writes.

Above all else, Thay - as he is known - teaches that the world cannot be changed outside of ourselves. The answer is for each one of us to transform the fear, anger, and despair which we cover-up with over-consumption. If we are filling our bodies and minds with toxins, it is no surprise that the world around us also becomes poisoned.

He also argues that those who put their faith in technology alone to save the planet are bowing to a false god.

Thay believes that within every person are the seeds of love, compassion and understanding as well as the seeds of anger, hatred and discrimination. Using a gardening metaphor, he says our experience of life depends on which seeds we choose to water.

From what I could read in the Guardian piece, the seeds he would have us nurture are those I have come to through an entirely Western path. It leads me to believe that the process the Buddha followed is not unique, except in the depth of his reflection and separation from the noise of the world. He has collapsed his thinking into five trainings, based on the Buddha's teaching, each one aimed at overcoming behaviors that contribute to the ills of the world. One of them, mindful consumption, lines up closely with the essence of my last post and with my book's themes. Other aims are to cherish all life on Earth; practice generosity; and, also related, relieve others of suffering (caring, in the words I use).

I was intrigued by some of the disdainful comments the Guardian article drew. A few argued that Thay didn't practice what he preached because he used airplanes to get around the world to spread his teachings. They miss a key point. There is no way to know the world and speak to it except to be in it. No one, even the Buddha, stays under his or her bodhi tree forever. Eventually they must return to the world, as it is, and spread enlightenment there. The alternate--to remain in a cave or a mountain top--is to require those who would come to listen and learn to get in an airplane. I suspect a life cycle analysis would clearly opt for the efficiency of moving the Bodhisattva around.

As I continue to enjoy the sun-filled days in Maine for a little while before returning to Massachusetts, I am quite aware of the peacefulness it creates. I have been catching up on my summer reading and seem to be able to absorb the stories more readily than when I am cramming the texts into the cracks of my daily busyness. I become aware of the power of reflection that the quiet induces. In theory, I believe that reflection can raise hidden triggers for actions I rue later, like stuffing too many hors d'oeuvres before dinner, or spending another hour in front of the computer screen.

Most of the time I get right back into the usual pattern the moment the aura passes, but I have been able to make some changes that bring me closer to flourishing. I have little desire just to buy things because they are there and I can. This is one small area that I walk the talk about sustainability I write about about. If I want to quiet the voices in my head that are my GPS for action, I first have to be able to listen to them. Only then can I have a conversation that allows me to counter the arguments I am bombarded with.

The technique for inducing mindfulness I point to in my book is the design of everyday artifacts, otherwise the personal technology we use to do the myriad of tasks that make up our normal life. Building in features that interrupt our mindless, unconscious behavior creates the possibility for mindfulness and consciousness of what we are doing and of alternate modes of behavior. There is no guarantee that we will use the opportunity to reflect and change our tune, but there is no possibility without a break in the flow. This mechanism, like a coach's interventions in athletic training and play, comes in the midst of the action that need modification and the inner "conversation" is immediately connected to what is going on.

Other forms of inducing mindfulness, like meditative practices, lack the immediacy of interruptive processes. They can and do create a general feeling of detachment. this allows the exploration of arguments the body makes that lead to actions that produce some sort of dissatisfaction, a sense of incompleteness or inappropriateness. I suspect that a combination of the two ways to produce mindfulness would be more effective that either one can be alone. Meditative disciplines train the body to produce and perceive states that are hidden otherwise, and to explicate the general beliefs and norms that drive all actions including the ones that are unwanted. Once the actor has become aware of the value of reflection and can more easily jump from normal transparent behavior, then interruptive devices, like speed bumps, that guide appropriate behavior can be more effective in creating new beliefs and norms.

This post is, perhaps, an example. I was reading the NYTimes on line today and clicked on a column by Robert Wright, who writes weekly on culture, politics and world affairs. He was recounting his recent experience at a a silent meditation retreat. After reading it, I stopped and reflected about the idea of mindfulness in my own life, and shortly thereafter this post came forth.

I am committed to blogging and to the cause of sustainability as flourishing, but must admit that it is getting harder and harder to find the right words and to keep this blog fresh. Reading works as a sort of meditative practice for me. If I am in the proper reflective stance, I can draw out meaning from the text and also move into my own thoughts triggered by what I have just read. Many of my students, who are required to keep a journal to help them develop reflective competence, struggle with the practice and find it difficult. When they stop thinking of the process as an assignment and as an opportunity to record whatever is coming to mind, their negativity tends to abate.

I am working my way through the works of Wendell Berry this summer, something that everyone should do at some time. All my copies are filled with tabs and marginalia recording the many thoughts that are brought forth as I read his extraordinary words.

This summer has been spectacular. After a few days of rain last week, the sun has returned in its full glory. Tonight, after the wind died down, the bay turned into a mirror reflecting the dark tones of the setting sun. Tomorrow promises to repeat today's beauty.

I spend much time thinking about and composing the posts to this blog. As those of you that follow from time to time know, I try to connect whatever I write to sustainability. Sometimes it's easy when I chance upon something out there that is simply begging to be the subject of barbs and arrows. Listening to events of these days, I find it more and more difficult to keep a positive, optimistic view of the likelihood of sustainability coming in my lifetime (next to zero), or in my children's life (still close to zero), but maybe in my grandchildren's time on Earth.

But then ever so often I wake up to days like these, and the discover again the meaning of flourishing: the quality of life that sustainability is all about. It's not about business that lasts forever, or getting out of recessions, or an "Airtight Compost Pail [that] Keeps Your Kitchen Odor-Free." It's an inner peacefulness, full of appreciation for just being. The mirrored water, like the magic portal in "Through the Looking Glass" reaches out and draws me into it, and all my worries and concerns for the sad state of the world disappear, if only for just a moment.

The word "halcyon" popped into my head as I started this post. It describes a time in the past that was peaceful and supremely happy. Now that the sun has gone down and the mirror lost, the moment is past, and the word stands correctly. The etymology of the word comes from "a mythical bird (thought to be a kingfisher) said to breed at the time of the winter solstice in a nest floating on the sea and to have the power of calming the winds and waves." It's far from the solstice yet, and the real belted kingfisher (pictured above) that flits around the house didn't show up tonight. But the bay was so calm that one could easily believe it was due to a magical spell.

This is the title of a recent report from nef (the new economics foundation), an independent UK "think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being." These are the same people that have developed and promoted the Happy Planet Index and other topics relating to sustainability. Their topmost objective is to transform the economic system at its roots in what they have called, The Great Transition. While much of their research is derived from the UK, the findings and implications are highly relevant for the US. For those of us that grew up with Schumacher's Small is Beautiful, the nef has updated the subtitle of his book to read "economics as if people and the planet matter."

I have used the publications of nef for my own research and in my classes. I find them to be carefully thought out and executed, and often compelling. The one I headline above is a long report on the effects of the trend toward fast food in the UK. The situation is much like that in the US. I found this paragraph that pretty well summarizes the general tenor of the report.

The ‘food system’ encompasses all the activities involved in growing, processing, manufacturing, distributing, serving, and selling food. The adverse impacts of this system, known for decades, are now seen to be at crisis point: the exploitation of workers, the low value placed on animal life, the damage to the environment, the effects of climate change, and the recognition that even as the world’s population expands, the natural resources on which food production depends are being depleted. The existence of a billion overweight and obese people alongside another billion who do not have enough to eat is an affront to justice. And there is growing realisation that the foods being produced are not best suited to maintaining healthy human beings. The challenge, therefore, is to produce more and better quality food, more ethically, from less land, using fewer resources and with fewer negative impacts, and to share it more equitably - this, broadly, is what is meant by the transition to a more sustainable food system.

That's about all I am going to say about the work, except to note that this title doesn't work as well as Gore's version. But it is nonetheless on target. I encourage my readers to download it from the link above and read it in its entirely, substituting images of the US for those of the UK. The names may be different but the stories are very close. And while you are on the nef web site, gather a few more of their reports and read them. They're all free when you download them. Many readily implementable ideas for transforming the economy toward sustainability can be found in them.

This is the opening question in a brand new publication of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The title of the report is A Guidebook for IUCN’s Thematic Programme Area on Greening the World Economy (TPA5). It can be downloaded from the IUCN website. It a great collection of sources on this subject.

This guide is intended to offer an overview of available literature relating to the main topics covered by IUCN’s Thematic Programme Area on Greening the World Economy (TPA5). It is a compilation of papers, reports, and articles that can be freely accessed on the internet. It is not intended to serve as a complete bibliography of available literature, but more as an overview of the different concepts and discourses that animate ongoing discussions on the topic of the ‘Green Economy’.

The array of articles and reports is quite extraordinary and should become a great resource for anyone working on issues around sustainability and economy. The content is great, but language used to set the conceptual frame is flawed. The report answers the question above as follows:

The first challenge in the exploration of this new topic consists in understanding what the Green Economy concept is about. Simply put, the ‘green’ economy can be considered synonymous to a ‘sustainable’ economy. However, the Green Economy concept often carries a more distinctive meaning, one that focuses specifically on the fundamental changes that are required to ensure that economic systems are made more sustainable. It results that the ongoing discourse on the Green Economy is often animated by ambitious and forward looking views on how to overcome the deeply rooted causes of unsustainable economic development.

The mistake comes simply in equating green with sustainable. This might work in other times, but today the meaning of green has become so bastardized that it is often given to things and processes that may actually run away from sustainability. Sustainability is more than greening, no matter how the word is used. Greening is often associated only with the environmental dimensions of sustainability, but not the human side. It is not surprising that the IUCN with its focus on the natural world would frame the issues as they have. But this is really only a small complaint about a excellent and most useful work.

The Nike way, "Just Do It," is not the solution to the many addictive consumption patterns in the US. The core of my book is an argument that these patterns are deeply embedded in the cultural environment, so deeply that the best intentions of individuals fail in the struggle against the cultural pressures. Writing in the New York Times, Natasha Singer finds this true in the particular case of obesity.

Unfortunately, behavior changes won’t work on their own without seismic societal shifts, health experts say, because eating too much and exercising too little are merely symptoms of a much larger malady. The real problem is a landscape littered with inexpensive fast-food meals; saturation advertising for fatty, sugary products; inner cities that lack supermarkets; and unhealthy, high-stress workplaces. . . In other words: it’s the environment, stupid.

The solution lies in part in changing the food supply system at its roots so that healthy eating is cheaper than the present alternative. Economists would describe obesity as an externality in the food delivery marketplace. The cost in terms of medical expense, loss of self-image, lost opportunities in the workplace, and so on are not included in the price of groceries or institutional meals. The food we do see out there is skewed toward the stuff that is a major cause of obesity--high caloric, fatty items--because it is artificially made cheaper than the good stuff through a long standing mix of policy-based subsidies.

Fast-food restaurants can charge lower prices for value meals of hamburgers and French fries than for salad because the government subsidizes the corn and soybeans used for animal feed and vegetable oil, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the Gillings School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Market subsidies were designed decades ago to support farmers during times when the market was weak and uncertain, and to expand exports, but those reasons disappeared along with the demise of the family farm and the availability of crops from other parts of the world. Similar to many other instances of public policy, these supports are locked in by the political strength of the farm lobby and come back year by year.

The article, and many other sources as well, argue for a reversal of this practice. These goods should be made to be more expensive than junk food through policy interventions. Some companies are putting in workout centers with healthy snacks and deliberately reducing stress, another causal agent in obesity. These firms have recognized that obesity is costly and that it is economically worth while to spend money to reduce the incidence in their employees. Restrictions on advertising "bad" food and eating habits has been instituted in the UK. The article points to a clever program in the UK that aims to teach children in school how to cook healthy meals so that they will not be so dependent on fast food when they grow up. This reminds me of the home economics course I had to take in high school. I can still remember making applesauce and burning the biscuits. Perhaps, it was part of my life-long interest and involvement in cooking good meals.

Summer is winding down and I will soon have to get back to the real world. I have been blessed for any years to be able to head for Maine every May, and linger there until the beginning of the Fall. This season has been memorably spectacular for the long succession of perfect days. Last year was also memorable, but for the torrents of rainfall that seemed to cascade down almost every day. Today the sky was cloudless and the bay sparkled, but the wind was much too strong to chance going out on the water.

Tomorrow morning, I will head over to the local Saturday Farmer's market with one of our many grandchildren. I go early so I will not miss getting my weekly dozen or two of the huge eggs from my favorite farmer. It never ceases to surprise me when I crack one, and two yolks pour out. I usually scramble a couple every morning.

The eggs go quickly and, if I dilly-dally, I am forced to buy only the regular size, but still delicious, offerings of all the uncaged hens whose gifts are offered up for sale. Then, I rush to get my pain d'amande from Barack, who bakes some of the best bread I have ever tasted. The lines in front of his stall are always the longest of all, and these delectable goodies disappear very quickly. Add a coffee from one of the several local roasters and my day becomes fully started. Next a couple of scones from Beryl for Sunday breakfast. And then, I wander, having done the essential, to sample and bring home other of the wondrous wares.

This farmer's market started about 10 years ago and has been growing every year. The variety of locally produced goods gets larger all the time. I can sample all kinds of cheeses and dairy products, and usually come home with something. Another favorite is a pepperoni that is to die for.

It's not just the wonderful merchandise that makes this place special. It has become a true community of farmers, bakers, weavers, other kinds of merchants, and people from the community, many with their dogs. There is even a booth that places abandoned dogs in new homes. The importance of local economic activities to sustainability is stressed in the readings I assigned to my students this trimester. The Saturday market in Brunswick brings the theory to life.

There is something about summer that brings out the closeness we are to one another and to the Earth. We are fortunate in New England that Fall makes the transition to Winter comfortable and smooth. It sneaks in days even in October that fool us into thinking it is still July. But by then the feeling of flourishing that comes with the beauty of summer starts to fade. It's still there, but more distant from the senses. I am told by the passing of the seasons a little of what sustainability means. It is, in part, just the expectation that next summer will be just as beautiful as the last.

The most recent issue of the New Yorker has two articles that piqued my interest. The first is the periodic financial column by James Surowiecki, titled "Soak the Very, Very Rich." The second was a longer article (subscription required) about a dealer in exotic foods located in Las Vegas. I found this second piece more about how these very, very rich folks manage to spend all their money.

Surowiecki presents some startling statistics. I knew the top of the income spectrum lived in rarified air, but I was stunned with the numbers. The top 0.1% earn as much as the rest of us put together (120,000,000). Not only has the income distribution become more unequal for the whole population, but has also for the those at the top. These very, very rich have put a big margin between the merely very rich. That's the first part of the story.

The second is replete with tales like that of a single fish garnering $5000 when served up. It was an ombrina, whatever that is. I certainly have never seen one in the restaurants I frequent. Another example is a collection of perfume vials holding balsamic vinegar from 1890, "most likely served to high rollers, after supper, on mother-of-pearl spoons." The subject of the article, Brett Ottolenghi, mainly deals in truffles, with these other exotic items thrown in. The deal making involved makes the specialty food biz in Las Vegas sound like Chicago during Prohibition.

It's nothing to have stuff airfreighted from France or gotten via a round trip van ride to the Santa Monica (CA) Farmer's Market or "flown in as often as five times a week from the Mediterranean, in coolers equipped with microchips to monitor the temperature during the voyage." Not only is this whole scene reminiscent of the obscenity of the story I posted a few days ago about Slum Tourism, it contributes to climate change far in excess of the mere transactions. I can't think of much else, except perhaps the diamond trade, where the contribution to global warming per ounce is greater. Those involved know what they are doing to the globe. The famous chef, Paul Bartoletta-the Med fish buyer-"has no patience with sustainability. He quips that "Las Vegas is a pilot project to see if man can live on the moon."

This alone would be enough to accentuate the folly of hyper consumption and vast inequality, but there is another indirect implication and possibility for sustainability. My Marlboro class has been grappling with the conflict between the need to attain a steady-state economy, which is consistent with the resources of the one planet we occupy, and the pain many would suffer in the process of getting there. Unemployment and support of retired and elderly people in general become more problematic if the economy were to stop growing. This problem is frequently cited as one reason that a steady-state economy is not realistic and so we must work harder to make this one more efficient. Wrong solution to a difficult problem.

But just imagine if instead of eating all that beluga caviar, the very, very rich would accept just being plain, old rich. I don't have the numbers to make an accurate calculation but I am guessing that there would then be enough money to offset the transient hardships of getting to a no-growth state. The development of such great disparities in income and the ability to flourish is one of the contradictions of capitalism This example turns the theory into a stark reality.

My wife asked me to complete the entry form for the Publishers Clearing House (PCH) periodic sweepstakes that just came in the mail. This one is all about useless things, not the old standard list of publications at reduced rates. I look on the process as a game, "How can I find all the hidden sticky things I have to put on the form without noticing any of the objects for sale?" The contest designers already know about this game that I and others play, and have designed the package so that it is virtually impossible not to scan the items.

I don't know how many separate items are included, but every one I did look at was pretty much useless: "Genuine Tiger's Eye Handcrafted Turtle, A DVD with the title, "32 Ways to Please your Lover," Erasable Address Book, Cat Rain Gauge, and hundreds more. Many were in the $15-20 price range, payable in three or four easy payments. I can think of no better metaphor for our consumptive ways. Enjoy the pleasure of buying something you did't need and get a (very tiny) chance of winning something big at the same time.

I found this video of an old PCH television ad from 1987, shown below.

I have just finished my course on "Exploring Sustainability" at Marlboro College Graduate School, and am reading the students' essays and comments on keeping their journals. Many reflect on being stuck in the middle of their own desires to shift into a more basic and sustainability-driven consumption pattern and the incessant pressure to buy stuff coming from every direction. I am also in the midst of a very interesting on-line conversation with my colleagues in a sustainable consumption project about the same dilemma. The gist of the thread is that both individual and institutional change are necessary for the shift to occur, but neither the micro or the macro is willing to take the lead.

Consumers and citizens alike are in deep denial. One of my students compared our collective condition to that of Gautama Siddhartha, the Buddha, who woke up to the state of the world and his own alienation only after being thrust, metaphorically naked, into that world from his sheltered place in the palace. Heidegger writes that we must face and accept the reality of our death before we can live authentically. We are all living through the death throes of our cultural world and the support system on which it absolutely depends, but have yet to recognize or accept what is happening before our very eyes.

The PCH program is designed to lull us away from facing that reality. So is just about everything we see, hear, and live through every day. But it is, in fact, happening. I ask my students to keep a journal, partly in hopes that it will help them break out of denial. It works sometimes. It took a dramatic encounter for the Buddha to wake up. Heidegger and others offer hopes that we can find our authentic self, one which transforms need to care, without the necessity of such a stark awakening. I am not sure which is right, but I do know that without breaking out of the denial we are in, we will still eagerly await the arrival of the latest PCH sweepstakes package in the mail or hurry to scratch off the surface of the instant lottery cards that our local supermarket starting handing out this summer.

One of the alternatives to materialistic, status-driven consumption is said to be activities that provide experience-based satisfaction, like travel, services, and activities that bring people together. That may be true, but I do not think the kind of travel described in an article headlined, "Slum Tourism," fits the bill. The article paints a picture of rich folks traveling to see how the "other half" lives, a practice that that has roots in antiquity. Even sovereigns went out into the streets in disguise to see how the hoi polloi lived.

The article mentioned popular destinations like Mumbai and Rio, both with massive slum populations. The smash hit movie, Slumdog Millionaire, has brought crowds to see the scenes so dramatically pictured in the film. The article is eloquent and made me feel small. The author, Kennedy Odede, has come from such a place to being a student at Wesleyan College, but she has not forgotten her growing up as she writes:

I was 16 when I first saw a slum tour. I was outside my 100-square-foot house washing dishes, looking at the utensils with longing because I hadn’t eaten in two days. Suddenly a white woman was taking my picture. I felt like a tiger in a cage. Before I could say anything, she had moved on.

There is much more to chew on and I urge you to click the link and read the whole article. What lingers on for me are the unreflective solutions that are showing up to solve the overconsumption problem in the US and other affluent countries. Sure, travel seems to be more happiness producing than things like Rolexes or Rolls Royces, but it's still buying things and services to satisfy some inner need. At least that's what the marketers and many psychologists tell us.

Maybe that's the wrong model entirely. Think of the difference it would make if we were driven by care, not need, including taking care of ourselves, but also others and the world we live in. I believe that on deep reflection that is the way we act whenever we get in touch with our human core. Slum tourism is so one-sided as to be almost obscene. It turns human beings born into circumstances so different from those who travel to gaze on them into mere curiosities. Odede finishes her piece with these two paragraphs.

Nor do the visitors really interact with us. Aside from the occasional comment, there is no dialogue established, no conversation begun. Slum tourism is a one-way street: They get photos; we lose a piece of our dignity.

Slums will not go away because a few dozen Americans or Europeans spent a morning walking around them. There are solutions to our problems — but they won’t come about through tours.

Consumption in the US is a deep-seated, pervasive, and pathological practice. All living creatures must consume to live, and human beings need, beyond mere subsistence, to have and consume what have become over time the necessaries of life. We will never successfully transform consumption to a level and manner that is consistent with sustainability until we stop thinking primarily of ways to avoid its materiality. We have to stop and think why we consume anything beyond those necessaries. As long as we believe that such activities are driven by some "need," we will not be able to transform our economy. All the forces at play will find a way to convince us that we always need more. Slum tourism will simply become a metaphor for narcissistic, insensitive, uncaring, unsustainable consumption.

Yale's Environment 360 reported this little, but very significant, squib a few days ago. Reporting a finding from the just concluded Ecological Society of America, the article was headlined, "Scientists Find First Evidence Of GM Crops Reproducing in the Wild." This is not supposed to happen as these crops are designed to be infertile, requiring farmers to buy seeds every year. I know it's not kosher to copy stuff more or less in its entirety, but the Yale report is very terse.

Scientists conducting research in North Dakota have found the first evidence of established populations of genetically modified crops in the wild. After testing and photographing 406 canola plants found along more than 3,300 miles of roads, the researchers discovered evidence of transgenic plants in 347, or 86 percent, of the plants. Specifically, some of the crops were identified as Roundup Ready, which are engineered to be resistant to the herbicide Roundup, commonly known as glyphosate; and some were identified as Liberty Link crops, which are engineered to be resistant to glufosinate. In two cases, the crops were resistant to both. “Varieties with multiple transgenic traits have not yet been released commercially, so this finding suggests that feral populations are reproducing and have become established outside of cultivation,” said Cynthia Sagers of University of Arkansas, one of the co-authors of the study which was presented at the annual meeting of the Ecological Society of America. The findings, she said, have significant implications for the ecology and management of native and weedy species and for the management of biotech products in the United States.

Those promoting geo-engineering solutions to climate change should pay close attention to this finding. The undesired outcome here springs from a better understood system than the Earth's global environment. GMO crops can be put on the market only after a rigorous testing protocol, and still we get unexpected results. The photo shows herbicide-resistant weeds in a corn field that can virtually stymie harvesting. Geo-engineering requires that we take the plunge into the unknown with a minimum of testing at the global scale. Mother Nature is sending us a message with the unexpected crop findings. I hope we will listen carefully.

I came home late last night from a 2-day gathering of the faculty of the Marlboro College Graduate School MBA in Managing for Sustainability. It was the first time we have met in numbers more than a few at a time for a year or so. The program is just about three years old, but has greatly matured judging from the richness of the conversations that took place. As we exchanged details of each of our courses with one another, I realized how complex and challenging the program is.

An MBA degree implies that the holder will most likely work somewhere in the world of business, although the Marlboro students have a much broader view of where they would like to end up. This means that the curriculum must carry a strong dose of business-as-usual theory and practice. Even as these students leave and find a place in an entirely new sustainability world, they will still have to deal with institutions and customers deeply rooted in the present ways of doing business.

At the same time, the school is committed to turn out professionals with a starkly different vision of what sustainability means. The entering students are a self-selected group with aspirations to change the way business is done in hopes of creating a world that works. This combination of two separate and often conflicting world views poses a huge challenge to the teachers and the students. How do you teach so that the students learn and unlearn at the same time?

Someone talked about the process of unlearning racism as a analogy. The foundations of consumerism are buried deep in our culture and in everyone's bodies. It's not enough to make or buy "green" or "sustainable" products if the goal is to turn the economy completely upside down such that we flourish within the limits of the world's resources. Or reverse the direction of inequality. Most of the students accept the idea that growth cannot continue without limit, but study how to create growing businesses. This is only one of the many dissonant threads of the Marlboro program and a few others like ours.

Unlearning is a much harder process than learning. The predominant norms are reinforced by the existent cultural institutions. The best of intentions are thwarted by the power of current beliefs and norms. Many more are committed to the status quo than want to change it, even as their lives are not what they long for. But that longing is driven by visions of a future largely shaped by the past. No matter how hard one tries to escape the confines of the past, it is always there until an unlearning takes place.

I usually try to end each blog with a concluding sentence or two that grabs its shape from what has preceded it. This time I am just going to stop and leave things hanging. That's the way I felt at the end of our sessions, knowing that I had much left to understand before I could deal with the dissonance of learning and unlearning at the same time.

Deloitte recently published a survey of business sustainability aspirations and practices. Titled, "Sustainability in business today: A cross-industry view," the report showcases the responses from businesses in a wide range of sectors. Deloitte's header highlighted the following arguments for paying attention to sustainability: "Increasing regulation, investor activism and changing consumer behavior have increased the importance of “going green.” Not a whisper about the state of the world. I get from this that business lives in a corporate cocoon with its sensors tuned only to those that affect its bottom line or stockholder value (or more likely, the salary of its CEO). What about the world outside? Environment health and justice are more than mere words. They are observable things, just like investor satisfaction. Business will do little of serious impact toward sustainability until it sheds its security blanket and connects to the real, hurting world out there.

One part that I found particularly interesting was this list of various definitions being used by business.

Q: How would you define sustainability as it relates to business? Respondents told us:

“We have used the Brundtland definition at times and a triple-bottom-line type of thing, but we talk about sustainability in terms of resources - financial resources, human resources, and natural resources. Because we are a user of natural resources and wood and fiber, most of our focus is in that area.” (Respondent from a process and industrial company)

“We term it as having the minimum impact on the environment. There is a social component to that as well, but we are currently focusing on environmental sustainability.” (Respondent from a consumer products company)

“For us, sustainability is just doing business right. We believe that it is a foundation that contributes across the entire value chain. We believe that it gives us a competitive advantage by applying it in acquisition, in branding, and in marketing and development.” (Respondent from an automotive company)

“We have been careful to define it as environmental sustainability for the purposes of our team’s existence.” (Respondent from a consumer products company) “The long-term health of the business requires that we consider things beyond financial return - such as environmental performance and social responsibility and community relations.” (Respondent from a consumer products company)

“We go to the Brundtland Commission report of 1987 to start the conversation, and then take it down a level to make it more operational in nature, and then down one more level [to] land, air, water, and people.” (Respondent from a consumer products company)

“Continuous reduction of our environmental footprint throughout our own facilities and our value or supply chain. We also define it from a social perspective as making sure that the community in general, and certainly communities where we sell products, are viable and healthy and that their needs are met.” (Respondent from a consumer products company)

I start with a heavily prejudiced position about the failure of business as a whole to grasp what sustainability is fundamentally about, so it's no surprise that I find these "definitions" largely empty statements, even to the point of banality. What a shame. The best that these definitions promise is that the world will not get any worse than it is, but even that is unlikely, given the reference to the Brundtland formulation and its roots in eco-efficiency. Doing less bad through eco-efficiency is little more than a race against economic growth. Growth is certain to win.

All this begs the question of what if we are already overusing the Earth's capacity to support our species. Notwithstanding the various deniers of global warming and other current and impending system failures, students of the global ecology have ample evidence that we are already exceeding one earth's worth of capacity, and are heading for as many as four as China and India ramp up their economies. Inequality and injustice are all too prevalent in many parts of the world. The tacit argument I would expect to get in an extended discussion with any of the people quoted above is that we are just following Adam Smith's (pictured above) model of the most efficient economy, serving the self-interest of our customers and stockholders.

I doubt that that is really true in any case, but it simply doesn't work when things absolutely needed like fish or water or clean air or health or safety and so on by all these "interests" are physically scarce, not merely scarce in economic terms. Ironically the award of the latest Nobel for Economics to Elinor Ostrom was a begrudging acceptance of the need to develop different governance mechanisms for the finite life-supporting resources we rely on for sustaining ourselves. The simplistic, Smithian governance model lying underneath everyone of the definitions above simply doesn't work any more. But by mouthing these platitude without any sign of reflection or vision beyond the bottom line, business remains part of the problem, not the solution.

One of the students in my course at Marlboro College posted a link to Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, a work from positive psychology containing a taxonomy of traits that connect to the "good life." The student suggested that these might form the basis for defining human flourishing. I agree. The authors describe the work as:

The classification is the result of a thorough study of the philosophies of the antiquities, the major world religions, the distinctions offered by historic and current social organizations. Twenty four specific strengths under six broad virtues consistently emerged across history and culture: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence. Each strength was thoroughly examined in its own chapter, with special attention given to its meaning, explanation, measurement, causes, correlates, consequences, and development across the life span, as well as to strategies for its deliberate cultivation.

The work is an antidote for the well known Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the authority used by practitioners to diagnose and treat all sorts of mental disorders.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals in the United States. It is intended to be applicable in a wide array of contexts and used by clinicians and researchers of many different orientations (e.g., biological, psychodynamic, cognitive, behavioral, interpersonal, family/systems).

Positive psychology seeks to discover what makes people's lives "good," as opposed to traditional psychology that deals primarily with conditions that interfere with one's fully functioning. The apposition of positive and traditional psychology is analogous to the anti-parallelism of sustainability and unsustainability. The single largest cost in the US in that for medical treatment, most of which is remedial. There is no specific economic category for producing the good life. It is all lumped into some measure of wealth or consumption. This belief system has produced little of the positive traits I will enumerate shortly, but has succeeded in threatening the current way of life and the planet as well. Our culture seems to prefer fixing problems after the fact rather than preventing them in the first place by design.

The six virtues, with a short definition, are:

1. Wisdom and Knowledge - Cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge
2. Courage - Emotional strengths that involve the exercise of will to accomplish goals in the face of opposition, external or internal
3. Humanity - Interpersonal strengths that involve tending and befriending others
4. Justice - Civic strengths that underlie healthy community life
5. Temperance - Strengths that protect against excess
6. Transcendence - Strengths that forge connections to the larger universe and provide meaning

I won't stop and list all the character strengths that fill out the classification scheme, but here are the entries for wisdom and knowledge:

• Creativity [originality, ingenuity]: Thinking of novel and productive ways to conceptualize and do things; includes artistic achievement but is not limited to it.
• Curiosity [interest, novelty-seeking, openness to experience]: Taking an interest in ongoing experience for its own sake; finding subjects and topics fascinating; exploring and discovering.
• Judgment & Open-Mindedness [critical thinking]: Thinking things through and examining them from all sides; not jumping to conclusions; being able to change one's mind in light of evidence; weighing all evidence fairly.
• Love of Learning: Mastering new skills, topics, and bodies of knowledge, whether on one's own or formally; obviously related to the strength of curiosity but goes beyond it to describe the tendency to add systematically to what one knows.
• Perspective [wisdom]: Being able to provide wise counsel to others; having ways of looking at the world that make sense to oneself and to other people.

I have defined sustainability as the possibility of human [and all other life] flourishing, arguing further that the possibility depends on getting the whole socio-technical ecological system working in such a way that signs of flourishing become manifest more or less everywhere. In my book, I suggest one way of "defining" flourishing, that is, the satisfaction of a set of 11 canonical domains of concern, such as subsistence, family, or learning. There is a great deal of overlap between these and the above classification scheme.

In my recent teaching at Marlboro, I have presented the students with yet another scheme for determining how well a person is enjoying the good life. Based on the capabilities framework of Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum has developed a scheme with 10 capabilities necessary to build a fully functioning life upon. It is another way to describe a set of conditions that might be deemed "flourishing." A few of her categories are: life, bodily health, affiliation, and play. For the managers among us, it is critical to provide some metric enabling them to put any form of control or guidance system in play. Any of these three schemes or others would do that job, but that is not the essence of sustainability.

The challenge we all face is not the "management of Planet Earth," but figuring out how to make the system produce any of these constellations of properties constituting flourishing. The positive set of virtues is a good guide for knowing how we are doing, but has little value in guiding our collective journey into the future. I know little in detail about the science of positive psychology, but it seems to focus, not surprising, on the individual and on ways to intervene to create more well-being. Sustainability needs a "science" that looks outward at the world and discovers how to design the functioning of the cultural systems such that individual human beings live a fully functioning life.