It’s usually I who criticizes the efforts of businesses to claim some sort of sustainability leadership. This time the blast comes from within the business community. The first act in this scenario is a recent [PR release](http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/content/story/design/puma_could_be_first_brand_to_measure_impact_on_ecosystem_services) from the parent holding company that owns Puma. > **Puma Could Be First Brand To Measure Impact on Ecosystem Services** > > Sports and lifestyle brand Puma has instituted a new accounting methodology that it says will lead to the first-ever Environmental Profit and Loss (EP&L) statement. The EP&L statement will attempt to measure the full economic impact of the brand on ecosystem… Read More
Continue ReadingBack to Basics 6: Complexity (and Gardening)
Complexity is more than a scientific construct and has significant implications for sustainability. I’ll get to discuss that later, but first I need to set the stage. Complexity can refer to a real system whose parts are so multiply interconnected that it is impossible to predict how it will behave when subjected to perturbations. It is also used to describe systems that can move toward order from chaos, that is, they are self organizing. This characteristic is basically the same as the first. Chaotic situations will remain chaotic until something perturbs the system creating order, but we cannot tell in… Read More
Continue ReadingStill Sending Misleading Messages
As I may have noted recently, the subjects to blog about that I look for somewhere in cyberspace are, as my grandchildren say about many things, boring. The volume of words (both in loudness and quantity) keeps growing, but the speakers still do not get the point: sustainability does not have same meaning as what virtually all messages carry. No matter how many times someone talks about what they are doing for sustainability, using green or sustainable or even sustainability to describe a new product or new program to inform their customers, they are still in the reducing unsustainability world… Read More
Continue ReadingThe Curse of Perfection
Neal Gabler, writing in today’s Boston Globe, [discusses](http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/03/31/the_new_american_dream/) what he calls the new American Dream–perfection. A DISGRUNTLED New York mother recently filed a lawsuit against her 4-year-old daughter’s preschool, charging that the school had reneged on its promise to adequately prepare the girl for an Ivy League education. Apparently the kids were playing with blocks when they should have been discussing Wittgenstein. Understandably the suit was met with ridicule as another example of overbearing parenting, but it is also an example of how many of us, especially in the middle and upper-middle classes, not only aspire to be perfect; we… Read More
Continue ReadingBack to Basics 5: The Sustainability 2×2 Matrix
No MBA student or practitioner can avoid the classic 2×2 matrix offering a clear picture of strategic choices when two sets of variables are involved. Some consider this form of portrayal as an art, even as a metaphor for a sort of systems thinking. In its simplest form the variables are arrayed as the x- and y-axes on a simple graph. The generic form looks like this. I found several examples on the Web. This one points to strategies for service organizations based on the nature of the particular service to be offered. One can use this for almost all… Read More
Continue ReadingNuclear Power is Still Nuclear Power
On a recent Dot Earth column, Andrew Revkin pointed to two opposing views on nuclear power, but both coming from well established environmentalists. I’m pressed for time today, preparing for my periodic face-to-face encounter with my students at marlboro College Graduate Center, so I will mostly crib from Revkin. Here’s his lede: I encourage you to weigh two starkly divergent reactions to the seismic and nuclear crises in Japan from Bill McKibben and George Monbiot — both leading voices of environmentalism. In separate opinion articles in The Guardian yesterday, McKibben turned the conversation to climate and pressed for a shift… Read More
Continue ReadingBack to Basics 4: Possibility
I come to this topic as it is critical to sustainability, but it takes a little scene-setting. Flourishing depends on living authentically (see previous [post](http://www.johnehrenfeld.com/2011/03/back-to-basics-3-authenticity.html) on this topic). The most direct way to think about this is to imagine owning everything you do, not everything you have. The existential consequences show up as possibility. When you come from some inner source of care, possibility is limited only by the reality of the world at hand. You can choose freely who you are and what you will do consistent with that role. It is not quite the same as free will… Read More
Continue ReadingShining a Mirror on Ourselves
The situation at the Japanese nuclear power plants is certainly worthy of the headlines it is getting. It is a catastrophe that fits into the once in a (fill in your own very high number) ___ years risk category. Why, then, so much attention here in the United States? The risk of any damage from radiation emitted from the current state or even a much more serious meltdown is, as every knowledgeable commentator has said, is negligible. Why, all of a sudden, do Congresspeople and others demand an immediate examination of our nuclear plants? This event has not changed the… Read More
Continue ReadingOur Common Future
This is the title of the United Nations Report that brought the world the idea of sustainable development: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” The definition is terse but full of moral content as well as real concern for the state of the world. The moral core of this statement is equity. It recognizes the finite capacity of the Earth to support all who are alive today and all those who will inhabit the planet in the future. Most simply stated, all have… Read More
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