The Right Way to Flourish

A small story in today’s NYTimes would perhaps be unnoticed in quiet times, but coming soon after the Gulf Blow-out, it merits attention. A Waltham, Massachusetts genetic engineering company announced that they are in the later stages of approval for a genetically modified salmon species that will grow to maturity in farms in half the time of an ordinary breed. In writing this last sentence I struggle to know what to call the unmodified salmon. Natural, no, the salmon raised in farms come from a line that has forgotten what it is to live in the wild. Wild, no, at… Read More

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I have found it difficult to write for my blog this week. Maybe it’s because the good weather outside of our Maine cottage beckons or maybe I am a bit depressed by everything going on these days. I’m still thinking about the implications of the Gulf spill. In spite of the zillions of words written about it the situation seems pretty stark and can be largely captured by just a few sentences. 1. It’s crazy to drill for oil in places where a blowout, however unlikely, would cause great harm. 2. It’s crazy to let companies like BP or any… Read More

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My last post drew upon an article in Greenbiz by Nathan Shedroff. Nathan wrote me to ask why I had disagreed with him. The issue is sufficiently complex that I want to devote another post to it. I have copied the guts of Nathan’s rejoinder. Part of my response was a reaction to the “funny” headline in Greenbiz, but that’s not the real reason. John, I don’t understand your point or why you disagree with me that sustainability should be an accepted and assumed “given” in how we do business instead of, still, a question to ponder. I never stated… Read More

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Greenbiz is one of the best websites to go to to keep on top of what the business community is doing and telling about sustainability. I could easily write more than a few posts a day responding to the news, information, and misinformation to be found there. Most posts would be boring, with my usual complaint that few if any of the articles or the firms they picture get sustainability right. There are lots of references to environmentally friendly or green products, and sustainable businesses. If it takes a healthy environment to allow businesses to persevere over long times, then… Read More

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Did Mother Nature anticipate that we would mess up her world so badly? She, as James Lovelock writes in [*Gaia*](http://books.google.com/books?id=89GBVioWGUgC&printsec=frontcover&dq=lovelock+gaia&source=bl&ots=Ih98f3MeHi&sig=uBpcBAaBX2n7C4yOApup1Aaqpa0&hl=en&ei=wZ0aTJjSDYX7lwe6_83XCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDYQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q&f=false), created a system that can maintain a nourishing environment for all her species. Now we are told by scientists that one of the more intelligent creatures around (maybe more so than we) can contribute to our battle against global climate change. Is it self (whale) preservation or concern for a fellow species? Here’s the article. The headline tells the story: “Scientists Discover Sperm Whale Poop Fights Global Warming.” The secret is that these whales’ feces contain large amounts of iron… Read More

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Headline from a [story](http://www.csrwire.com/press/press_release/29820-Hooters-Girls-Donate-Their-Pantyhose-to-Create-Booms-and-Absorb-Up-to-1-Million-Gallons-of-Oil-in-the-Gulf-of-Mexico?tracking_source=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+csrwire%2FPRfeed+%28CSRwire.com%29) from today’s CSR Newswire: > Hooters Girls Donate Their Pantyhose to Create Booms and Absorb Up to 1 Million Gallons of Oil in the Gulf of Mexico

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The Spirit Level is a recent book by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett that argues that many societal ills can be traced to the degree of income inequality, rather than to the absolute level of affluence as is often believed. After a few introductory chapters, the authors present some nine chapters full of data that illustrate significant correlations between inequality and a wide variety of social indicators. One figure after another shows that some social indicator gets worse as inequality increases. The United States is almost always the worst as it has the largest income inequality of all the nations… Read More

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb popularized the black swan theory around the time the financial system went south. Simply put, he argued that extremely rare events with serious consequences, like the Gulf blowout, do happen, but that we are almost never prepared to deal with them either before the event or afterward. Often, because the consequences are so large, these events can change the course of history. In this case, we are seeing brown pelicans trying to survive the catastrophe, ending up as black, oil-soaked birds. Their appearance is all too close to the original metaphor that named Taleb’s theory. The same… Read More

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I’ll be back on Tuesday. I don’t expect there is any room for blogging midst all the family events on Nick’s high school graduation.

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I generally try to avoid sensational blogging as there is already enough around. I have become skeptical that showing the horrific consequences of humans’ mistreatment of nature and other humans can change the course of history. There have been a few exceptions so I have only got as far as skepticism, not downright dismissal. The memories of these scenes quickly fades under the competition of the banal stream of media signals that capture public attention. Most people cannot make the connection between the catastrophe in the Gulf and the gas they pump at the local BP station. Just think for… Read More

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