When Charles Darwin wrote his world-changing book, On the Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection, he provided a simple explanation for the astounding complexity of life on Earth: Nature selects and reproduces the traits best suited for a species’ survival.
Some adapt to their surroundings and thrive. Others fail to adapt and die out. There are many forces, from climatic and environmental changes, to hungry predators, to random genetic mutations that every now and again result in an evolutionary leg up for the next generation.
“Survival of the fittest” has long been applied to the cutthroat world of business, too. It’s probably why those with deeply vested interest in last century industries turn to government to “protect” their place in the food chain, because they can’t survive on their own.
And yet corporations of all sizes are being forced to adapt to a new economic reality that is being shaped by the forces of climate change and more than a century of industrial pollution. Environmental degradation has become a measurable drag on corporate profits and national economic growth. And for the past 15 years or so, consumers (and voters) have increasingly rewarded those who wanted to fix that, because they are smart enough to see that evolution to the next economy was in all our best interests.
But, as the climate clock keeps ticking, it’s time to grapple with a key question: Will we evolve fast enough? Regrettably, the answer is . . .probably not.
With the boneheaded decision to pull out of the Paris climate accords, to choose isolationism over global collaborative action, to deny science and the power of improved human performance, we’re now on an unavoidable collision course with catastrophic climate change.
And I’m not talking about melting glaciers. I’m talking about economic meltdown.
What happens to Nestlé or General Mills when permanent droughts devastate global agriculture? What happens to Prudential or Berkshire Hathaway—two of the world’s largest insurance holding companies—when faced with an escalating onslaught of extreme weather events and unprecedented coastal flooding? What happens to blue chip corporations like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo when water shortages send the beverage industry into a tailspin? What happens to the stock market when corporate profits plunge due to resource scarcity brought on by shortsighted politicians in the pockets of those who refuse to adapt and dig in their $750-an-hour lawyerly heels to protect their status quo at all cost? What happens to the American labor market when the global economy enters a post–climate change environmental depression? And most important, what happens to our kids and our grand-kids when these scenarios play out?
I don’t want to discover the answers to any of these questions. No one does. We don’t have the generations’ worth of time necessary to let economic natural selection run its course, especially when it’s dealt politically motivated interventions that can only delay and worsen the inevitable.
It’s clear that we need something more than sustainable evolution. We need a sustainable revolution. And revolutions, of course, need leaders.
We sure can’t depend on them coming from the White House. The daily train wreck of bad decisions, self-centered politics, and overwhelming paranoia has left many of us stunned and speechless. In Congress, buffoonery has replaced bold action and finger-pointing substitutes for forward thinking on both sides of the aisle.
But we can find those leaders elsewhere, and we should be giving them as much air cover and support as we can muster, because they are our only hope. They are mayors from cities large and small across our great country. They are inventors and innovators who see in the sustainable revolution opportunity for human advancement AND for financial reward. They are passionate scientists frantically looking for answers. They are clear-eyed business people who get the fact that profit and the promise it brings are tremendous motivators for hitting reset on everything from energy sources to food production.
While the old narrative claims that the environment is the enemy of growth, the new narrative holds that the environment and the economy are deeply, fundamentally connected. They share common enemies: waste, inefficiency, pollution, climate change, resource scarcity, and environmental degradation. They also share a common ally: sustainability. And instead of intractable, insulated groupthink, they share a common outlook: greenthink.
Greenthink occurs when businesses, non-profits, governments, and individuals marry environmental and economic principles for the benefit of both. Throughout the global economy, a select number of enlightened companies are already engaged in greenthink by leveraging the power of sustainability to drive profits. These businesses aren’t using less energy and fewer resources in the name of self-denial, or out of the goodness of their hearts; they’re consuming less in order to earn more. The result is a measurable reduction in the damage that many companies are inflicting on the environment and people, an increase in innovation and the overall quality of their products and services, and a reward in the form that business understands best: cold, hard cash.
I’m convinced “greenthink” gives us a framework that we – the people – can embrace. It’s our best defense against climate change. It reminds us that using less gets us so much more – more resources, better health, a higher quality of life, not just for the 1%, but rather for the 100% of us who make up what’s called America. And I’m equally convinced there’s no time to waste.
Adapted from
GREENTHINK: How Profit Can Save the Planet, available on amazon.com.
All proceeds go to support Project Haiti, an orphanage and children’s center in Port-au-Prince that is aiming for LEED Platinum and WELL Platinum.