A politician who isn’t afraid to talk about overconsumption

May 13, 2013

Business Week recently ran a good story by Joel Stein headlined How Jerry Brown Scared California Straight.

Jerry Brown, being sworn in as California governor in 1975

Jerry Brown, being sworn in as California governor in 1975

Mostly it’s about how Brown cleaned up California’s fiscal mess. I was struck by the fact that, unlike most members of Congress, and our president, who generally tell people what they want to hear, Brown is a grownup who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks. Maybe that’s what happens when you turn 75 and you have been in politics forever. You get tired of pandering. Brown was first elected governor of California in 1975, for crying out loud.

Anyway, here’s my favorite passage:

Brown believes California has been led for too long by “I want.” His office at the Capitol is empty except for two photographs, some books, a couch, a coffee table, and a thick wooden table with a monastic bench. Many of his staff offices are empty, too, since he has barely any staff; the governor doesn’t employ a chief of staff or speechwriter.

This is a man who remembers World War II ration cards with fondness. “This idea you can have ice cream every night? Ice cream was for your birthday,” he says about his childhood. “It wasn’t an austere world. In fact, it was a normal world. It’s only austere juxtaposing the indulgence, the overconsumption, the profligacy—people don’t like those words because part of our economic growth is buying all this stuff.” Brown, who took a vow of poverty and chastity and lived in near-total silence while studying for the priesthood in the late 1950s, cites the Jesuit philosophy of tantum quantum: take what you need.

The best line: “Ice cream was for your birthday.” We need more leaders like Jerry Brown. The rest is here.

Filed Under: Consumption, Environment, Politics Tagged With: , , ,

Warren Buffett’s coal problem

April 21, 2013
Warren Buffett

Warren Buffett

Last winter, I traveled to southeastern Montana (brr!) to report on a battle over a coal mine being proposed by Arch Coal, America’s second-biggest coal company, and a coal-carrying railroad that’s needed to transport the coal from the mine to coal-burning power plants, either in the U.S. or in Asia. The railroad, called the Tongue River Railroad, is owned by Arch Coal, by the BNSF Railway, which is a unit of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway and by the candy billionaire Forrest Mars Jr.

It’s a fascinating story, for a bunch of reasons. The coal mine and the railroad are interdependent; both will be built, or neither will be. They need the approval of state and federal regulators. And opposing them are an unlikely coalition of Montana cattle ranchers, members of the northern Cheyenne tribe, a small Amish farming community that recently moved to to the state in search of peace and quiet, and some very determined environmental activists from the Northern Plains Resource Council, the National Wildlife Federation and the Sierra Club.

My story was as just published in the May/June issue of by Sierra, the magazine of the Sierra Club, under the headline, Warren Buffett’s Coal Problem. Like the Sierra Club, I think this coal mine is a bad idea–a very bad idea–and that’s one reason why I wanted  to write the story. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Business Ethics, Climate Change, Energy, NGOs, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Mark Tercek: The business case for nature

April 7, 2013

Tercek-Adams-Natures-FortuneThe value of nature is astonishing, when you stop and think about it. Marshes protect coastlands. Urban trees clean the air. Forests provide timber. Oceans give us seafood.  Snow-capped mountains store drinking water. Some might say nature is priceless.

Not Mark Tercek, the former investment banker at Goldman Sachs who became CEO of The Nature Conservancy in 2008. His new book, Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature (Basic Books, 2013), argues that nature provides enormous economic benefits to society, business and consumers, and that, if we can figure out how to value and pay for those benefits, we can slow down and even reverse the degradation of nature that threatens our well-being.

It’s an important and potentially controversial argument, as Tercek acknowledges. While the 20th century conservation was all about protecting nature from people, Tercek and some of his allies in the environmental movement would like the future to be about protecting nature for people. If nothing else, he argues, recognizing the economic value of nature will expand the base of the environmentalist beyond the white, college-educated and relatively affluent folk, the backpackers and hikers and birdwatchers at its core. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Books, Climate Change, CSR, Environment, Leadership, Media, NGOs, Politics, Sustainability, Water

In defense of environmental extremism

March 21, 2013
David Brower and friends

David Brower and friends

The other night, I saw A Fierce Green Fire, a documentary history of the environmental movement, as part of the excellent DC Environmental Film Festival. The movie was OK, worth seeing, but not great, a bit PBS-like in its sweep.  By trying to cover a  lot, the filmmakers mostly skim the surface: Here’s Sierra Club  founder John Muir, there’s Rachel Carson and Silent Spring, remember when Jimmy Carter put a solar heater on the White House roof, say hello to Stewart Brand and Bill McKibben, meet Wangari Maathai, and let’s not overlook environmental justice and the Copenhagen climate talks, and wasn’t that Buckminster Fuller? Nor does the film look critically at environmentalism; it’s narrated by Robert Redford, Ashley Judd, Van Jones, Isabel Allende and Meryl Streep, which pretty much tells you all you need to know.

FierceGreenFire_posterHaving said that, the film, sometimes by design and sometimes inadvertently, manages to deliver a useful reminder about radicals and rabble-rousers: They are often the ones who drive change. Had Barry Goldwater been an environmentalist, he might have said that extremism in defense of the earth is no vice and that moderation, when it comes to climate change, is no virtue. The environmental movement’s heroes, at least in this telling, are David Brower and Lois Gibbs and Chico Mendes and Greenpeace, and not those who work inside the Beltway or travel to UN conferences. At the very least, grass-roots, bottom-up activism created the conditions that drove change in Washington.

Consider, for example, these stirring words from a presidential State of the Union address, which is (too) briefly excerpted in the movie: [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Books, Climate Change, Environment, NGOs, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Shell: Get ready for a warmer world

February 28, 2013

image.1614211676Solar power and natural gas will grow rapidly in the next few decades, if new scenarios from global energy giant Shell prove accurate.

And as the technology to capture carbon from the burning fossil fuels reaches scale, and sources of clean energy grow, net carbon emissions could drop to zero by 2100.

Even so, it will be hard, if not impossible, to meet the goal set by the world’s governments of holding the average increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees centigrade.

6280287836_2ccdb72913_mToday in Washington, Royal Dutch Shell’s chief executive, Peter Voser, and Jeremy Bentham, the head of Shell’s scenarios team, unveiled a pair of “New Lens” scenarios, dubbed “oceans” and “mountains,” and available in much greater detail here. In essence (and it’s more complicated this), the “mountains” scenario envisions a strong role for government and coordinated global policy, while the “oceans” scenario sees dispersed power, greater volatility, a stronger role for markets and rapid economic growth. Shell has been generating scenarios for about 40 years, to help guide the company’s long-term planning as well as influence policy makers.

Underlying both scenarios, though, are assumptions about the world’s increasing population and economic growth that together will drive demand for energy by about 80% by 2050. That rising demand is all but unavoidable, Bentham said, even assuming strong policies to promote efficiency or high energy prices that discourage consumption.

Meeting that demand for energy, while reducing carbon emissions dramatically, will be extremely difficult, to say the least, the Shell executives said. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Politics, Sustainability Tagged With: , , ,

John Mackey: Hippie, libertarian, CEO

February 12, 2013

imageThe top executives of big publicly-traded US companies, in my experience, tend to be rather drab fellows (nearly all are men) who choose their words carefully, hew carefully to the middle of the road in their thinking and rarely say (or do) anything outrageous.*

Not John Mackey, the founder and co-CEO of Whole Foods Market. For better and occasionally for worse, Mackey is an original, who doesn’t run his company by any conventional management book.

Instead, he has written his own book, called Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, with co-author Raj Sisodia, an academic affiliated with Bentley University. It’s a good read, especially because of the insights it delivers into the unusual culture and practices of Whole Foods, as well as into Mackey’s own evolution.

Some examples from the book: [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Books, Business Ethics, Climate Change, Consumption, Economics, Environment, Food, Leadership, Media, Politics, Sustainability, Transparency, Uncategorized, Workplace Tagged With: , , ,

2012′s green business heroes

December 23, 2012
Bill McKibben does the math

Bill McKibben does the math

Some say, and with reason, that 2012 was the best year ever. Never in the history of the world has there been less hunger, less disease and more prosperity. Of course there’s plenty to worry about–the fiscal cliff, gun violence, chaos in Syria and the Congo–as always there will be. But, to paraphrase Martin Luther King, the long arc of history bends towards a more just and sustainable world.

In the little corner of the world that occupies much of my attention–the places where business and sustainability intersect–it has not been a good year. Global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. We’re burning more coal, oil and gas than ever. Policy is stuck, in the US and internationally. This will be the hottest year on record in the US, and still people don’t accept the science of climate change. Go figure.

That said, in this final blogpost of 2012,  I’d like to salute some people (again, mostly from the world of business and sustainability) who fought the good fight during the year  just past. Some are business people, others are politicians, activists and even journalists, but they are all doing what they can to bend the arc of history. They’re my green business heroes for 2012. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Media, NGOs, Politics, Sustainability, Transparency, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Reed Hundt and Blair Levin: Grow the economy, save the climate

November 26, 2012

Today’s guest column comes from Reed Hundt and Blair Levin, authors of a new ebook called The Politics of Abundance:  How Technology Can Fix the Budget, Revive the American Dream, and Establish Obama’s Legacy, available at www.politicsofabundance.com and via Amazon and iTunes. Reed Hundt was chair of the Federal Communications Commission and Blair Levin was his chief of staff from 1993 through 1997, when the government’s telecom policies helped spur the Internet boom; they see similar opportunities now in broadband and energy. Hundt is now the CEO of the Coalition for Green Capital, a non-profit that designs financing support for energy projects. Blair (who is a friend) is CEO of Gig U, a non-profit engaged in broadband projects. They’ve got some good and (relatively) simple ideas for spurring the green economy.

Based on existing trends in global warming and life expectancy, every American at or under age 65 is likely to live long enough to see the world devastated by floods, droughts, storms, starvation, extinction of species, and other iterations of the apocalypse.

Despite occasional eruptions of denial in some quarters, most business and government leaders in the United States and virtually all in other nations agree that greenhouse gases, spewing from smokestacks and exhaust pipes, are warming the planet to the point where these apocalyptic outcomes are probable.

The great news is that in the first term of the Obama Administration federal and state governments showed clearly how any country can halt these murderous emissions, and at the same time stimulate sustainable economic growth.

By insisting that ARRA, the recovery spending act passed in February 2009, provide tax credits used for building a new energy system, President Obama helped the wind and solar electricity generation industry double their share of the market in less than four years.

Then the Administration re-organized and increased research and funding of sustainable energy technologies. As a result, innovators are delivering Moore’s Law (price-performance doubling every couple of years) results in batteries, grid efficiency, and other areas.

California has put into place laws that cap emissions, require rapid market share shift to renewables, and encourage investment in distributed rooftop solar. So far the economic impact is good and popular opinion supportive.

Connecticut created a state green bank that can provide low-cost capital for renewables and efficiency investment. As a result, clean electricity can be provided to consumers at below the current and projected prices for non-sustainable electricity generation, and the money contributed by the state green ban to jumpstart private projects will be paid back over time.

Most states have passed laws requiring a shift of major market share to renewable generation sources. These renewable standards permit utilities to phase out dangerous emissions-intense generation rapidly, while bringing new investment into local economies.

Reed Hundt

Technological breakthroughs have led to the discovery of vast resources of natural gas deep inside American soil. The electricity generation industry can switch from using coal to natural gas and deliver electricity cheaper, with much reduced emissions. Within the second term of the Obama Administration natural gas generation can increase its already large share of the market by fifty percent – without any new government funding. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Books, Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Politics Tagged With: , ,

What a long strange trip it’s been: How the Social Venture Network changed business in America

November 18, 2012

Ben Cohen, of Ben & Jerry’s renown, is asking me for money, and he’s not selling ice cream. I give him a dollar bill, he stamps it in red ink — NOT TO BE USED FOR BRIBING POLITICIANS — and returns it to me. It’s part of his new crusade to get corporate money out of politics.

“Corporations are not people, and money is not free speech,” Cohen declares.

The 61-year-old ice-cream mogul sold Ben & Jerry’s to Unilever in 2000.  (He’s on the left, without his trademark beard, next to his longtime pal Jerry Greenfield.) The T-shirt says: “Stamp Money Out of Politics.” These days,  as “Head Stamper” at StampStampede, Cohen is working for an amendment to the US Constitution to get money out of politics.

It sounds improbable but no more improbable than this: That a gathering of about 70 people, including Ben and his partner Jerry Greenfield, at the rustic Gold Lake Mountain Resort not far from Boulder, Colorado, Colorado back in 1987 could spawn a movement that has changed the way millions of Americans think about and do business. The Gold Lake get-together led to the creation of the Social Venture Network (SVN), a group of business people, investors and philanthropists, many of them shaped by the political and cultural movements of the 1960s, who believe that business can change the world for the better. About 700 SVN members, friends and family gathered last week in New York for a 25th anniversary dinner and celebration–a time to assess how far their movement to remake business has come, and how far it needs to go.

The dinner was a star-studded affair, at least for those of us who pay attention to businesses that aim to build a more just and sustainable economy. On hand along with Ben and Jerry were Eileen Fisher of the eponymous clothing company, Gary Hirshberg of Stonyfield Farm, Drew and Myra Goodman of Earthbound Organic, George Siemon of dairy co-op Organic Valley, Jeffrey Hollender, formerly of Seventh Generation, Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hotels, Roger Brown and Linda Mason of Bright Horizons, Amy Domini of Domini Social Investments, all of whom were named to the SVN “Hall of Fame.” Spotted in the crowd of 700 or so were Gifford Pinchot III, president of of Bainbridge Graduate Institute, my friends Seth Goldman of Honest Tea and author Mark Albion (More Than Money: Questions Every MBA Needs to Answer), Danny Kennedy of Sungevity–the closest thing to a power elite of the sustainable business movement.

None of them, to be sure, run FORTUNE 500 companies. But the movement birthed by SVN powered the field of corporate social responsibility, opened up new possibilities for entrepreneurs, raised expectations that big companies now need to meet and helped shape the way companies ranging from Google (“Don’t be Evil”) to Walmart do what they do. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Business Ethics, CSR, Environment, Food, Leadership, NGOs, Politics, Small Business, Social Entrepreneurs, Socially Responsible Investing, Sustainability Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Do the math: Bill McKibben takes on Big Oil

November 11, 2012

Most Americans own cars. Most cars run on gasoline.

Can we be persuaded to think of the oil industry as the enemy? What about the coal industry, which supplies more than a third of the electricity we use?

“Movements need enemies,” declares Bill McKibben, the author, activist and leader of grassroots group 350.org. So last week, with allies including the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, McKibben and 350.org began a 20-city, month-long coast-to-coast tour called Do the Math that targets the fossil fuel industry. It’s designed to invigorate the climate movement by calling upon colleges, foundations and governments to sell their stock in coal, oil and natural gas companies.

The campaign is modeled after the 1980s South Africa divestment campaign, which helped pressure the government to enter negotiations that eventually led to the end of apartheid. To underscore that point, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu will make appearances, on video, during the tour.

It’s time to focus on the polluters, McKibben said last week by phone from Seattle, where the tour kicked off. “We’ve spent so much time focusing on our elected officials, and so little time focusing on the players behind them,” he said.

“The fossil fuel industry is now the tobacco industry,” he told me. “They are now a rogue force in our society.”

Not surprisingly, the oil companies aren’t happy about any of this. Rayola Dougher, a senior economic advisor at the American Petroleum Institute, told me that McKibben’s attacks on U.S. oil companies, if they lead to higher carbon taxes or caps, would raise energy prices and risk American jobs, while doing little or nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions. “Demonizing an industry is not a good starting point for dealing with a big and complex issue like this one,” she said. [click to continue...]

Filed Under: Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, NGOs, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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