Cartoon by Michael Leunig (thanks to Mia for the link)
A week ago I wrote an article
linking business risk, business sustainability and business resilience,
arguing that the best way to get companies to pay attention to their
social and environmental actions is to frame the challenge as a
business risk and business sustainability issue, rather than something
business should do just out of a sense of responsibility.
A business colleague has since sent me a paper and a video
of a presentation to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England
and Wales by Rob Gray of St. Andrew's University. Gray argues that what
currently passes as 'sustainability reporting' is, at best, meaningless
rhetoric and, at worst, dangerous greenwashing (dangerous because it
gives us a false sense of security that we're effectively dealing with
the problems). There is no correlation between 'sustainability
reporting' and more socially and environmentally responsible business
practices, he shows, and those practices, at any rate, are not even
beginning to address the problems our planet and civilization now face.
In essence, Gray is saying:
- Business
sustainability and the sustainability of our planet and civilization
are, ultimately, connected (if there's no planet there's no business),
but in the shorter term they are not necessarily correlated and may in
fact be inversely correlated (what's in the best interest of the
short-term bottom line of the company may harm society and the planet).
By extension, appealing to business to focus on business sustainability may actually make the situation worse.
- We
all, including business, have a responsibility to take the drastic
steps needed now to try to ensure the sustainability of our planet and
civilization. For business to say that this is government's job, and
that they will cooperate with regulations but otherwise be passive in
addressing this threat, is an abrogation of that responsibility.
On
the first issue, I'm not sure I agree. It may be in the best interests
of an oil company, for example, to spend money on greenwashing PR and
advertising while its competitors spend money investing in clean
technologies. But getting the business to focus on business
sustainability can't make this any worse -- the worst corporate
criminals are already doing that and will continue to do so. In my
experience few people read (or believe) sustainability reports anyway.
There
is a concern that governments (usually well-paid by corporatists) may
be complicit with greenwashers by encouraging wishy-washy
sustainability reporting instead of passing regulations to make
business more sustainable. After all, the public has been hoodwinked
into believing that 'free' trade agreements benefit the majority rather
than a corporatist elite (and these agreements are a race to the bottom
when it comes to labour and environmental regulation, since it
effectively makes such regulation illegal in signatory states). So why
not hoodwink us again by selling us on 'sustainability reports' instead
of 'sustainability actions', so the government can essentially do
nothing, and allow socially and environmentally irresponsible
corporations to do nothing?
I'm not sure there's anything than
can be done to stop or mitigate this from happening anyway -- there's
too much of a reward for doing so. Those who want to advance the cause
of sustainability need to decide whether to spend their time fighting
for honest accounting and reporting, or fighting for real action and
regulation. It's not really a hard choice.
On the second issue,
I do agree with Gray. Our whole civilization is unsustainable. We need
to drastically lower birth rates to bring human population down to
sustainable levels. That can only be done culturally, not politically,
and as I've said before I don't think it will happen -- it's just not
in our nature.
We also need regulation that makes it
prohibitively expensive to pollute and waste, or to consume a
disproportionate amount. But more than that we need enforcement of such
regulation. Today's globalized economy encourages
polluters, wasters, and conspicuous consumers to exploit countries that
either lack regulation or lack enforcement. And even in countries with
both, successfully cheating on taxes and other regulations, in today's
cynical anti-government world, is something people actually brag about.
More
than that, our entire economy is built on growth in consumption, which
translates into greater growth in profits. Without profit growth, the
equity markets would (some say will)
crash, and our economy will crash with it. If we were to recognize this
real white elephant in the room, we'd have to acknowledge that we need
both corporations and individuals to reduce their footprint, in many
cases drastically, as an absolute precondition to sustainability of our
planet and civilization. We need to consume much less, which means we
need to produce much less. We need to re-internalize all the
externalized costs that, for many corporations, are the difference
between today's extraordinary profits and insolvency. We need to
eliminate pollution and waste entirely, not just to start to slow
global warming but because no amount
of pollution and waste is sustainable. No amount of resource extraction
beyond what the planet, over millions of years, slowly replenishes, is
sustainable. 'Sustainable growth' is an oxymoron.
There are a
few companies, like Interface Carpets (full disclosure: I own a few
shares in this company), that have come to this realization, and they
are beginning to begin to do what would be necessary to become truly
sustainable. But they are a tiny part of a massively complicated
economy which must somehow all start
moving, very quickly and consistently, in that direction. When we have
no idea how to do so. When we are rewarded (in fact corporations are
chartered) to do the exact opposite.
Therein lies the
quandary. To transform our economy would take an unprecedented,
herculean, collaborative, and punishing effort by all of us, moving
quickly, starting now. The alternative is to throw up our hands and say
we're all fucked anyway, so we might as well enjoy what we have while
we have it. There is a terrible temptation to do just that, to embrace
the greenwashing and the tepid, inadequate tiny steps towards being a
little less grossly irresponsible, a little less unsustainable. To try
to convince ourselves that we're doing our best, and slowly improving.
At least until some disaster comes along to force us to do more.
So
far, the generations that will follow us, as our planet and our
civilization careen over a cliff, are none the wiser. They've bought
the propaganda we tell them, and tell ourselves. So far.
What
will we do, though, when they learn what we've done? And what, as we
desperately and ludicrously tried to convince ourselves that we were on
the road to sustainability, we failed to do?
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MADE IN CANADA
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