I like the way a masterful interviewer and editor can make you look good!
Check out Breaking the Barriers and Seizing the Moment, the interview I just did with Joel Makower of Greenbiz.com.
The occasion is the release of my new book, The Truth About Green Business (which is now moving up the carts, as they say — and waiting for your review!). But the interview is wide ranging, starting with my perspectives from nearly 40 years in the sustainability field, on “where we are and how far we’ve come.”
I feel both excited and deeply concerned. It’s like that old Charles Dickens line, the best of times and the worst of times. There’s been a substantial, I would say even profound, increase in both the awareness and the engagement of companies across industries, and the sophistication with these companies are addressing green or sustainable business. And just over the last couple of years there’s been a big shift in the seriousness of the understanding and seriousness of the commitment and the scale of challenge that many companies are prepared to take on.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that we’re still in a world of hurt and looking at worse. I don’t think there’s a single company, and certainly not a single government in the world, that is taking these issues on at the scale and the depth that the challenges require. There’s a lot of momentum in the right direction and there’s a lot of resistance as well. And I think it’s anybody’s guess at this point on how it plays out.
We go on to talk about strategy, the process of change, measuring “sustainability”, the assumptions that hobble both businesses and activists, and the inescapable fundamentals:
We live most of our business lives in the world of economics. But “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment,” as Herman Daly said decades ago. And the environment depends on fundamental principles of biology and even more fundamental principles of chemistry and physics that you just can’t escape no matter what your role in the company or your political inclinations. The laws of thermodynamics apply everywhere in the universe. You can’t break those laws; as [Natural Logic director] Jane Byrd reminds me, you can only break yourself against them.
Read more at Breaking the Barriers and Seizing the Moment.