P&G, Microsoft & Sustainability

P&G and Microsoft have both recently strongly committed themselves to “sustainability.” P&G’s Lafley saying:

P&G’s commitment to sustainability is strategic. It is how our company conducts business. [Specifically]

• Develop and market at least $50 billion in innovative and sustainable products, up from a goal of $20 billion.
• Reduce carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, water usage and disposed waste by 20 percent, leading to a 50 percent reduction over the last 10 years.
• Increase use of rail transportation from 10 percent now to 30 percent by 2015.
• Increase the number of children benefiting from P&G’s Safe Drinking Water Program to 300 million, up from the original goal of 250 million.

 

and Microsoft’s saying:

Recently our CEO, Steve Ballmer, sent out an e-mail to all 90,000 Microsoft employees. He made clear that environmental sustainability is a core value for the company that is embedded in all we do,” Robert Bernard said in an interview with CNET News. He added that Ballmer talked about the topic as a corporate belief, “as opposed to a green campaign or a marketing campaign or a marketing issue.

P&G’s commitment is wide ranging and touches on a number of nodes of the value web, including resources and trade, atmosphere, energy, water, transportation, and family and community. They seem to be systematically working sustainability into their value chain.

Microsoft’s statement, though bold, is a little more confused, referring to “environmental sustainability.” Not quite sure how Microsoft is sustaining the environment. Rather than “environmental sustainability” I would recommend something like “environmental awareness is a core value”. 

Sustainability is bigger than you, me, the environment, climate change and renewable energy. It’s what links all of the essential nodes of the value web together. 

I applaud both companies for their concern and commitment. However, I believe both have a way to go before they fully embrace and embed sustainability in their organizations. They need to take the lead by leaping from focussing on discrete parts to developing strategies that link these parts holistically to what they do. 

Sustainability is about relationships and connections and not disconnected metrics. The sooner we see this the sooner we can start doing to get sustainable results.

Tags: A. J. Lafley, carbon dioxide emissions, climate change, core value, Microsoft, P&G, renewable energy, safe drinking water, Steve Balmer, sustainability, sustainable products, value web, waste reduction

11 Things You Can Do To Be Sustainable

Sustainability is not recycling. It is a process. A way of life.

1. Practice a discipline that gives you real insight into your Self. Deal with what emerges.
2. Draw a value web and ask yourself, “How can I strengthen ALL of these relationships?”
3. No waste. Just do it.
4. Develop a meaningful personal sustainability practice that you can commit to.
5. Stop “fighting” global warming, poverty, (insert cause of choice).
6. Begin working for systemic solutions to global warming, poverty, (insert cause of choice).
7. Commit yourself and enroll others to realizing renewable, clean energy in your community NOW.
8. Break old habits.
9. Seek out and support sustainable businesses and business models.
10. Do whatever works for you from all of those other lists.
11. Stop reading lists.

Tags: capacity evolution, clean energy, global warming, no waste, personal sustainability practice, poverty, renewable energy, sustainability, sustainable business, value web

The Absurdity of “Fighting” Global Warming

I have started collecting stories of sustainable practice. There are many of us doing so many things at so many levels, yet, when I talk with people in organizations or even in private I often hear a response sounding like, “I just don’t know where to begin.” 

Often, when people tell me they don’t know where to start, it is in reference to “fighting” the malevolent specter of global warming. I’ve got news for you.  We can’t “fight” global warming. It’s not an enemy. It’s an outgrowth of who we are, who we’ve been and what we’re becoming.

They only way we will make a significant impact on lowering the level of greenhouse gases we’re pumping into the atmosphere is to radically shift our energy generation and consumption practices as quickly and decisively as possible. We can’t “fight” global warming. We have to give in, give up and move on.

What is fueling global warming? Nearly everything we do. As I type away I’m also sucking up energy from the PGE power grid here in Portland which is, still to a great extent, coal fired. If we want to stop greenhouse gases from accumulating in the atmosphere we have to stop generating them. And, more importantly, we have to help other people stop as well.

This doesn’t mean villifying coal. Coal is not an enemy, it’s compressed carbon. We need to take our collective dis-ease with our current lifestyles and channel that energy into realizing fundamentally different ways of using and generating energy. I know, I know, renewable forms of energy are inefficient, expensive and not practical. The engine in an Oldsmobile wasn’t going to get us to the moon either.

What’s holding us back? We are. Change is hard, scary and uncomfortable, especially when you are a comfortably consuming American, Japanese or newly middle-classed Chinese. Give it up people. The dream of the last one hundred years is choking us with CO2. Let’s figure out and realize a better way. 

Revolution is coming one way or another. Either we keep “fighting” global warming with ineffective protocols, accords and reductions (until the glaciers melt, sea levels rise and all hell breaks loose) or we leap forward to something that just might sustain ALL of us. We’ve done it before. We can do it again.

Let’s stop fighting and start being the change we need to see in the world. Rant over. Let’s get on with it.

Tags: change, climate change, CO2, coal burning, global warming, greenhouse gases, renewable energy

An Inconvenient Truth in Tokyo: Al Gore’s Appearance at Waseda

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Was fortunate to catch Al Gore at Waseda University here in Tokyo on Wednesday. He was in town to accept an honorary degree and kick off their Global Ecology Summit.

He gave a variation on his Inconvenient Truth presentation on global warming with updated data. I’ve seen his presentation a couple of times and it keeps getting more convincing. To some degree that may be because of Mr. Gore’s considerable practice in delivering his message, unfortunately though, it has much to do with the ongoing changes in our environment that continue to lay frightening credence to his message. One thing that struck me deeply was his comparison of our current hothouse plight to that of the dinosaurs. I’ve heard and read this comparison before but, for some reason, the realization that we, like the dinosaurs, could well go extinct because of a polluted atmosphere making the planet inhospitable for much of what currently lives here cut me deeply. 

My initial surprise at the strength of my reaction yielded to a deep, calm acceptance of the fact that life will go on. If we are trying to save the planet we are wasting our time-it and life will go on without us. I realized that what I believe we must do is to avert needless suffering, pain and loss.

We are living in a time in which instant karma is a reality. We can see like never before how the butterfly effect works in real time via our wired, hyper-interactive connectivity. The choices we’re making, the way we’re living now are the foundations of our future. We can see this if we are willing and courageous enough to see. If the predictions that Gore and his scientific support are making are true, we’re creating a nightmare of suffering for future generations.

Gore’s description of our cities as part of a pattern of wind and water also hit me in a similar way. Our cities deeply reflect our inter-relationship with the elemental forces that shape our world. Their location, shape, building style, core sources of economy and even the make up of citizens are inextricably related to the ecological context into which they are woven. If the actions we’re taking now are going to erase or alter the fundamental precedents for settlement (like no water in New Dehli or lots of sea water in Miami and Tokyo) we will be responsible for unimaginable pain, suffering and loss.

The presentation closed with the exhortation to make the jump away from fossil fuels and to renewable resources like solar and wind power. Invoking Abraham Lincoln, Gore referenced the following statement: “As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”  In Lincoln’s case he was talking about slavery and saving the US. In our case we are talking about dependence on fossil fuels and saving our selves, children and grandchildren from a miserable, dark and depressing future.

It isn’t a matter of technology now, the technology exists or is quickly coming on line. It is a matter of belief, hope, imagination, compassion, and will and courage. 

I’ve asked this before and will keep asking anyone who will listen, what are you waiting for?

Tags: Abraham Lincoln, Al Gore, An Inconvenient Truth, global warming, renewable energy, solar power, wind power