Fishing with Paul Hawken - orig. 07/25/05
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and then give him credit so he can buy a fishing pole, fishing line, hooks, bobbers, bait, hip waders, a vest, one of those funny little hats, a net, a fish whacker, a boat, fuel, etc. and you own him.
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This discussion is based on the given that we are facing imminent, global ecological disaster. No one is able to say how imminent or exactly when it will occur, but I believe that there is consensus among the majority in the scientific community that if we stay the economic course we are currently on then worldwide environmental collapse is inevitable. If you are not yet convinced that collapse is imminent and that radical changes are necessary to stave off dire effects to all living systems on earth then I would strongly encourage you to do some independent research. Find ten articles that examine the big picture in regards to global environmental collapse. I challenge myself to do the same.
I finished Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, this morning. It’s dense, but I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already. It was written in 1993 which was over a decade ago and I am going to find out what he has written recently.
I am going to put down my thoughts in the order that I recorded my notes.
-----
Marketing to Children
I remember when I was 18 having a discussion with a friend about some sort of utopian ideal. It was all good with him until I mentioned that educating children was the key to making it work. He basically said, “You can do what you want, but don’t mess with my kids.” It is not an unusual response. I think that any parent wants to protect their child, and yet we have allowed the marketing machine to brainwash our youth. I think it is telling that people my age prefer not to have a brand logo on their shirts, whereas people a few years younger than me actually prefer to have a brand logo on their shirts. The marketing departments have succeeded.
I believe it may be time to curtail advertisers ability to market to our children. There are a couple of obvious arguments against this position. The first argument that I would mention is that one can simply turn off the television or whatever media if they don’t want their children watching it. We cannot turn off our visual environment however. Paul Hawken says on page 131 of The Ecology of Commerce, “Besides breathing, what do you do more than 3,000 times a day? What you do–or, more specifically, what is done to you–is receive several thousand messages to buy something. Not all of these are TV hard-sells.”
Even if you were to keep your child from watching TV he/she would still be subject to consumeristic peer pressure from schoolmates and friends. I remember in third grade a guy making fun of my tough-skins. I had to ask my mother to buy me a pair of Brittania’s so I would not feel ostracized. Remember their slogan, “My home is Seattle, but I live in Brittania.”
The second argument that I mention, but would actually be the first argument of the advertisers would be that it is a first amendment issue and that freedom of speech is our right. We also know that there are exceptions to this rule in relation to public safety e.g. shouting fire in a public theater. I would contend that conditioning children to turn them into mindless/thoughtless consumer addicts constitutes a grave threat to public safety.
There has already been a precedent set as it is currently illegal to market cigarettes to children.
-----
There are a lot of issues in our current society that distract us from the main issue. I believe that restoration of the biosphere should supersede all other issues in action and media attention as it will by far the greatest impact on humanity and other life forms.
-----
Are corporations acting in our best interest?
Corporations primary obligation is to earn money for it’s shareholders who are a small minority of the population. I believe the shareholders only communication from the company is through financial reports. This allows shareholders to dissociate from the actions of the corporation. I have already discussed, in a previous entry, the situational ethics of the CEO’s which also applies to other employees of corporations.
Corporations are currently able to influence governments around the globe.
If a corporation is able to influence government for the financial benefit of a minority this seems to be counter to the aims of a democracy which is to represent and protect the will of the majority of its citizens. It seems as if both choices in the last presidential election were members of an elite minority.
Is our government no better than any previous form of government in that it is set up to profit for and protect a small group of people while subjugating a much larger group of people? Is that what our founding father’s intended?
I am convinced that in order to have any hope of resolving the environmental disaster that confronts us we need to regain control of our governing bodies.
How then can we win our democracy back? I am asking: How do we do it? How do we separate government from commerce?
-----
On page 119 Paul Hawken says, “If we are to create a commercial culture that does no harm to natural and human communities, society will have to define commercial crime more effectively... In, law an individual is held accountable for his actions, even if those actions are carried out in ignorance of the law... Corporate crime, on the other hand, is perceived and handled differently. It is rarely even referred to as crime. No one was held responsible for the increased incidents of cancer following Three Mile Island...”
I heard a republican representative on CSPAN (during a hearing about a journalistic shield law) earlier today mention that he was working on a bill that would provide criminal prosecution for corporate wrongdoing.
What about crimes against humanity? Crimes against life? If politicians can be held accountable for crimes against humanity shouldn’t CEO’s be subject as well? Are they untouchable?
Are corporations impinging on our inalienable right to life? (I know the reference is from the Declaration of Independence, but our lives are protected in the Bill of Rights as well.)
Both “The Corporation,” and Paul Hawken mention that corporate charters can be revoked. Paul Hawken discussed dissolving companies that commit “capital crimes” and paying off their stockholders with the proceeds. I would like to see it taken a step further to where the moneys from the sale of the company are used to pay for reparations and/or cleanup. Why shouldn’t the stockholders take a financial hit in the case of a corporation that has committed a grave crime.
-----
It is going to take a lot to bring popular opinion around if it is possible at all. It’s going to require everyone who is convinced of this imperative to try and convince as many other people as possible. It’s scary to talk about such radical ideas, but more voices are going to have to join if there is any hope of affecting a change.
-----
I wish I had been more aware ten years ago. That I had connected the dots sooner. I feel like I am behind the curve.
-----
Here is a cartoon, from a series that I was working on earlier this year, to break things up:
-----
Hawken discusses localization of production and distribution which I heartily agree with. He goes on to say, “It is one thing for corporations to promote individual responsibility as a means to ‘save the earth,’ and quite another for an enterprise to conceive and design itself so choices are enlarged.” He is firmly convinced that corporations are the only organizations powerful enough to restore the environment. Page 147, “Consider this fact: If the items used in households in America were all recycled, this would reduce our solid waste by only 1 to 2 percent.” His hope is that companies will stop producing products that end up as waste.
I tend to think that we should be doing anything and everything in our power at every level to try and restore the biosphere and repair as much of the damage we have done as possible.
-----
I am pretty sure that all of our plastics are made from petrochemicals. So besides just fuel for cars, every piece of plastic in your house and vehicle is based on petrochemicals.
-----
I have a brother who is an Objectivist. He just moved to Chicago to open a brokerage house. The basic concept behind Objectivism as he explains it is that Objectivism is about doing what is best for oneself. That doing what’s best for oneself is going to be what is best for everyone. Trickle down economics has an objectivist ring to it.
I also learned in school about a Psycho-Social theory that is called Value Exchange Theory or something along those lines and it states that all human interactions are based on a quid pro quo type of relationship. I love you, you love me in return. Even if one were to think in terms of altruism there is an exchange in that one gets a positive feeling from helping others. It’s uplifting.
The problem that I have is not necessarily with the philosophy of Objectivism, but with the application. Objectivists in general believe that the acquisition of money is what’s best for oneself and therefore best for the whole. I am starting to think that what’s best for oneself is to live in a nontoxic environment and to allow ones descendants the right to life.
The other issue I have is that Objectivism is a Modern philosophy, i.e. from the era of Modernism. Modernism, hearkens back to Nietzche and the uber-mann. It is all about individual heroes (Ayn Rand calls them Producers) who are better than the average person whether better in business, smarter or more artistic etc. Objectivism also purports to be the one true philosophy and values no other philosophy than it’s own.
Postmodern thought is more along the lines that everyone is capable of being an artist or learning about business and that all our concepts draw from the work of previous artists and conceptual models. In the fine arts we are currently in what’s being called the Post-post-modern era. If art is in the Post-post-modern era then why is business still wallowing in the Modern Era?
-----
Hawken talks about instituting green taxes that increase over the course of twenty years. The taxes would be on any type of action that a company was involved in that created any kind of waste. The taxes would start low and eventually become so exorbitant that consumers and businesses would have to find waste free alternatives in order to remain in business. He used the example of a gas tax that would eventually become so expensive that consumers would have to switch to vehicles that use alternative fuels. He would phase it in over twenty years so that businesses and individuals will have plenty of time to transition.
In return for green taxes he proposes phasing out income tax. Which sounds good to me. Basically we would be paying more for goods and services, but we would have more income because of the reduction in income taxes.
He also talks about private utilities that have a guaranteed, but limited profit, “...10 to 12 percent...” that are responsible for taking care of the commons and subject to the will of the people, but that is more than I want to get into right now.
-----
Here’s a nice Hawken’s quote from page 202, “Politically feasible solutions tend to be half-measures that bring up the rear in terms of innovation and imagination. Historically the only kind of dramatic action we expect or accept from a national government is the waging of war, yet the ultimate threats to human welfare posed by the environment may someday equal or exceed that presented by any previous conflict. Because we perceive the environment to be only one of many ‘important’ issues, and because there is not a shared or universal perception of peril, our government is as yet unprepared to face up to the forces of environmental degradation.” And from page 208, “...or as the Somalians say, you cannot wake up a man who is pretending to be asleep.”
-----
Hawken doesn’t have a lot to say about overpopulation or population control but he does bring it up again in the last chapter, “At present fertility rates of 3.3 children per family, the population of the world will be 107 billion people in the year 2100. No one accepts that figure, of course...” which is because there is now way in hell that this planet can support 107 billion people. There are examples that show us that we can expect a catastrophic dying off of humans well before we reach that point. No one can predict the carrying capacity of the planet, but we may already be beyond a carrying capacity that is able to be maintained in a restorative manner.
Hawken doesn’t seem to think that population control is a workable proposition. But I believe the Chinese were able to institute population control via monetary incentives and political pressure. Population control still seems radical to many Americans, but I believe that is our responsibility as educated people to lead by example.
-----
Hawken’s does not seem to believe that consumers are able to cut back their consumption of their own volition and he does not seem to believe there needs to be a reduction in goods so much as a reduction in waste. I don’t think that he goes far enough in terms of encouraging reduction. Consumers not only need to consume less, but there should be a reduction in the number of companies and products. The amount of products available for trivial uses is ridiculous. If one imagines one’s loved one’s lips wrapped around the tailpipe of a car I imagine one would shut off the car’s engine fairly quickly.
-----
One of the things we can do is contact companies and our politicians and let them know that it is time for some radical changes. I will look into finding ways to contact folks and let you know how to do the same what I say in my correspondence with them. If I had stock in a company I would speak up and let them know the vision that I think they should follow.
-----
Water Conversation
I spoke with a friend of mine a few minutes ago and recommended that he watch, “The Corporation”. I had to let him know that I couldn’t drive out to his house (he lives about 35-45 minutes away by car) to play music because I was trying not to drive my car anymore.
He asked me what I was doing about water conservation and I didn’t have a good answer for him because I didn’t know very much about water conservation yet. He is however the second person who has mentioned water conservation to me.
He suggested saving gray-water from dishes and hand washing to use for either flushing your toilet or for watering your plants. You would want to use as little soap as necessary if you are going to use the gray-water to water your plants. I worry that dishwater might have organic matter that would decay in your toilet tank.
He also mentioned taking short showers. I can certainly take shorter showers and I will be doing more research on water conservation.
-----
This discussion is based on the given that we are facing imminent, global ecological disaster. No one is able to say how imminent or exactly when it will occur, but I believe that there is consensus among the majority in the scientific community that if we stay the economic course we are currently on then worldwide environmental collapse is inevitable. If you are not yet convinced that collapse is imminent and that radical changes are necessary to stave off dire effects to all living systems on earth then I would strongly encourage you to do some independent research. Find ten articles that examine the big picture in regards to global environmental collapse. I challenge myself to do the same.
I finished Paul Hawken’s book The Ecology of Commerce: A Declaration of Sustainability, this morning. It’s dense, but I highly recommend reading it if you haven’t already. It was written in 1993 which was over a decade ago and I am going to find out what he has written recently.
I am going to put down my thoughts in the order that I recorded my notes.
-----
Marketing to Children
I remember when I was 18 having a discussion with a friend about some sort of utopian ideal. It was all good with him until I mentioned that educating children was the key to making it work. He basically said, “You can do what you want, but don’t mess with my kids.” It is not an unusual response. I think that any parent wants to protect their child, and yet we have allowed the marketing machine to brainwash our youth. I think it is telling that people my age prefer not to have a brand logo on their shirts, whereas people a few years younger than me actually prefer to have a brand logo on their shirts. The marketing departments have succeeded.
I believe it may be time to curtail advertisers ability to market to our children. There are a couple of obvious arguments against this position. The first argument that I would mention is that one can simply turn off the television or whatever media if they don’t want their children watching it. We cannot turn off our visual environment however. Paul Hawken says on page 131 of The Ecology of Commerce, “Besides breathing, what do you do more than 3,000 times a day? What you do–or, more specifically, what is done to you–is receive several thousand messages to buy something. Not all of these are TV hard-sells.”
Even if you were to keep your child from watching TV he/she would still be subject to consumeristic peer pressure from schoolmates and friends. I remember in third grade a guy making fun of my tough-skins. I had to ask my mother to buy me a pair of Brittania’s so I would not feel ostracized. Remember their slogan, “My home is Seattle, but I live in Brittania.”
The second argument that I mention, but would actually be the first argument of the advertisers would be that it is a first amendment issue and that freedom of speech is our right. We also know that there are exceptions to this rule in relation to public safety e.g. shouting fire in a public theater. I would contend that conditioning children to turn them into mindless/thoughtless consumer addicts constitutes a grave threat to public safety.
There has already been a precedent set as it is currently illegal to market cigarettes to children.
-----
There are a lot of issues in our current society that distract us from the main issue. I believe that restoration of the biosphere should supersede all other issues in action and media attention as it will by far the greatest impact on humanity and other life forms.
-----
Are corporations acting in our best interest?
Corporations primary obligation is to earn money for it’s shareholders who are a small minority of the population. I believe the shareholders only communication from the company is through financial reports. This allows shareholders to dissociate from the actions of the corporation. I have already discussed, in a previous entry, the situational ethics of the CEO’s which also applies to other employees of corporations.
Corporations are currently able to influence governments around the globe.
If a corporation is able to influence government for the financial benefit of a minority this seems to be counter to the aims of a democracy which is to represent and protect the will of the majority of its citizens. It seems as if both choices in the last presidential election were members of an elite minority.
Is our government no better than any previous form of government in that it is set up to profit for and protect a small group of people while subjugating a much larger group of people? Is that what our founding father’s intended?
I am convinced that in order to have any hope of resolving the environmental disaster that confronts us we need to regain control of our governing bodies.
How then can we win our democracy back? I am asking: How do we do it? How do we separate government from commerce?
-----
On page 119 Paul Hawken says, “If we are to create a commercial culture that does no harm to natural and human communities, society will have to define commercial crime more effectively... In, law an individual is held accountable for his actions, even if those actions are carried out in ignorance of the law... Corporate crime, on the other hand, is perceived and handled differently. It is rarely even referred to as crime. No one was held responsible for the increased incidents of cancer following Three Mile Island...”
I heard a republican representative on CSPAN (during a hearing about a journalistic shield law) earlier today mention that he was working on a bill that would provide criminal prosecution for corporate wrongdoing.
What about crimes against humanity? Crimes against life? If politicians can be held accountable for crimes against humanity shouldn’t CEO’s be subject as well? Are they untouchable?
Are corporations impinging on our inalienable right to life? (I know the reference is from the Declaration of Independence, but our lives are protected in the Bill of Rights as well.)
Both “The Corporation,” and Paul Hawken mention that corporate charters can be revoked. Paul Hawken discussed dissolving companies that commit “capital crimes” and paying off their stockholders with the proceeds. I would like to see it taken a step further to where the moneys from the sale of the company are used to pay for reparations and/or cleanup. Why shouldn’t the stockholders take a financial hit in the case of a corporation that has committed a grave crime.
-----
It is going to take a lot to bring popular opinion around if it is possible at all. It’s going to require everyone who is convinced of this imperative to try and convince as many other people as possible. It’s scary to talk about such radical ideas, but more voices are going to have to join if there is any hope of affecting a change.
-----
I wish I had been more aware ten years ago. That I had connected the dots sooner. I feel like I am behind the curve.
-----
Here is a cartoon, from a series that I was working on earlier this year, to break things up:
-----Hawken discusses localization of production and distribution which I heartily agree with. He goes on to say, “It is one thing for corporations to promote individual responsibility as a means to ‘save the earth,’ and quite another for an enterprise to conceive and design itself so choices are enlarged.” He is firmly convinced that corporations are the only organizations powerful enough to restore the environment. Page 147, “Consider this fact: If the items used in households in America were all recycled, this would reduce our solid waste by only 1 to 2 percent.” His hope is that companies will stop producing products that end up as waste.
I tend to think that we should be doing anything and everything in our power at every level to try and restore the biosphere and repair as much of the damage we have done as possible.
-----
I am pretty sure that all of our plastics are made from petrochemicals. So besides just fuel for cars, every piece of plastic in your house and vehicle is based on petrochemicals.
-----
I have a brother who is an Objectivist. He just moved to Chicago to open a brokerage house. The basic concept behind Objectivism as he explains it is that Objectivism is about doing what is best for oneself. That doing what’s best for oneself is going to be what is best for everyone. Trickle down economics has an objectivist ring to it.
I also learned in school about a Psycho-Social theory that is called Value Exchange Theory or something along those lines and it states that all human interactions are based on a quid pro quo type of relationship. I love you, you love me in return. Even if one were to think in terms of altruism there is an exchange in that one gets a positive feeling from helping others. It’s uplifting.
The problem that I have is not necessarily with the philosophy of Objectivism, but with the application. Objectivists in general believe that the acquisition of money is what’s best for oneself and therefore best for the whole. I am starting to think that what’s best for oneself is to live in a nontoxic environment and to allow ones descendants the right to life.
The other issue I have is that Objectivism is a Modern philosophy, i.e. from the era of Modernism. Modernism, hearkens back to Nietzche and the uber-mann. It is all about individual heroes (Ayn Rand calls them Producers) who are better than the average person whether better in business, smarter or more artistic etc. Objectivism also purports to be the one true philosophy and values no other philosophy than it’s own.
Postmodern thought is more along the lines that everyone is capable of being an artist or learning about business and that all our concepts draw from the work of previous artists and conceptual models. In the fine arts we are currently in what’s being called the Post-post-modern era. If art is in the Post-post-modern era then why is business still wallowing in the Modern Era?
-----
Hawken talks about instituting green taxes that increase over the course of twenty years. The taxes would be on any type of action that a company was involved in that created any kind of waste. The taxes would start low and eventually become so exorbitant that consumers and businesses would have to find waste free alternatives in order to remain in business. He used the example of a gas tax that would eventually become so expensive that consumers would have to switch to vehicles that use alternative fuels. He would phase it in over twenty years so that businesses and individuals will have plenty of time to transition.
In return for green taxes he proposes phasing out income tax. Which sounds good to me. Basically we would be paying more for goods and services, but we would have more income because of the reduction in income taxes.
He also talks about private utilities that have a guaranteed, but limited profit, “...10 to 12 percent...” that are responsible for taking care of the commons and subject to the will of the people, but that is more than I want to get into right now.
-----
Here’s a nice Hawken’s quote from page 202, “Politically feasible solutions tend to be half-measures that bring up the rear in terms of innovation and imagination. Historically the only kind of dramatic action we expect or accept from a national government is the waging of war, yet the ultimate threats to human welfare posed by the environment may someday equal or exceed that presented by any previous conflict. Because we perceive the environment to be only one of many ‘important’ issues, and because there is not a shared or universal perception of peril, our government is as yet unprepared to face up to the forces of environmental degradation.” And from page 208, “...or as the Somalians say, you cannot wake up a man who is pretending to be asleep.”
-----
Hawken doesn’t have a lot to say about overpopulation or population control but he does bring it up again in the last chapter, “At present fertility rates of 3.3 children per family, the population of the world will be 107 billion people in the year 2100. No one accepts that figure, of course...” which is because there is now way in hell that this planet can support 107 billion people. There are examples that show us that we can expect a catastrophic dying off of humans well before we reach that point. No one can predict the carrying capacity of the planet, but we may already be beyond a carrying capacity that is able to be maintained in a restorative manner.
Hawken doesn’t seem to think that population control is a workable proposition. But I believe the Chinese were able to institute population control via monetary incentives and political pressure. Population control still seems radical to many Americans, but I believe that is our responsibility as educated people to lead by example.
-----
Hawken’s does not seem to believe that consumers are able to cut back their consumption of their own volition and he does not seem to believe there needs to be a reduction in goods so much as a reduction in waste. I don’t think that he goes far enough in terms of encouraging reduction. Consumers not only need to consume less, but there should be a reduction in the number of companies and products. The amount of products available for trivial uses is ridiculous. If one imagines one’s loved one’s lips wrapped around the tailpipe of a car I imagine one would shut off the car’s engine fairly quickly.
-----
One of the things we can do is contact companies and our politicians and let them know that it is time for some radical changes. I will look into finding ways to contact folks and let you know how to do the same what I say in my correspondence with them. If I had stock in a company I would speak up and let them know the vision that I think they should follow.
-----
Water Conversation
I spoke with a friend of mine a few minutes ago and recommended that he watch, “The Corporation”. I had to let him know that I couldn’t drive out to his house (he lives about 35-45 minutes away by car) to play music because I was trying not to drive my car anymore.
He asked me what I was doing about water conservation and I didn’t have a good answer for him because I didn’t know very much about water conservation yet. He is however the second person who has mentioned water conservation to me.
He suggested saving gray-water from dishes and hand washing to use for either flushing your toilet or for watering your plants. You would want to use as little soap as necessary if you are going to use the gray-water to water your plants. I worry that dishwater might have organic matter that would decay in your toilet tank.
He also mentioned taking short showers. I can certainly take shorter showers and I will be doing more research on water conservation.
posted by T-Bone_Jones at 9:10 PM
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