The Big Environmental Problem - The First Step to Change

[Cross-posted to The Environmental Capitalist blog]

One of the major themes of our last semester will be Environmental Sustainability, as it will come into play in our Global Strategy, Leading Change and Management Practicum courses.

As prep work, we're reading:

• Natural Capitalism - Creating the Next Industrial Revolution
• The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability
• Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility

I haven't read all of these books yet, but a couple common themes come through in each of them.

• The world's current consumption rate of natural resources will deplete the planet by the end of the 21st century (give or take a few years).
• Much of the technology needed to solve today's problems exist today. It isn't necessarily ready to be deployed in a "cost effective" manner, but it exists today.
• The interconnectedness of many of the problems is extremely complex (ie. Pollution comes from A, affects B/C/D, this depletes E/F/G, causing problems with X/Y/Z, etc.)

Unlike many people that want to bash things like Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, turning it into a political debate, or a science debate, or a morality debate, I don't believe it's really a debate about any of those things. This is a marketing debate and it's being lost by everyone that is passionate about the concept.

Let's break this down a little bit and see if we can make a few suggestions:

• If the scientists are right and the world (at the current or forecasted pace) will run out of natural resources by the end of the 21st century, almost every person that can influence it (financially, politically, etc.) will be dead before that happens.
• As we've seen with things like the Y2K computer bug, or the underfunded U.S. Social Security program, intelligent people don't take action upon well known issues until they are right in front of them and teetering on the edge of chaos.
• As I've mentioned before, almost all of the discussions about sustainability are phrased in such massive scope that the average person can't grasp what that means. Is the rise of the ocean by 6" alot? Is a 1* increase in water near the Arctic Circle alot? 200 years of coal reserves available in the US seems like a long time, isn't it?

So essentially they are asking people to take action on things where they will never see the final act (or maybe even the intermission), they can't economically afford them today, and they can't actually grasp the scope of them other than in simple things like the price of gas in the summer.

So if you're selling this at the G8 summit, then it's a political or economic or moral discussion. But for the average person, it's hard for me to look at this as anything more than a massive marketing problem. And like many marketing problems, we need to convince people to make a change, especially the first change.

Let's try a simpler concept -

What if instead of the massive amount of money used for some of the 2008/2009 Gov't bailouts, that money had been focused on something that almost everyone in the US could grasp (since the US is the largest net-polluter in the world)? What if they had allowed GM and Chrysler to fail (real Chapter 11, not gov't bailout version), and completely focused the "Cash-for-Clunkers" program on trade-ins for vehicles that didn't use gasoline? You have a clunker, you MUST trade it in for a non-gasoline burning vehicle within 18 months. And within 5-10 years, all vehicles in the US must run on non-gasoline products. And while the initial price tags on the vehicles will be slightly higher, that can be blurred through subsidies, alternative taxes (sales tax, tire tax, whatever..). We have no idea where all the taxes dollars go today. And it's the law.

It would be the equivalent to the JFK "Man on the Moon" edict. It would focus all the industries surrounding automobiles to focus on green technologies because there is already a consumer demand for transportation, and it's the law. And it would be something that every person could grasp because cars intersect our lives on a daily basis. It's simple, it has a understandable timeline and it has massive scope of impact.

Would it have political and economic ramifications? Absolutely!! Both positive and negative, but at least they would be tangible by everyday people and governments.

• Less dependence on foreign oil - lower trade deficits; lower military expenditures to protect sea channels which carry oil; less fear of terrorist bombings
• Less pollution - lower healthcare spends on asthma, etc.
• Job creation - new distribution channels for the alternative energy mechanisms (refueling stations, repair services, etc.)

And it might be partially impractical (at this point), but that's OK. All change is considered impractical until you can convince someone to do it.

This isn't a tree-hugger vs. non tree-hugger issue, this is a citizens of Planet Earth issue. It's a massive set of issues and it's a long-term set of issues. But people need to do a better job of starting the discussion.

I'd just ask that the passionate people around this industry consider this approach for a second. See if it makes any sense. Maybe you aren't in the automotive sector, but how could this type of thinking be applied to your sector or sustainability. What is the first step you wish you could get people to take, and then how might you force that to happen? Maybe it wouldn't all happen through a new law, but maybe it happens through some other event. What would be your first step to change?

1st Semester Summary - LOB (Part II)

The final project for the LOB class was a self-analysis paper and presentation, in the context of the topics we studied throughout the class, along with an action plan to improve the areas we identified as weaknesses.   Everyone was given 15 minutes to convey not only their analysis, but also an aspect of their personality that the class may not be aware of, or what made them unique.   I talked about my presentation in earlier posts, so wanted to touch on a couple of other presentations that I thought were very interesting.  I'm hoping to explore some of these topics in more details in later blog posts (interviews, Q&As, video discussions), but I'm working out the details at this time.

Cradle-to-Cradle (C2C) - One of my classmates runs an architectural firm, and is in the program to expand his business skills to augment his outstanding creative and engineering skills. His presentation highlighted some work that he started in 2004, based on the inspiration that he received from the book Cradle-to-Cradle, which explores the biomimetic approach to the design of systems.  To say that this was "work" is really underselling his efforts.  It really was a mission, or a crusade, to not only explore this area for his own work, but to encourage a worldwide audience to help drive this thinking forward and bring it into reality. What excited me about this presentation were two things:

1. The opportunity to spend time exploring "Green" initiatives with someone that had been living and working in this space since before Al Gore invented Global Warming.  
2. The opportunity to spend time exploring how he created a tribe around his initiative, and how that effort spiraled into results that far surpassed his wildest expectations.

When Family Calls - One of my classmates is one of those people that you just know are impressive before ever meeting them.  They just carry themselves in such a way that you know they are intelligent, confident and successful.  They never get rattled, they ask interesting questions, and you're constantly asking yourself how they always seem to get things right?  This classmate of mine presented an interesting aspect of their life, and a decision they must deal with that I suspect many of us have to address at some point in our lives.  That question is, "When is the right time to prioritize personal growth or desires over family needs and commitments?"   In my situation, it's the realization that I have an obligation to take care of family in North Carolina, and that (at least in the short-to-mid term) means that I will need to sacrifice opportunities that would require me to move my family outside the state.  In my classmates case, it's the decision between a more glamourous lifestyle and one that impacts a family legacy.  It's a decision that I'm glad I don't have to make, because the consequences of any decision are more impacting than anything I have to deal with today.   

One of the downsides of a non full-time program is that you don't always get the opportunity to get to know all your classmates, as we meet less frequently and much time is spent in group study.  I don't know this classmate very well, so I'm not sure that I'll be able to expand much upon this aspect in later posts.  But I have a year, so maybe that's something I should make a goal for 2009.

Selling the Big Idea to Management - The final presentation that I wanted to highlight was a classmate/teammate that told us a story of trying to sell a future-looking, industry-changing idea to his upper management several years ago.  He talked about the research and prototyping he had done to create a working model for demonstrations.  He talked about the late nights and weekends he spent teaching himself computer programing and working with potential technology partners to integrate his system.  He spoke passionately about his plan for selling his idea up through his management chain, getting buy-in along the way.  And then he told us about the stumbling block that so many of us have encountered as we try and sell a new idea to management.  This part hit particularly close to home, as I've spent years trying to figure out the formula (timing, competition, technology trends, management bias, sunk costs, "not-invented here" syndrome, etc.) for bringing new products to market, or changing market dynamics through a new model.  

My classmate and I have put this at the top of our priority lists for 2009, to share our stories, experiences, scars & scabs, and see if we can come up with some better guidelines for selling that killer idea.  This will definitely be something I write more about in 2009.

By only highlighting three presentations, I'm significantly short-selling my classmates experience and background.  I apologize for that.  I would have loved to write more about my Indian classmates that speak 5-10 languages (the variants from the states in India), or my classmate that fights fires for a hobby, or the classmate that started the program as an IT administrator and now has at least 3 business models ready to engage.  

As the old newspaper adage goes, there are a million stories in the big city.  I'm not sure we have that many in our MBA program, but there is plenty of experience for me to learn from and explore in 2009.  Hopefully many of them will join the conversation here.