In 1956, the original version of The Price Is Right debuted on American television.  It was an immediate hit in the post-war consumer society, and remains popular today, some 56 years later.  The essence of the show involves contestants bidding on expensive products, much in the manner of auctions.  The contestant whose bid is closest to the correct price of the prize – without going over it – wins the prize.  It’s an entertaining enough conceit, I suppose, and there’s no denying the potency of that name, The Price is Right, which is why I deliberately use it here as a jumping off point to consider a different kind of auction, an auction where I increasingly believe the price – any price – is wrong.

Regular readers of my blog know that I track the first Bluefin Tuna auctions of the year at Tokyo’s Tsukji fish market with a sense of grim inevitability.  Last year, a single tuna sold for 32.49 million yen.  This year, bidders made that number seem paltry; a single 539-pound tuna sold for 56.49 million yen or nearly $736,000.  That’s a shade under $1,250 per pound if you’re counting.  Now, it should be said that the first bluefin auction in January is an important cultural event; a key part of Japan’s New Year’s celebrations, and the country is the world’s biggest consumer of seafood.  It should also be noted that this year’s winning bidder, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of a sushi restaurant chain, reportedly said following the auction that his bid was an attempt to “liven up Japan” in the wake of last year’s devastating tsunami, nuclear plant failure and economic stagnation.  Fair enough.  Still, is there not a larger issue at play?

The human experience on Earth is routinely measured by the speed of progress. But what if progress isn’t what we think it is?  What if progress is actually sowing the seeds of societal collapse?  The anthropologist and writer, Ronald Wright, probed this idea expertly in his book, A Short History Of Progress, and he coined the expression “progress traps” to describe alluring technologies and belief systems that may serve immediate needs, but that ransom the future.  As he put it, the prevailing assumption about human occupation of the planet is that “a pattern of change exists in the history of mankind…that it consists of irreversible changes in one direction only, and that this direction is towards improvement”.  Put another way, humanity regularly places a very large bet that the future will be better than the past – and by some measures it is, but by other, slower-burning measures, it isn’t.

Recent research has shown that numerous species went extinct as humans moved across the globe.  Whether in Madagascar, where virtually all of the island’s megafauna were pushed to extinction following the arrival of humans 2000 years ago, or the islands of the Pacific Ocean, where some 2000 species of birds have gone extinct, to more recent times when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources reliably documented 875 extinctions between 1500 and 2009, the story is the same – humans reliably push other species to extinction.

The bluefin tuna is not officially on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) list of endangered species, but it is considered a “species of concern”.  In the language of NOAA this means the bluefin is a species:

About which NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has some concerns regarding status and threats, but for which insufficient information is available to indicate a need to list the species under the Endangered Species Act.

It is interesting (and sad) that, faced with “insufficient information”, we as a society choose not to err on the side of caution, but instead leave room for continued bluefin fishing.  Then again, maybe it is neither interesting nor surprising.  We have, after all, been here many times before.  If I may return to Ronald Wright, he notes that in the 20th century alone, the human population multiplied by four, while consumption grew by 40.  All the while, the number of people living in abject poverty in 2000 was equal to the entire global population in 1900.  He fairly asks is this is progress:

Is this progress? Can the stock market be trusted to run the world? Or is our consumerist boom the illusory wealth of wastrels blowing an inheritance — by no means only their own? Is the promise of prosperity for six billion the Big Lie of our time?

And so it goes.  A 1998 poll conducted by the American Museum of Natural History found that 70% of 400 biologists polled believe that we are living against the backdrop of a human-induced extinction.  The same percentage agreed that up to 20% of all living populations could become extinct within 30 years – by 2028.  In his book, The Future of Life, the eminent biologist, E.O. Wilson, determined that if the current rate of human disruption of the biosphere continued, one-half of the Earth’s higher life forms would be extinct by 2100.  Peter Raven, past President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science reinforces this view, saying:

We have driven the rate of biological extinction, the permanent loss of species, up several hundred times beyond its historical levels, and are threatened with the loss of a majority of all species by the end of the 21st century.

Let us return to the bluefin tuna being auctioned off in the Tsukji fish market.  Is this a quaint, or even timeless cultural tradition, or is it something more nuanced and, dare I say it, darker?  On the one hand, those who believe in the market might attest to the fact that what we see on display in the auctions is an efficient allocation of an increasingly scarce resource.  Limited supply means intense demand and the price is bid up – as the market says it must.  On the other hand, the bluefin auction can be viewed as the latest entry in a solemn ledger documenting the destruction of life on Earth.  Regardless of the price bid, when the last bluefin is auctioned, we lose a piece of nature, a piece of ourselves.  This is a dark game we are playing, and we continue to play it at our own peril.  Among other considerations, the bluefin plays a critical role in maintaining the ocean ecosystem as a top predator that keep the populations of lower trophic species in check.  But perhaps we don’t care, or care enough to change our behavior.  After all, modern society, especially in the West, is frequently portrayed as being individualistic, a world in which people prioritize their own or immediate family’s goals above those of the wider community or collective.  It is not yet too late, but the hour is long.  Our willingness and ability to change course, to act differently and save the bluefin will say a good deal about our ability to save ourselves.

Contact Rob Abbott at: rob@abbottstrategies.com and follw him on Twitter: @rma1962

The Avett Brothers, the folk-rock band from Mount Pleasant, North Carolina, has been in heavy rotation on my headphones of late – both for the potency of the music, and the message in the lyrics.  This is especially true of the song, Head Full of Doubt, Road Full of Promise. In the wake of the COP-17 meeting in Durban, and particularly in the assessment that China and India are “winners” coming out of this most recent round of global climate negotiating, I readily identify with the lyric:   

There’s a darkness upon me that’s flooded in light

In the fine print they tell me what’s wrong and what’s right

And it comes in black and it comes in white

And I’m frightened by those that don’t see it

And especially in the mournful cry that:

 And your life doesn’t change by the man that’s elected

For 17 years, representatives from nearly 200 countries have gathered annually under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) to try and craft a solution to one of the most daunting challenges that has ever faced humanity – how to slow the heating of the planet.  Each year, the warnings from the scientific community grow louder, as an increasing body of evidence points to the dangers from the continuing accumulation of human-generated greenhouse gases (GHG) in the Earth’s atmosphere.  Shockingly, global emissions jumped by the largest margin ever in 2010 (see Global Carbon Project) overturning the idea floated by some that the decline in emissions during the recession might continue through the tentative recovery in which we now find ourselves. This GHG jump underscores a long-term trend of inexorably rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change.  Even the International Energy Agency, an industry lobby group, fears that we are within 5 years of a climate “tipping point”. As Al Gore put it in his gloriously eloquent 2007 Nobel Peace Prize Lecture: 

We, the human species, are confronting a planetary emergency – a threat to the survival of our civilization that is gathering ominous and destructive potential.

For Canada, the costs of climate change – by any measure – could indeed be stark.  In September, the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy reported that climate change will trigger wide ranging impacts across Canada, from flooding in low-lying coastal regions and threats to the country’s timber supply, to health problems caused by deteriorating air quality. The financial cost for these impacts was pegged at about $5 billion a year by 2020, climbing to between $21 billion and $43 billion a year by mid-century.  In the worst-case scenario, NRTEE put the cost at $91 billion per year by 2050 – social, cultural and environmental costs would push the figure much higher.  The Canadian situation is, of course, the thinnest edge of a much, much larger wedge. Globally, the costs – those that can be monetized, at least – are frighteningly larger.

Against this dire backdrop, you could be excused for thinking that the COP negotiators were achieving real progress.  And yet, for 17 years the results of the UN climate talks have been modest – at best. John Broder, writing in The New York Times earlier this month, characterized the prevailing feeling at the close of each COP meeting as one of disillusionment and discontent:

Every year they fail to significantly advance their own stated goal of keeping the average global temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

It’s important to put the 2 degrees aspiration in context.  As the researchers at Real Climate remind us:

Even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years, a disruption of climate conditions that have been stable for longer than the history of human agriculture. Given the drought that already afflicts Australia, the crumbling of the sea ice in the Arctic, and the increasing storm damage after only 0.8°C of warming so far, a target of 2°C seems almost cavalier.

And so it is that the gridlock ensnaring global climate talks is cause for accelerating concern.  There’s a well-worn story about a 17^th century English sea captain that animates the problem of institutional gridlock beautifully.  I share it here to underscore how little we seem to have learned from our own past as a species.  In 1601, James Lancaster served lemon juice to the crew on one of four ships he was commanding on a trip to India.  Most of the crew on this one ship remained healthy, but on the other three ships, 110 of 278 sailors (40%) died of scurvy by the journey’s midpoint.  Now this was important stuff to 17^th century seafarers because scurvy claimed more lives than anything else, including warfare.  So, you’d think Lancaster’s experiment would ignite revolutionary change.  Not so.  The British Navy didn’t stock citrus fruit on its ships until 1795 – nearly 200 years later.  Louis Roddis, in A Short History of Nautical Medicine, notes that in the 200 years from 1600 to1800 nearly 1,000,000 men died of an easily preventable disease.  “There are in the whole of human history few more notable examples of official indifference and stupidity producing such disastrous consequence to human life."  Despite the magnitude of the problem, and the availability of a simple solution, people were slow to change.

 In many obvious ways, the world in which we live today is indisputably a different place than 17^th century Britain, but in other, subtler ways, it is really not so different.  The analogy is an imperfect one, but think of climate change as our generation’s scurvy. There is abundant evidence of the importance of the issue; the solution – a weaning of our economy and life off fossil fuels – though not easy, is also well known.  Yet we refuse to change.  We get hung up on the differing obligations of developed and developing nations, or the question of who will pay to help emerging economies adapt, or the urgency of rapidly developing and deploying clean energy technology, of the classic policy analysis dilemma of concentrated costs (entrenched industry in the developed world) and diffuse benefits (global society).

I get it; the COP negotiators operate on the principle of consensus, meaning that any nation can hold up progress, much less an agreement.  Such was the case again this year.  The COP-17 meeting closed with a “pledge” to work toward a new global climate treaty, and the establishment of a climate fund to aid developing countries in addressing GHG emissions as their economies modernize. But that is all it is – a pledge – all of the details are still to be defined and negotiated.  No one was ready, or able, to take a clear and firm stand, to articulate a vision or story that cut through the bureaucratic knot, and mobilize collective action.  If I may return to Al Gore’s Nobel Lecture, his observation that too many of the world’s leaders are best described in the words Winston Churchill gave to those who ignored Adolph Hitler seems apt:

They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent.

The characterization in some quarters of India and China as “winners” coming out of COP 17 is particularly irksome to me.  Let us all, please, be clear about what is unfolding on our watch.  Climate change is a classic illustration of the tragedy of the commons, a situation in which many individuals or countries, acting in their self-interest, deplete or destroy a shared limited resource – this case, our atmosphere, even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long-term interest for this to happen.  China and India might realize some short-term economic advantage, but there are no “winners” in this scenario.  There is no business to be done on a dead planet; there is no economy to grow in sterile ground.

At the height of the financial crisis in 2008, Verlyn Kilnkenborg wrote a powerful essay for The New York Times on the accelerating extinction of mammals worldwide.  It seems even more right now than when he wrote it – deftly drawing a parallel with the convulsions in global financial markets and the efforts to calm them:

What complicates matters further is a simple lesson we might also draw from the present financial crisis; everything is connected.  No species goes down on its own, not without affecting the larger biological community.  We emerged, as a species, from the very biodiversity we are destroying.  At times it seems as though the human experiment is to see how many species we can do without.  As experiments go, it is morally untenable and will end badly for us.

For much of my life I have lamented the fact that in Canada, and too many other countries, we separate our economic and innovation agenda from our environmental agenda, conveniently ignoring the fact that all wealth ultimately flows from the environment.  The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around. When we put off the systemic changes to energy production, transportation, agriculture and other features of “life” because we fear the drag these changes might have on the economy we are being penny wise and pound-foolish.  These changes are the ultimate investment in humanity’s future. Climate change, as COP-17 once again demonstrated, is not an environmental issue; it is sustainability writ large, politics on a grand canvas, and it requires much more than environmental delegates gathering annually if we are to forge something meaningful, something commensurate with the scale of the challenge before us.  As Nick Robins, an energy and climate change analyst at HSBC put it recently: “There is a fundamental disconnect in having environment ministers negotiating geopolitics and macroeconomics.”

So, how to move forward?  To begin, I believe that we have not yet had a meaningful conversation about community and collective action and how this colors our approach to climate change. As a result, we continue to joust for metaphorical turf in a tiresome and ultimately unwinnable tragedy of the commons.  As a species we are a community that transcends boundaries or borders.  We share (or should share) something in common – an abiding desire to achieve sustainable management of the Earth’s atmosphere.  All of us live in communities of place, past, purpose, perspective, and practice and the quantity, quality, and reach of connection in any of these communities depends on how connected people are in each community and how much connecting each person does with other people in each community.  This is not an abstract concept; I passionately believe that to address global climate change people must be invited into a conversation that firstly optimizes the possibilities of belonging, engagement, and making a difference. Only then can the more tactical and tangible actions be identified.  Can we dare to imagine world leaders engaging in this kind of deep conversation, a conversation that is about nothing less than raising consciousness?  I choose to believe that we can, that we must.  The alternative is to live in a state where, as the title of this essay suggests, the head is full of doubt and we perpetually wait for the promise of something different, something better. 

Contact Rob Abbott at: rob@abbottstrategies.com and follow him on Twitter: @rma1962

George Santayana famously observed: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it”.  I’ve thought about those good words during much of the Occupy movement because it seems to me that too many people cannot remember the events that brought us to this moment.  And so it is that the protestors have been criticized for lacking a coherent narrative, and moved out of the spaces that were their metaphorical beachhead.  The forces of the ruling empire want us to believe that the protest movement is in fact not that at all; it is nothing more than a disorganized group of disaffected youth and any pretentions to a movement are misguided.  I think not.  The Occupy movement may well be characterized as an international protest directed at economic and social inequality, but I see it as something more – as a profound meditation on how human society lives, works and plays and how we came to this hinge point of history.  Let me explain.

Interest in and concern for the outcomes of human interaction with the natural world and with each other is not new.  Among other reference points, the earliest recorded story, The Epic of Gilgamesh, commented on the dire social and environmental consequences of forest depletion.  Flashing forward through history, that most vexing of terms, “sustainable”, was first used in Germany in the 18^th century to describe a long-term perspective in forestry.  The emergence of industrial society in Europe in the 18^th and 19^th centuries sparked debate, especially by the Romantics, who were appalled at the “soulless mechanism” of the new age and the human consequences of industrialization.  Charles Dickens’ portrayal of “Coketown” in his novel, Hard Times, was a stinging indictment of rapidly industrializing England, and John Ruskin went so far as to coin the term “illth” to describe the side effects of the emerging economic system – poverty, pollution, despair, and illness.  In North America, several initiatives at this time, notably the Regional Planning Association of America, expressed concerns about sustainability–even if this precise term was not yet used.  And of course, the muckrakers of the early 1900s did work that is too often forgotten, but that provided an intellectual and moral foundation on which current efforts are built.  I would argue that there is a century-long cord connecting the Occupy Wall Street movement, for example, with Ida Tarbell’s groundbreaking work, A History of the Standard Oil Company, published in 1904, and Upton Sinclair’s account of the Chicago stockyards, The Jungle, published in 1906.  If we are to truly make sense of the Occupy Movement, we need to remember that it is not the latest jeremiad of the modern environmental or labor movements, nor is it a clever marketing campaign dreamed up by an ad agency.  The fact is, the seeds of the Occupy conversation were sown long ago and unless we remember this, learn from this, and make conscious changes now we will walk ever deeper into the maze and further limit our capacity to find a way out.

In 1909, the North American Conservation Conference resulted in a Declaration of Principles that called for “legislation to preserve and protect wildlife, to prevent soil erosion and water pollution, and generally to manage renewable resources in such a way as to ensure their continued productivity in the future.  Sadly, WWI, the stock market crash and Great Depression, and WWII overwhelmed any consideration of how we might adopt such a forward-looking perspective.  It is only in the post-war economic boom that society remembered the dark shadows at the edge of prosperity.

A reactor fire in 1957 at the Windscale nuclear power plant on the northwest coast of England sounded a cautionary note about human use of the environment and especially the dangers of a technologically advancing civilization.  The fire was shortly followed by evidence of atmospheric contamination in Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and Denmark.  The nature of the contamination was such that over an area of 500 square kilometers, milk from farms was declared unfit for human consumption. 

TheResources for Tomorrow Conference in 1961 marked the beginning of a meditation on conservation and environmental management that in many respects continues today.  A year later, Rachel Carson would publish Silent Spring and it is important to remember that entrenched interests fought very hard against the message that Ms. Carson delivered.  Nonetheless, the era of environmental protection legislation was being birthed.  Significant examples include The Wilderness Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Clean Air and Water Acts.  In the early 1970s, the Man and Resources conference provided a platform for discussion of a theme that would permeate environmental discussions in Canada and elsewhere for the next two decades, “integrated resource use”.  In hindsight, this can be viewed as the conversation that prefigured what we now see as the Occupy Movement because it sought to advance a worldview that might achieve “the best possible balance between social and economic demands and ecological implications in the wise use of natural resources”. 

The escape of toxic gas from a Union Carbide chemical plant in Bhopal, India in 1984 that killed over 6,000 people, and the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer in 1985 were two moments when it seemed as if the world’s ruling class might press “pause” and shift to a different trajectory. An additional, and galvanizing spur in this regard was the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear station, an event that underscored humanity’s interconnections and interdependence.  Following this accident, in an all-too-familiar echo of the Windscale incident 40 years earlier, grass eaten by lambs in Wales, milk drunk by Poles and Yugoslavs, and air breathed by Swedes were all contaminated by radiation.  In the wake of Chernobyl incident, the World Commission on Environment and Development report, Our Common Future, sparked debate about the synergistic relationship between economic development, social justice and environmental protection.  This debate would build to a crescendo at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, at the time the largest-ever gathering of heads of state.  The key trends that coalesced in the run-up to UNCED were:

• Increasing world population, especially in the southern hemisphere, and an associated increase in the demand for goods and services
• Increasing concentration of world population in cities
• Increasing demands on a limited natural resource base, and the resulting pressure to improve resource productivity
• Increasing access to information on the environmental and social costs of development
• Increasing public concerns about the deterioration of the environment, and the ramifications this has for economic and social welfare

How familiar these trends feel some twenty years later.  Our inability to both remember the historical roots of the challenges we face globally, and to take right action, have brought us to this moment, this moment when nearly 3,000 cities worldwide have Occupy protestors gathering in a courageous show of defiance at the rulers who have failed them.  Why should we be surprised?

The historical tour I’ve just summarized is an attempt to both remember and recapture the context that we should hold when we talk about the Occupy movement.  There is something important happening here; on the surface it might seem to be many loosely connected things, but if you listen you can hear a plea for a meaningful conversation about how we raise global consciousness and the capacity to endure and thrive.  You can hear a plea for communities, governments, NGOs, businesses and individual citizens to operate not at the expense of the future, but in favor of the future.  This will require a fundamental change in awareness and consciousness with respect to our relationship with nature, and with each other.  Long-held assumptions, especially in the west, about profit maximization, fiduciary responsibility, the role of government, and the responsibilities of individuals – to cite some of the more prominent examples – must be challenged if we are to truly operate in favor of the future and truly honor what I see as lying at the heart of the Occupy movement.

Contact Rob Abbott at rob@abbottstrategies.com and follow him on twitter: @rma1962  

The Keystone pipeline debate should remind us of the need for a national energy and economic strategy 

For all of the talk about the Keystone XL pipeline, what interests me is the conversation we aren’t having – but should.  While considerable media attention is being given to the jobs versus environment debate, the real conversation is about perspective.  This is the too often overlooked need to stand outside a particular frame of reference and look at conditions from a wider and/or longer context.  The power of perspective is that it can reveal truths that are otherwise hard to see.  This is especially apt in considering the way in which we consistently situate economic development opportunities in the zeitgeist and play these off against other “competing” interests such as environmental, social, cultural or heritage values.  This is the truest frame within which to consider Keystone because in Canada our economic history has been defined by the “staple theory” advanced in the 1930s by Harold Innis, a political economist at the University of Toronto. 

Innis argued that Canada developed as it did because of the nature of its staple commodities – fur, fish, lumber, wheat, and minerals – that were “harvested” and exported to Europe.  The search for and exploitation of these staples led to the creation of institutions that defined the economic and political culture of our country. And it continues today.  In virtually every province and territory the economic development emphasis is on natural resource extraction: British Columbia wants to open eight new mines as part of a latter day “gold rush”, and is championing shale gas development; Alberta is accelerating the pace of oil sands development; Saskatchewan is leading the country in economic growth on the back of its own oil and gas development; and so on. 

TransCanada Pipelines, the Keystone proponent, has spent millions of dollars lobbying in support of the project – constructing a story of secure energy and jobs and minimizing potential environmental risks – and has been enthusiastically joined in this effort by the Government of Canada.  And through it all, the ghost of Innis haunts the narrative: export of raw materials – in this case, heavy oil from Alberta – can trigger economic growth.  The problem is that this is a relatively short-term proposition; Keystone might protect or create jobs and revenue for Alberta and the federal government, but is this really sustainable?  What happens when the oil runs out?  A passing glance at our own history shows that apparently sustainable industries like cod on the east coast, fur in Central Canada, and forests on the west coast, can be all too readily extinguished.  Why?  In the absence of a long-term perspective, and a commitment to both technical and social process innovation, governments routinely find themselves backed into a corner as resource stocks decline and default to job protection at the expense of other interests.  The rewards are always short-lived; the day of reckoning arrives when the resource is depleted, and after the handwringing, we fail to learn from these mistakes of policy or management and move on to the next “resource” that might fuel economic growth.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  We can do better and we must do better.      

And so it is that I wonder about the broader narrative within which Keystone should be situated.  I am under no illusions; our economy today is largely based on fossil fuels, minerals and oil.  I therefore expect the project to go ahead, but what of our economy and cultural identity in the future?  It seems to me that if Keystone proceeds, it should do so as one component of an overarching energy and economic development strategy that is truly sustainable – and not as a discrete project viewed in isolation at a moment in time.  And the same is true for all of those other resource projects waiting in provincial and federal queues.

For too long we have defined ourselves as a nation that exploited natural resources.  Must that trend be our destiny?  I don’t think so.  I envision a 40-to-50 year transition that sees our relationship to energy, the environment, and our economy evolve such that we become known as much for what we leave in the ground as what we take out.  Our legacy of natural resource extraction can be just that – a legacy that serves as the foundation on which we build a bold “next act” for Canada.  Keystone and projects like it have a place in this narrative, but they do not define it; a portion of the royalties paid and profits earned from these projects should be reinvested in a bold innovation agenda for Canada that includes targeted investments in communication, education and infrastructure.  The future comes knocking and unless we make conscious choices and investments to prepare for that future we will relive the mistakes of our past.  The export of oil and gas looks good today, but it is really not so very different from the export of fish, fur or forests.  So while we quite rightly examine the specific merits of Keystone, we need an equal measure of attention on the intellectual and public policy space within which Keystone properly fits.  What might a truly diverse national energy portfolio for Canada look like, and how do we get there?  What are the implications and opportunities for new forms of economic opportunity associated with a changing energy mix?   

Canada has abundant natural capital assets, but it does not have an infinite supply.  The oil and gas will run out.  And when it does, our reliance on commodity exports will constitute the ultimate economic development trap.  The work to avoid such a trap should start now.  We do not think on a national scale about assets and capabilities in the same way that we think of individual provinces’ assets and capabilities.  As a result, any pretense of Canada having a national energy strategy is more properly viewed as a national oil and gas strategy, which both limits the conversation now, and heightens our national vulnerability to future energy and economic shocks when the oil and gas game has played itself out or moved elsewhere.  It’s time to express energy and ecological worry as economic and social opportunity and paint a picture of how this might be achieved over the next 40-50 years.  This is about looking at energy in a new and bolder perspective.  This is the conversation we aren’t having.

Ray’s achievements with Interface are justifiably lauded, but it was his willingness, and his ability, to see far beyond his own company’s interests and share his wisdom – with competitors and others – that speaks to the kind of person he was, the kind of leader he was.  Ray understood that sustainability is an attempt to bridge the gap that too often separates environmentalists and economists; planners and developers.  Done well, as Ray did with Interface, it was a wonderful demonstration that sustainability and business strategy are not mutually exclusive.  In particular, Ray was extraordinarily nimble in his response to the "economy versus the environment" debate.  We all know the tired refrain: investment in the environment drains valuable money from the bottom line.  Ray knew better, but he also understood where many of his contemporaries were coming from.  He knew that any entrenched system is resistant to change, especially in the absence of a compelling argument for change.  And so he became the argument for change.  He deftly, elegantly brought the force of his big brain and considerable southern charm to bear on the idea that sustainability is much more than a higher, faster brand of environmentalism with little to contribute to business and societal success.  He opened the Interface playbook and showed anyone who was willing to look how it could be done – and done profitably.  He demonstrated that sustainability can both protect existing assets and value and provide the basis for new wealth creation.  Ray could do this because he genuinely saw sustainability not as a problem to be solved, but as a future to be created.  He saw it as a pragmatic response to business and organizational realities that are cast into sharp relief by planning and risk management that deliberately looks beyond the horizon of the next quarter or the next year.  This is the lens that Ray (with a nudge, it must be acknowledged, from Paul Hawken) brought to INterface, and it is the same perspective that has been nurtured by Dam Hendrix, his successor as CEO.

What I remember, and cherish most in thinking of Ray is his protean capacity as a storyteller.  Drew Weston, a professor of psychology at Emory University, has said that the "stories our leaders tell us matter, probably almost as much as the stories our parents tell us as children, because they orient us to what is, what could be, and what should be; to the worldviews they hold and to the values they hold sacred".  When Ray talked of "taking nothing from the earth that is not rapidly and naturally renewable, and doing no harm to the biosphere", he framed it as an expedition, a climb to the top of Mount Sustainability.  And in doing so he both declared the values he held sacred, and provided context for the thinking and deep conversation that can guide any organization toward choices that are not irreversible and that enhance, rather than hinder resilience in the face of change.  This is not ideological; it is simply smart.

In an article earlier this year commemorating the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, Ray managed, in just a few words, to distill a lifetime of living and learning, a life in business, and a profound engagement in the cause of sustainability.  It is a worthy capstone to his life and work.  He said:

 There is no alternative to protecting nature if we want air, water, soil creation (and thus food), materials, energy, climate regulation, the carbon cycle (including photosynthesis), pollination, seed dispersal, flood and insect control.   Take away any of those and there would be very little economy left.

We all stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us.  Ray Anderson’s words and example have inspired me over the past two decades – and they inspire me still.  We will miss him, but his legacy lives on.  And he will never be forgotten.

Contact Rob Abbott at: rob.abbott@shaw.ca

The City of Vancouver, flanked by Metro and several individual municipal champions, is currently engaged in an important and demonstrably successful experiment in social transformation through its efforts to become the "greenest city" in the world by 2020.

Frankly, the world needs a champion city, a living laboratory, in which leading green urban practices are developed, studies and promoted.  A city in which the persistent debate pitting economic growth against environmental protection is, at last, put to rest.  Vancouver can be that city, and green, in the widest sense, can become its brand.

There are a lot of "Vancouver-watchers" out there, keen to monitor the Vancouver experiment because it contains ideas and lessons that could shape the trajectory of cities across the globe – not only or even principally about green-tech innovation and accomplishment (though Vancouver is no slouch in that regard), but broader social and process innovation, featuring important origination and achievement in:

• Genuine strategy incubation and creation – and a high skill in the art of "connecting-the-dots" leading to changes in policy and urban practice.
• Shifts in political, policy and administrative culture.
• Relevant public conversation and media discourse – the creation of a civic "space" in which citizens and stakeholders are genuinely invited into a dialogue about the shape and trajectory of their city.
• Industry practices.
• Community values and design.
• Academic excellence and successful collaboration with business, NGO and government sectors.
• Construction technology, infrastructure, energy auditing, architecture, and urban design.
• Gradual but steady transformation of business resistance into business embrace of green values and practices.
• Wide recognition of bio-regional values – a spreading ecological "literacy" and culture.

These are significant and largely incalculable made-in-Vancouver assets – but they are assets nonetheless, and the sooner the city prepares itself to strategically capitalize on them, the greater the net benefit to the city, its citizens and its partners.

Quietly, and not so quietly, Vancouver has developed a global reputation as an important urban laboratory.  So-called "Vancouverism" – the art and science of urban planning pioneered by former City Planning Director Larry Beasley and others – has rightly been studied (and expropriated and imitated) everywhere.  Less noticed is that Vancouverism has spawned a significant sub-economy as architects, politicians, urban planners, developers, journalists, academics, consultants, building professionals, and cultural creatives have made the intellectual pilgrimage to Vancouver (and collectively dropped millions of dollars into the city’s economy) to see, study, learn about and otherwise experience the city’s practices.  Vancouver’s professionals associated with the process have also marketed their talent and expertise, and generated a sizable export economy based on these unique-to-Vancouver urban design products and practices (policy-creation, planning strategies, architecture, design, marketing expertise, and so on).

We are suggesting here that Vancouver’s current experiments and achievements with city-wide sustainability innovation dramatically extend and give a new bounce to the arc of Vancouverism.  This second act of Vancouverism is gold right under the city’s feet.  The ever-expending pool of expertise in Vancouver is enormous and it operates in all disciplines and frameworks at the community, NGO, urban policy, urban political administration and leadership, consulting, academic and enterprise/business levels.  Moreover, the ripples of this collective expertise are felt in all corners of the globe.  That this has happened without any conscious organizing framework or strategy is something of a miracle, but it is our view that without such an intentional effort now, the real opportunity for Vancouver might be lost.

That is, it is crucial for businesses of all stripes and economic development leadership to recognize that the city/regional urban sustainability accomplishment – apart from its intrinsic virtues – is a brand, and an extraordinary Vancouver economic development opportunity, and needs to be seen as such.  It is analogous to Silicon Valley and other cities or city-regions that have woken up to their strengths and local excellence, and moved consciously to exploit them.

Viewed in this light, Vancouver’s whole-city innovation is an expression of the ideas Richard Florida has popularized in recent years, and is also wholly consistent with the argument about how city economies work mounted so persuasively by Jane Jacobs and others many years ago.  Put another way, the unfolding experiment in Vancouver is indeed a green one, but it is too often and too narrowly defined as an environmental one.  Fact is, this green is all about the color of money and opportunity in the 21st century, and the transforming power of an idea whose time is coming – and fast.

As a center for green-tech innovation (energy, construction, waste management and so on), Vancouver will always find itself in competition with other places that may have their own strategic advantages.  But as a green urban culture, and as a place that is the or one of the leading social innovators successfully moving an entire urban population in all of its parts toward green urbanism ("one planet living"), Vancouver is unequalled and has extraordinary strategic advantages.

Economic and other key leadership in Vancouver needs to immediately consider these matters at the deepest level, and aggressively begin framing the city’s future in this context.  Such work might begin with objective study of Vancouver’s sustainability accomplishments and assets, and its potential to become North America’s "Green Capital", leading to a detailed long-range strategy and "play book" to maximize the potential benefits to the city.  Such an undertaking can explore:

• Creation of an informal or formal secretariat drawn from the entirety of the Vancouver economic fabric – it is important not to frame this as a conversation among and between a narrow green constituency.  This is about the entire economy – as it is now, and as it may become in the future.  As such, it needs the input of long-term economic players every bit as much as the new kids working in alternative energy, local food, digital media and so on.
• An external communications and networking plan to promote Vancouver accomplishments and forge partnerships or alliances with like-minded cities globally.
• Information-gathering and coordination of human assets.
• Strategies – financial and promotional – to assist all green initiatives.
• Business facilitation and opportunity-brokering.
• Any and all other activity designed to maximize the "halo effect" of Vancouver’s urban innovation success.

This opportunity won’t wait forever, and other cities are or soon will be poised to exploit their particular reputational advantages and benefits.  Consequently, no better moment exists for Vancouver to capitalize on the multiplier value of its green assets and initiatives.  And so we return to the important idea of perspective.  The current city aspiration around "green" needs to be re-framed or re-calibrated to emphasize a green economic development strategy.  In other words, we need to infuse the entire economy with the ideas and ideals of green, broadly defined.

Written jointly by Rob Abbott and Gene Miller.

Contact Rob at: rob.abbott@shaw.ca

Contact Gene at: gene@gaininggroundsummit.com

Before digging in on BP, a personal disclosure: after 25 years as a sustainability and strategy advisor to businesses around the world, I passionately believe that if we are to approach, much less achieve, sustainability we need to enlarge the conceptual or analytical framework within which we all make decisions.  For oil and gas companies (I want to say "energy" companies, but let’s face it, the global energy game is still weighted heavily to oil and gas), this means changing the context for decisions across the entire value chain – exploration, production, processing, transportation, refining, and marketing.  Crucially, it also means that the change imperative is not limited to company leaders and managers, but includes board members, shareholders, employees, investment analysts, regulators, NGOs, and customers who collectively shape the operational "space" within which leaders and managers do their jobs.  The specific change in context I’m talking about is to be mindful of natural authority and moral authority and the way in which these either do – or do not – enter the decision making calculus.  You see, humans are endowed with the power and freedom to choose – no other living entity has this power.  It is why people have a natural authority over the environment.  Because we have a natural authority we need to use it in a principled way.  Too often this doesn’t happen and we violate our stewardship concerning the earth.  We’ve ignored this for too long and are only now beginning, slowly, to understand that the nest we have fouled is our own – with potentially perilous consequences.  Moral authority comes from the principled use of natural power and freedom to choose.  It is about being fully "awake" and having a sense of fairness, honesty, respect and contribution when making decisions, especially decisions that affect others.  In my view, a large and as yet not fully understood part of sustainability is moving toward the "principled use of natural power and freedom to choose".  This lies at the heart of what Bob Greenleaf masterfully called "servant leadership", and it is a powerful benchmark against which organizational "performance" can be judged.  With that disclosure out of the way, let me proceed with my thoughts on BP and it’s 2010 Sustainability Review.

I have long been of the opinion that sustainability reports and reviews are of marginal use.  Informed as they are by a "one-size fits all" mentality and the common set of performance measures that goes with it, the reports speak to everyone and no one.  Their intentions are honourable, but their delivery is flat.  Don’t get me wrong, communication and dialogue between a company and its stakeholders, especially in the wake of a disaster like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, truly matters.  But the question is not "should we produce a sustainability review or report?"  This is, at best, a tactical response to a much broader and more nuanced and important question, namely: "what is the portfolio of trust-building activities that we should be engaged in with our key stakeholders?"  And even this broader question should sit beneath the real question for BP at this time in its history (and other global oil and gas companies): "Are we on the right side of history in seeking to perpetuate an energy game of diminishing returns?"  These are questions that matter, questions without easy answers that nonetheless demand our attention because they define who we are as individuals and organizations – they define who we are as a society.  The 2010 Sustainability Review was an opportunity for BP to begin a new era of purposeful engagement with its stakeholders by inviting them into a conversation that addresses these "questions that matter".  Instead the Review is an object lesson in spin.

BP goes to great lengths to frame a particular narrative for the spill.  It is variously described as an "event", an "incident" or an "accident", as in "…the events of 2010 have impacted many people…" or "…the accident and oil spill are shaping how we do business".  On the surface, this type of narrative framing is obvious and to be expected.  After all, how could the spill not shape how the company does business?  Digging a little deeper, the framing is intended to create, if not trust, then at least a foundation on which trust might be established.  Something along the lines of: "Well, maybe BP was genuinely affected by the spill, after all, and is changing for the better".  The cracks in this narrative frame reveal themselves in the fine print.  For example:

• Our data does not include the oil spill volume or the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the Deepwater Horizon incident.
• Material for the purposes of this document should not be read as equating to any use of the word in other BP reporting or filings.
• Although there are several third-party estimates of the flow rate or total volume of oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon incident, we believe that no accurate determination can be made or reported until further information is collected.
• We have not included any emissions from the Deepwater Horizon incident and the response effort due to our reluctance to report data that has such a high degree of uncertainty.

Hmm.  So no disclosure of oil spill volume or GHG emissions associated with it – despite the fact the "incident" is frequently characterized as the worst environmental disaster in history.  A clear distinction between the use of the word "material" in the sustainability review versus all other BP reports and filings.  I had rather hoped that any discussion of BP in 2010 would be deliberately different and more courageous that anything the company had done before.  The spill provided a rare opportunity in this regard, an opportunity for BP to recapture the excitement of "beyond petroleum".  Instead we are told that the company’s focus is on building "a portfolio of enduring positions in the world’s key hydrocarbon markets focusing on deepwater, gas and giant fields".  On the question of moral authority, it can even be argued that BP’s strategic focus on hydrocarbons is even worse than the Gulf of Mexico spill because it tacitly sanctions continued use of a fuel whose combustion causes ocean acidification.  This is something that few people know about, but it looms as one of the greatest threats to global ocean health and human survival.  The world’s oceans absorb about one-third of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, creating carbonic acid.  This acidification makes it difficult for calcifying organisms – coral and mollusks in particular – to build shells and skeletons.  These creatures form the base of the oceanic food chain and as they begin to die the entire chain is at risk.  Carl Safina, one of the world’s greatest authorities on ocean health, believes that unless we wean ourselves off fossil fuels the carbonic acid content in the oceans will continue to climb and begin dissolving coral reefs sometime this century.  

My disappointment at BP’s failure to seize the moment of opportunity and take a bold stand against high-risk oil plays and in favor of a diverse portfolio of alternative energy technologies is shared by Karina Litvack, Head of Governance and Sustainable Investment at F&C Management Ltd., who says that BP’s strategic positioning suggests "a willingness to respond passively to soaring energy demand without driving transformational change in the industry".  My disappointment is also heightened by the fact that it is BP’s Board of Directors that provides "direction and oversight of BP on behalf of the shareholders for all aspects of BP’s business, including sustainability performance".  This is not unlike putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.  The group responsible for oversight on environmental, social and cultural values (as well as economic) in practice focuses on the much narrower objective of maximizing shareholder value (one of the most damaging legacies of neoclassical economics).  All of this disappoints me, but it shouldn’t surprise me.  Shortly after the Gulf oil spill, Matthew Gwyther, Editor of Management Today in the IK, said: "British investors care about one thing and one thing alone, and that is the share price".  He might well have added "in the short run" because I am convinced that unless companies like BP truly embed sustainability in their organizational DNA, the long run prospects for share price appreciation are slim to none.  Worse, the social opportunity cost of not making the changes to alternative energy technologies could be severe – accelerated climate change, ocean acidification, food shortages, disease, geopolitical conflict over diminishing oil and gas, and so on.  All of this presumes that businesses actually have a point of view about the future, or rather, that they care about the future.  How naive of me; clearly many businesses are playing a finite game and when the cheap energy runs out they’ll disappear.  If that’s the case, I’d like them to be honest about it and tell us.

Devotees of CBC Radio’s brilliant program, The Age of Persuasion, know all about "spin"; it is a form of propaganda, achieved by framing a person, event or idea in such a way as to persuade public opinion in favor of or against the person, event or idea.  BP’s 2010 Sustainability Review tries mightily to paint a picture of a changed organization, an organization chastened by the experiences of 2010, but the fine print, as noted above, paints a different picture.  Equally, the good words ring hollow when one considers that the Gulf oil spill was not a rare, one-off event in an otherwise exemplary company, but the latest in a series of disasters (see my July 2010 post, Blinded by the Light, for a deeper discussion of these):

• On March 23, 2005, 15 people died and more than 170 were injured in America’s worst industrial accident in a generation – a fire and explosion at BP’s Texas City refinery.  The United States Chemical Safety Board concluded that the explosion was "caused by organizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of BP".
• On July 11, 2005, Thunder Horse, a BP oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico, nearly sank.  A check valve that had been installed backwards and caused the vessel to flood during Hurricane Dennis hobbled the billion-dollar rig.  After fixing that particular mistake, BP discovered another problem – failures in the welding of pipes in the underwater manifold had caused cracks and breaks.  Had the well been active, the damaged pipes would have caused a major oil spill.
• One year after the Texas City disaster, there was a spill of 267,000 gallons of oil from BP’s network of pipelines in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.  It was the worst spill ever on the North Slope, and once again, it could have been prevented.  Investigators found widespread corrosion in several miles of under-maintained and poorly inspected pipes.

And so it is that the good words of BP’s 2010 Sustainability Review don’t inspire much confidence.  A case of plus ca change…

There is still time to launch the kind of conversation I believe BP needs to have with its stakeholders, and with its peers in the global oil and gas game.  The company is recovering financially – 4th quarter profit for 2010 was $5.6 billion; 1st quarter profit for 2011 was $7.1 billion, and the shareholder dividend has been restored.  What of the stakeholder or societal dividend?  Before the disaster that is the Gulf oil spill fades from institutional memory within BP, there is a moment that few companies ever truly get – to step back, genuinely take stock, and make a clean and dramatic break with the past.  There is some risk in this, but if you accept that oil and gas is a finite game, and the real game, the infinite game, is about energy, than a break with the past must eventually be made.  Why not make it now, when there is room to shape the future?  BP can use the lessons of the Gulf oil spill as a springboard into the future, with a new strategic intent, business concept and value delivery system all centered around a truly diverse portfolio of energy options.  What is needed is the honesty and authenticity to own the fact that there has been a recent and persistent disconnect between BP’s stated intent with respect to safety and the environment and reality.  And this disconnect has directly compromised the broad public interest.  I’ll be watching to see if BP steps up to this challenge – and opportunity.

Contact Rob at: rob.abbott@shaw.ca

It is there every time the Conservative, Liberal, Bloc and NDP leaders snipe at one another, or make "announceables" designed to woo a targeted demographic in a targeted riding.  And it is there whenever the media coverage of the campaign devolves, as it seems to with increasing speed, into a meditation on the efficacy of these daily skirmishes, or worse, the dark phantom of a coalition.  In other words, the opportunity is there because the political parties who have seats in our Parliament aren’t really talking about anything – or anything that matters anyway.  Where is the galvanizing vision for Canada in the second decade of the 21st century?  What is the point-of-view about how Canada will navigate a world that is at once more interesting and exciting, and more uncertain than many of us have ever experienced?  Where is the passion for all that our country is – and might yet become?  I’ve been thinking about these questions since the early hours of the campaign, and I thought of them again while reading J.D.M. Stewart’s eloquent review of Andre Pratt’s biography of Wilfred Laurier in the April 9 Globe and Mail.  Stewart deftly characterizes the political landscape as a "sad political scene in which no leaders seem to have nearly the passion and love of country that Laurier displayed, nor the crafty leadership skills and inimitable force of character."

By now, Canadians have a pretty good idea of what Stephen Harper is against, but what is he for?  Beating the opposition and the politics of control?  Tax cuts?  Law and order?  Is this how little we expect of our Prime Minister and our Government?  I think not.  Canadians may care about tax cuts, but that is not all they care about.  Canadians crave more and better – and they deserve more and better.  It is in this metaphorical white space that Ms. May, a skilled orator and campaigner, can make political hay – but only if she reframes the way Canadians think about green.

Green is a topic that reflexively scares many voters, especially those in business.  They fear that any investment in the environment and society will compromise their economic success.  This is an outmoded notion, rightly consigned to the scrap heap of history in many countries.  No less an authority than Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School has pointed out that societal needs, not simply economic ones, define markets.  He further notes that wasted energy or raw materials is just that – waste – and it creates internal costs for companies.  Perhaps most interesting for voters who have been skeptical of the business bona fides of the Green Party, Porter and others make the case that addressing societal harms and constraints does not necessarily raise costs for firms because they can innovate through the use of new technologies, operating methods and management approaches – and as a result, increase their productivity and expand their markets.  It is any wonder that GE, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Nestle, Unilever and Wal-Mart – hardly a green. "alternative", counter-culture group – are beginning to reframe their overarching strategies to accentuate the intersection between society and corporate performance?

So, while the other party leaders snipe and talk about, if not nothing, certainly less than might excite Canadians, Elizabeth May and her Green Party colleagues should talk about something that matters:  How economic success is increasingly based on novel applications of science and technology that simultaneously shrink environmental footprints while growing bottom lines; how Canada can reclaim its place of pride on the global stage and secure trade advantages by investing in R&D rather than military hardware; how education is the closest thing we have to a policy "silver bullet" and therefore why we need a dramatic overhaul of the education system in this country – an overhaul that can be paid for by reducing the spending (and the rhetoric) on "law and order".  Perhaps most importantly, how seemingly disparate issues – energy, environment, economy, health – are in fact interconnected.  The list goes on, but you get the idea.

I know that many Canadians are suffering from election, and more broadly, political fatigue, and that still others haven’t yet thought deeply about the issues that should concern them.  In my bones I feel confident that any thoughtful analysis would conclude that Canada deserves more than a commitment to scrap the long gun registry, selectively reduce taxes, or boost military spending.  Don’t get me wrong, good policy is about achieving the right sense of proportion – we need smart tax policy, and we need a certain amount of law and order, for example, but we crucially need a good many other things – things that have been impoverished by the debates of the first two weeks of the campaign.  The time is now, Elizabeth; claim the space that no one else seems willing or able to claim.  The people of Saanich and the Gulf Islands, and the nation, are ready.  

Vancouver has a good job, perhaps too good a job, promoting its green agenda as a logical extension of "Vancouverism", the art & science of urban planning pioneered by former City Planning Director, Larry Beasley.  Not surprisingly, this agenda appeals to a solid (and growing) constituency, but not to the mainstream business leadership in the city.  Worse, it signals a statement of strategic intent that is premature.  The Vancouver economy as a whole is still a paler shade of green than the communications office at City Hall would have many believe.  Yes, there are exciting new green and clean technology companies (Pulse Energy, anyone?), but much of the downtown office space in Vancouver still houses mining and forestry companies, or as Finlayson points out, the service companies (consulting, engineering, legal and other) whose economic livelihood is largely shaped by the largesse of these economic heavyweights.  So, it seems to me that the work ahead, particularly in a municipal election year, should be about changing the lens through which we see the economy and the broader landscape within which we live, work and play.  We don’t need a green economic strategy or goal, per se; we do need to infuse the entire economy with the ideas and ideals of green.  What does a more deeply embedded commitment to green mean for mining and forestry?  How might the trajectory of these incumbent industries – who have offices in Vancouver, but ply their trade in the hinterland of the province – be shaped by green?  And what does all of this mean for the vitality of the Vancouver economy?  Now, if Vancouver had a strategy that addressed this larger picture, as well as the newly hatching clean and green businesses that dot the city’s landscape, we could all, perhaps even Jock, get excited.