The Triple Bottom Line Blog

Maybe you noticed this curious item in the front pages of the March 3rd Business Week (no link to this story):

In a recent poll, only 30% of 1,015 Americans said they morally approved of nanotechnology--the engineering of matter at the molecular level to create everything from slice-resistant golf balls to cancer drugs. That's much lower than the results of similar surveys in key nanotech markets like Britain (54%), Germany (63%), and France (72%), notes Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin life sciences professor who ran the U.S. poll. He believes the approval gap is due to religion's "important role" in America. On both sides of the ocean, he says, many who identified themselves as religious objected to the idea of altering molecules.

I found the story weird because I've heard so little in the mainstream media about nanotechnology--and certainly nothing that would stir fears of Frankensteinish nanobots running amok. (By contrast, genetically engineered foods have gotten a lot more negative publicity--to say nothing of the hotly controversial stem cell research.)

When I did a little further reading on the poll, I became even more puzzled, especially when I read a comment from Professor Scheufele to the effect that the popular opposition to nanotechnology is not due to ignorance about the technology but rather to religiously-based objections: "The issue isn't about informing these people. They are informed."

What does this mean? Are we to believe that there are large numbers of devout Christians who are deeply knowledgeable about nanotechnology and have developed thoughtful theological arguments against it? The idea struck me as rather implausible--so much so that I emailed Professor Scheufele for further information.

The articles the professor linked me to did a lot to clear up the mystery. Turns out that one of the things Scheufele and his colleagues studied was whether knowledge about nanotechnology is correlated with positive attitudes toward it; and another was how religious belief affects this relationship. As explained in a forthcoming article in Public Understanding of Science, co-authored by Scheufele, Dominique Brossard, and Eunkyung Kim,

. . . highly religious respondents . . . showed the lowest levels of support for funding for nanotechnology; and being more knowledgeable about nanotechnology did little to influence their support for funding. For less religious individuals, however, our data showed a strong link between knowledge about nanotechnology and greater support for nanotechnology funding.

In other words, to know about nanotechnology is to love it--unless you are religious, in which case you hate it whether you know anything about it or not. (I'm oversimplifying, but you get the point.)

I find this story slightly depressing. It suggests that the U.S. contains, at the moment, a large, essentially irreducible minority of people who reflexively oppose new technologies, fear them, and express these fears in moral terms. For these people, scientific innovation is equated with "playing God" or "tampering with nature," and they assume that there is something sinister about technology unless the opposite can somehow be convincingly demonstrated.

The apparent link between technophobia and religious sentiment suggests specific issues that business people need to address.

If you're in charge of public relations at Monsanto, Dow, Schering-Plough, Amgen, or any other company that is in the business of marketing technological breakthroughs, you ought to consider creating a department for religious outreach. Talk to theologians, including some conservative ones, and work on developing an appropriate, non-scientific, spiritual language for explaining what you do--perhaps describing technology in terms like "human stewardship of creation" and its benefits as "blessings produced by God's gift of reason."

And devote resources to making connections with religious leaders, especially in the United States. When future public battles are fought over issues like technology regulation and funding, you'll probably want to have some well-informed, open-minded, and widely-trusted pastors on your side.

In this day and age, it may seem strange that these strategies are necessary--but evidently they are.

Labels: Amgen, Communications and Marketing, Dietram Scheufele, Dow, Monsanto, nanotechnology, Schering-Plough

In this post, I want to deviate from my usual discussion about sustainability, corporations, and profits.

I want to discuss something that rarely gets discussed in the sustainability world but which I think is going to be a subject of increasing attention. It's the fact that sustainability is really a two-sided coin. On the one side is sustainable production, which is what all of us in business like to talk about--how companies can get leaner and greener. But on the other side is sustainable consumption, which is something that we don’t talk about much.

I want to frame this issues by talking about globalization--not in economic terms, but in environmental and social terms.

One of the most interesting and important aspects of climate change is that it is a global issue with global impacts. If China continues to burn coal at the rate it needs to sustain its economic growth, Manhattan, Boston, and Miami will be threatened by rising seas, and farmers in Kansas and Nebraska will have to switch crops or move. When farmers in Brazil cut down rainforests, the temperature in Boise goes up.

There is no place to run from climate change. Polar bears living at the North and South Poles are threatened.

Globalization has also produced social impacts that are worldwide. We've thrown out most of our toys that were made in China, even after China executed the official who was in charge of product safety. (And we complain about tough government regulations here!) We import so many products from China that their product safety issues affect us directly. To some extent, the same is true for child and slave labor. China's social issues are also our issues, whether we like it or not.

And resource issues have also become global. We are due to run out of oil and a number of metals that we need to feed the manufacturing infrastructure that supplies us with everything from building materials to cutlery.

Water is the most dramatic example of the coming resources crunch. The list of areas that are likely to run out of water in the next thirty to fifty years is scary, and it is already happening right here at home. Las Vegas, the fastest-growing city in the U.S., is built in the middle of a desert, and the lake that supplies it with its water is drying up from the top and silting up from the bottom. Similar things are happening in many large areas of the world.

Andy Liveris, the CEO of Dow, has said that "water is the oil of the 21st century." The Pentagon has conducted scenario planning around the idea that the world will be engulfed in a series of regional wars fought over water in the next century.

But in this globalized world, consumption has not yet become globalized. It's well known that the United States, with only five percent of the world’s population, consumes twenty-five percent of the world's fossil fuel. We have only one fifth of the population of China, but we account for more global warming than they do (although the gap is rapidly shrinking).

Jared Diamond recently observed that the average American consumes 32 times as many resources as the average Kenyan. When you consider that a billion people live on less than $1 a day, that my lunch cost probably $20 and I am already thinking about dinner, you'd think the ratio would be even higher.

Now put this in a global context. It has been calculated that if the rest of the world were to start living at the same standard of living as people in the U.S., it would take twelve planet Earths to support our collective lifestyle. When I think about how much stuff I throw out every week, that doesn't really surprise me either. But as far as we know, we only have the natural resources of one planet Earth at our disposal.

The papers are filled with articles about how people in the West are obese, but you don't read very much about the fact that the economies of the West are also obese.

And you certainly are not likely to hear this from corporations that are in the business of selling more stuff. To the extent they are focused on sustainability, they are focused on being more efficient in manufacturing and selling us more stuff. But if you look at the numbers, the kinds of efficiencies they can make are not going to reduce our consumption to a sustainable level, not by a long shot. We can all buy hybrid cars and low-impact fluorescent bulbs, but that only slows the growth of pollution.

The fact is that we need to practice sustainability on both sides of the coin: sustainable production and sustainable consumption.

It's rare to hear companies say, "Consume less," and rarer still to hear them say, "Consume less of our products." A few years ago, McDonald's in France ran some ads saying, "If you have a weight problem, don't eat here so much." The corporate PR guys on Oakbrook Illinois found the people who were responsible and sent them to the (corporate) guillotine.

There are a handful of industries that are just beginning to address the issue of sustainable consumption.

Twenty-five years ago, when I was just getting involved in environmental matters, Massachusetts passed a law that would pay electric utilities for getting their customers to use less energy. Under the new scheme, the utilities would get paid the same, and in some cases more, if they sold less energy by convincing customers to use less, or to use it during off-peak times.

This became a national program called Demand Side Management (DSM). It has the potential to revolutionize the consumption of electricity all over the world. We need to apply this model to other areas of consumption.

Reducing our level of consumption is going to be tough for us in the developed world to swallow, and I frankly don’t know how it is going to happen. We have the strongest military in the world, now unconstrained by any opposing force. And we have proved very willing to fight to maintain our life style, with the war in Iraq (motivated at least in part by the desire to guarantee access to that country's oil reserves) seemingly just the latest example.

I think sustainable consumption will come about--if it does--through a combination of five factors:

Market forces. If you've traveled recently, you know that our standard of living is down because of the weak dollar. Imported goods are also more expensive. At the same time, the prices of gas and other natural resource will continue to climb. All of this will tend to bring our standard of living down, closer to that of the developing countries.

Regulation. China legislated only one child per family, and although I don't think we will ever go that far, I do envision more consumption taxes and possibly the rationing of various commodities. We are already going down that road with water use.

Technical innovation. Science may help alleviate the resources crunch. I'm thinking about things like genetically-modified organisms, clean hydrogen or nuclear fusion, and cost-effective water desalinization. But technology will not solve the problem. We're not quite as smart as we like to believe, and there is no technological genie waiting to grant our every wish.

International conflict. The next century will see a lot of battles over resources, and the West is destined to fight a number of wars like the war in Iraq--wars we realistically cannot win. These military defeats may be a necessary evil to wake us up to the need for sustainable consumption.

Redefinition of consumer preferences. This is the hardest one of all. It requires redefining quality of life by understanding that "Less is more." The simplicity movement needs to go from a cult to a mass movement.

I think you can see now why this topic doesn't get discussed much in business circles.

I had the pleasure of being a keynote speaker with Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia at a "net impact" event late last year. He has done as much as any CEO to make sure that his company is respectful and protective of the environment. Yet in front of 100 net impacters, he said (I am paraphrasing), "I have talked to some serious scientists, and most of them believe we have passed the point of no return. We have no hope left to save the Earth."

We all want to think we can go on living this way forever, and that our children should have more than we did. But deep down we recognize that this can't be the case except for a smaller and smaller percentage of us. Not only are there billions of people who want to escape from grinding poverty--and obviously deserve a chance to do so--but in addition the world's population is still growing. By 2050, it is projected to increase from the current six billion to nine billion, and three-quarters of this growth will be in the developing world. So we are going to have a lot more mouths to feed, hands to wash, and people without homes or hope.

I apologize if this message seems like a downer. Maybe I need to find my Prozac. But the issue of sustainable consumption isn't going to vanish just because we prefer to ignore it. I think we're grown-up enough to start talking about it. What do you think?

Labels: China, Climate and Carbon, Jared Diamond, Las Vegas, McDonalds, Patagonia, Personal Musings, Sustainable Consumption, Water, Yvon Chouinard

Here is a new study from IBM Global Business Services titled "Attaining sustainable growth through corporate social responsibility." Some of it simply confirms trends most of us in the "sustainability community" already recognize--for example, the fact that most companies are now beginning to look at corporate social responsibility initiatives as potential sources of business growth.

However, a couple of interesting observations from the report stuck out for me. Perhaps not surprisingly for a study from IBM, they relate to the information-management aspects of CSR.

1. Although the companies surveyed say they are pursuing CSR in large part because of demands from their customers, the great majority (76 percent) say they don't really understand what those customers expect or want. Most companies, it seems, relegate conversations about CSR to their sales, marketing, or PR people, which means that meaningful dialog about the topic doesn't generally involve line managers who have the power to make real changes in what the company does or how it does it.

It seems clear that this will have to change. After all, any company seriously interested in developing world-class customer service (for example) would make open dialog with customers about service expectations a high priority for its executives--and everyone, I think, understands this on some level. The same needs to be true when it comes to CSR.

2. When it comes to transparency, we in business tend to focus on the costs and the downsides: Can we really expose our inner workings to public scrutiny? Will transparency open us up to lawsuits or public embarrassment? Will it give our competitors a leg up? How expensive will it be to retool our IT systems to make it possible? etc. etc.

The IBM study suggests some interesting upsides for transparency--practical ways in which being open to outside scrutiny can actually reduce costs and lessen risks:

Increasingly, we believe that the degree to which a company is willing and able to open itself to stakeholder scrutiny will be a make or break factor in achieving CSR objectives. In fact, the company that invites more eyes on its operations can preempt problems that would otherwise become very expensive to solve.

To illustrate, the report discussses the challenges facing a manufacturing firm with thousands of suppliers around the world. (Hello, Nike.) How can it monitor and control the behavior of all the links in this vast supply chain? The temptation is to hunker down and go on the defensive, because the costs and complexities are simply so great. However, transparency offers a possible alternative:

But if a company clearly pledges to enforce standards, openly sets goals to improve upon its current abilities, and invites and enables stakeholders like NGOs to help monitor practices, then transparency not only relieves the business of some of the burden for monitoring, but strengthens relationships that were once adversial.

Obviously, this is easier said than done. But the greatest hurdle isn't technical--it's psychological. Companies need to develop the willingness to talk openly about what they are doing (and not doing) and to let outsiders verify the information for themselves; to give up a large degree of control over the data they generate; and to entrust their corporate message and values to people at all levels of the organization, not just a few designated spokespeople.

Let's face it, this is scary. And it will take plenty of internal conversation, self-examination, training, and re-education for many companies to get to the point of accepting this kind of openness. But those that do this sooner--and do it well--will have an edge over the competition, because they will be in a position to become "trusted partners" of their customers, not just in words but in fact.

Labels: IBM, Nike, Reporting and Transparency

It's a fascinating dilemma, and a bit of a Catch-22. Those of us who worry about human despoliation of the natural environment like to invoke, among other arguments, the long-term value of species survival for our own quality of life. "Who knows," we like to ask rhetorically, "What untold cures may someday be discovered among the obscure species of plants flourishing in the Amazon rainforest?"

It's a valid argument, but one that carries a sting in its tail. Because when those "untold cures" are actually discovered, it doesn't exactly guarantee the protection of the source species. In fact, it may be just the opposite, as this article from a German broadcaster's website suggests:

Drugs made from medicinal plants have become ever more popular among doctors and patients in Germany in recent years. Around 75 percent of customers in German pharmacies reach for a natural product when they buy non-prescription medications. In 2006, so-called phytopharmaceuticals accounted for around 2 billions euros ($2.9 billion) worth of revenue, or about a third of the total revenue in non-prescription medications. That translates into a high demand for the raw materials for these products--medicinal plants and their leaves, flowers, roots, and seeds. . . .

. . . for this reason Germany has a special responsibility when it comes to protecting medicinal plants. Excessive harvest and unregulated trade pose a threat to the existence of 4000 medicinal plants worldwide. In Europe, around 150 types of plants are in danger of extinction.

The article goes on to explain that, for technical reasons, industrial production of most of these plants isn't feasible. For now, at least, the only hope is the establishment of strict protocols governing how the plants can be harvested in their natural settings, and in what quantities. The inevitable result is limitations on the size of the market and lack of availability of the natural cures for some people who could benefit from them.

Sometimes we in the sustainable business community speak as if sustainability requires no tradeoffs--as if, with sufficient ingenuity, we can devise solutions that offer wins all around, with no downside for anyone. And maybe, in the very long run (measured in generations), that will be true. But in the real world, in the short term--where we all live--tradeoffs are unavoidable. And one big reason is the sheer fragility of our environment.

Medicinal plants offer just one example. There are many others. We want America's national parks to remain as symbols and reposititories of natural grandeur, which means we have to limit the number of visitors. We want to take advantage of wind and water power wherever these are available, which means we have to tolerate the intrusion of windmills and generating stations into some of our most scenic landscapes. We want the peoples of the developing world to enjoy a standard of living comparable to the one we enjoy in the West without accelerating the production of greenhouse gases, which means we all have to reduce our consumption of fossil fuels--perhaps drastically.

In each case, a balancing act is demanded, weighing goods that are mutually exclusive against one another and requiring difficult choices.

One of the painful lessons of growing up is that it's just not possible to do everything--that hard choices and, often, sacrifices must be made. (I have recently come to accept the harsh truth that I will never be a starting pitcher for the New York Mets.) As an industrial civilization, we'll be facing a series of such choices over the coming decades. We in the sustainability movement have a responsibility to help the world focus thoughtfully on the kinds of tradeoffs that are necessary, so that wise decisions for the long term can be made.

Labels: Food and Agriculture, Germany, medicinal plants, Sustainable Consumption