United We Fall

I was recently asked to speak about the business perspective as it relates to the proposed statewide water plan for Georgia, to be presented to the state legislature in 2008.

Business perspective as it relates to environmental legislation? The thought seemed a bit oxymoronic. 

As you look back over the past 45 years or so, the business community has seemed to be united in its resistance to environmental regulation that would ostensibly challenge business-as-usual practices. And that is true in terms of diverse issues, ranging from the use of synthetic chemicals such as DDT, haldane, and dioxin (1960s), the dumping of raw waste into our atmosphere and rivers (1970s), proposals such as various state bottle bills to reduce litter, reducing subsidies to conventional energy businesses while increasing funding for R&D for alternative energy, to the current statewide water plan to regulate instream flows, reduce water consumption, promote conservation practices, and regulate quantity and quality of ground and surface water. 

“United” is the key, operative word here, serving as an acronym for six key strategies business has used to inhibit progressive legislation from being passed into law. Those six strategies or arguments are as follows: 

U          Unsound science. Arguing that proposed changes are not sufficiently grounded in compelling, convincing research. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in Crimes Against Nature, is eloquent in his description of how cries of “more research needed” are used to delay and ultimately derail needed environmental controls. 

N          Negligible effects. The contention here is typically that whatever changes are proposed are not sufficient to effect the necessary results. In contradistinction to the Chinese proverb that the journey of 1,000 miles begins with the first steps, such a strategy contends that first steps do not a journey make. 

I           Impossible to effect logistically. We hear this with most proposed paradigm changes, for instance, the notion that a hydrogen fuel cell economy will always lack the infrastructure and delivery system to make this technological break-through viable. 

T          Technologically unavailable. The argument is consistently made - for instance with wave technology or cellulosic ethanol - that the proposed ideas are the stuff of which dreams are made of and lack market viability. 

E          Economically unfeasible or disastrous. Often an immediate argument presented by most businesses, contending that a proposed environmental law is likely to be onerous to current profits and current value propositions. 

D          Deflect responsibility onto other segments of society. The broad example here is the externalization of many costs - clean up of our air, our water - onto the public. A more specific example is the development of the Keep America Beautiful campaign in the 1970s by the manufacturing industry in order to have litter viewed as the result of irresponsible citizens and not the responsibility of businesses. 

Taken as a whole, these six strategies have been utilized effectively by business to defeat much well-intentioned environmental legislation over the past half century. And the question comes to mind, why has it consistently been the burden of everyday citizens to prove the merits of a change to old, deleterious patterns of behavior? When does it become the responsibility of business to make the business case for despoiling our land and wreaking havoc on our communities? At what point do we as a voting populace ask ourselves how has it become the case, as Robert Reich points out in Supercapitalism, that capitalism has grown and evolved to the detriment of democracy? When do we begin to ask ourselves exactly what is business united for . . . and against? 

David Suzuki, in an address before the fifth annual US Green Building Council conference held in 2006 in Denver, Colorado, noted that the sustainability movement now taking hold both nationally and abroad augurs tremendous economic opportunity for those businesses willing to embrace a new and different paradigm centered on being better stewards of our environment and our community. Bill Clinton, more recently, has echoed this same sentiment. 

Perhaps it is well nigh time for business to become united behind a different set of strategies and beliefs.