QUOTES
for
sustainability to be more than a green pipe dream, it must address the legitimate
aspirations of people the world over for a better life, a higher standard of living,
and equity.
Some
businesses are making profound changes, and profiting. Some are greenwashing and
profiting. And some, like Exxon, are still profiting and being bad. It really
is up to each of us to determine with whom we will do business, and to start to
enforce superior environmental performance by voting with our dollars.
The
world faces not a preordained future, but a choice. The choice is between mental
models. One model says that this finite world for all practical purposes has no
limits. Choosing that model will take us even further beyond the limits, and,
we believe, to collapse within the next half century. Another model says that
the limits are real and close and that there is not enough time and that people
cannot be moderate or responsible or compassionate. That model is self-fulfilling.
If we choose to believe it, we will get to be right. A third model says that the
limits are real and close and there is just exactly enough time, with no time
to waste. There is just exactly enough energy, enough material, enough money,
enough environmental resilience, and enough human virtue to bring about a revolution
to a better world. That model might be wrong. All the evidence we have seen, however,
from the world data to the global computer models suggests that it might be right.
There is no way of knowing for sure, other than to do it.
The
way to bridge most gaps is, as folk like Meg Wheatley say, to learn how to have
genuine conversations.
I
guess more and more, I feel that one of the more important things that all of
us who are working for a better tomorrow can do is to respect the work that everyone
else is doing for the same cause.
We
are, ourselves, as people who seek a vision that all living things can share,
a rich ecology that is stronger for our diversity. It's time to park our self-righteousness,
however fun it might be, and reach out to each other.
