Towards a Green Accounting: What's Externalized Could Kill Us

A striking aspect of the nature of the corporation is its single-minded focus  on profit, that is, taking in more money than it spends, salaries and expenses, plant and materials  included.

Profit- lots of it- makes for growth- and not so much because the company can then use the new capital to expand it's plant or give it's employees a raise- but because rising profits will boost share value, which acts as a a multiplier effect providing the company with enormous further capital; at the same time management is mightily rewarded, through millions in stock options.

Now, to boost the profit end of the equation you can, for example, avoid new infrastructure expenses as long as possible, avoid employee pay raises as long as possible,  lay off  workers, lay off plant safety and quality control personnel,  outsource work and services in India, cut benefits, and close plants showing less than optimal returns.

All these are pretty bad, but two profit-amplifying accounting dodges lying yet deeper in the history of industrial capitalism  have resulted in a real and growing threat to our civilisation, and all life on earth. 

The first is the externalization of the costs to the community- the local area or the earth community at large- caused by the industrial processes employed in pursuit of growth; costs which, if properly accounted for in the corporate ledgers, would have sapped the "profits" margin, and  possibly put them  in the red.

OK, so this blind-spot of the capitalist logical sequence was ignored by everyone for two centuries, everyone assuming the seas and atmosphere and soils were unlimited, and you could dump your garbage, your industrial effluents, your toxic by-products in the air, the water, and the earth without repercussion. Perhaps the externalization of these costs in corporate accounting underlay the fantastic growth of the corporate industrial empires of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was only in the late 20th century, when we stopped bombing each other long enough to pay attention again to Nature, that we noticed the disappearance of other earth-life from our environment- the Silent Spring of Rachel Carson.

But even the dawn of this awareness did not stop us- or rather, stop the corporate industrialists- from polluting and destroying our habitat, on a more and more pervasive and massive scale. As the new millennium began, these costs were still externalized.

One of these pollutions, just one of many, is atmospheric CO2 pollution, ubiquitous because it arises from the burning of fossil fuels, which are far and away the principal source of energy and power of our very civilization. This one pollution alone could do us in, as it threatens to unbalance the one atmosphere in which we all live  and breathe.

The second accounting dodge: not valuing the finite resources of our planet which are being exhausted  faster than Nature can replenish them. Like spending your capital rather than living off the interest it accrues, this is the other disastrous practice of current accounting methods. And here too, a hundred years ago, few worried that we might ever run out of fresh water, arable soil, forests, or fish in the sea. But we know better now. 

So not only do industrial corporations not account for the cost of dealing with their biocidal by-products, they pay no price for the finite natural resources which they use up faster than Nature can replace. It's no wonder corporate industrialism grew so rapidly in the last 150 years. The accounting was rigged.

These days it might  seem like a near-impossible leap, to move to full green accounting.  And yet, quite obviously, we must make this change, sooner or later, and the sooner the better. Here are some resources to look further into this revolution called  Green Accounting.

Green Accounting: A Virtual Resource Center, UN Environmental Program

Encyclopedia Of Earth: Green accounting


Apropos:
Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice And The Blade and The Real Wealth Of Nations, wrote the cover article in December's Tikkun magazine, titled Roadmap To A New Economics: Beyond Capitalism and Socialism. Here is an audio interview at Tikkun about her article.

The Network of Spiritual Progressives has published a "Global Marshall Plan- A national security strategy of generosity and care". Download the PDF here.

A Poem by Judy Chicago

And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind
And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another's will
And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many
And then all will share equally in the Earth's abundance
And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old
And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life's creatures
And then all will live in harmony with one another and the Earth
And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.

(this poem was spoken as part of the Invocation given by Rabbi Arnold Rachlis of University Synagogue, Irvine CA, on the occasion of President Obama's Town Hall meeting in Orange County, March 18, 2009.)

Santa Fe Sunsets

It's that time of year for spectacular sunsets in Northern New Mexico... here are some of my own favorite pictures...

Food, Fruit, and The Botany of Desire

A well-reasoned and well-sourced OpEd in the Times today (Oct 30) by Nicolette Hahn Niman argues that the problem with carnivory in the context of greenhouse emissions is with the industrialization of the meat industry, not with meat-eating per se. She details how meat can be raised for food without excessive greenhouse emissions, which is essentially a case for conscious, local, organic, free range, non-industrialized meat-raising. (NYT OpEd: The Carnivore's Dilemma)

Some further thoughts:
The industrialization of food production occurred not in order to feed the planet's growing population, but rather to create gigantic profit-vehicles for multi-national corporations vying for dominance in the food supply "industry".

It has in fact weakened or destroyed local food production wherever "free trade" has penetrated.

I was thinking about an eating strategy for future humanity when I wrote the earlier post about fruit. It seems to me our best strategy would be to develop partner species which produce for us our food willingly, without us having to kill individual beings on a massive scale. In return we give them warmth and comfort, and a survival alliance for their species.

Ants do that for example. They feed and care  for their aphids, which make the ant's  food.

We humans have fruit. Fruit fits the bill. Fruiting trees compete with each other to be desirable and beneficial to humans, as we are it's primary partner, the seed-spreader. (Though we are no longer leaving the seeds in the forest under a mat of our own natural fertilizer, we fulfill that part of the contract in a different way by offering a survival alliance whereby we humans assure the long-term well-being of the species.)
So far we've only bred fruit trees for such traits as appearance, sweetness, long shelf life. We should get serious about the potential of fruit and select for nutritional targets, so as to replace other sources in our diets as we make the transition. Fruiting plants are happy to comply- one might even say they are happy to be drawn into what for them may be a kind of conversation with us humans, species to species.

And by the way…

This conversation is in a way the theme of Michael Pollan's fascinating book "Botany of Desire", as seen in our relationship with the apple, tulip, potato, and marijuana.
Whether you've read the book or not, you'll enjoy the excellent PBS Special based on it, and especially the smart and attractive show's website, with 'web extras'- like the interview segments with Pollan linked above, and a graphically rich dedicated website to explore further the themes and frames of the book.

PBS show segments and extras online
Botany of Desire- website

Thinking About Fruit

When we were hunter-gatherers, we ate other animals and plants like the rest of creation; and since we were few, our appetite had little impact on the biosphere, we were naturally integrated with the web of life and it's give and take. When we became numerous, we made a kind of pact with nature, to wit: we will eat enormous amounts of certain species, but we will also guarantee their survival as species, domesticating and elevating them in the best of conditions (in principle).

I've been thinking about not eating large animals anymore. Partly because the raising of farm animals alone accounts for an enormous amount of greenhouse gas, soil degradation, habitat destruction, marine pollution, and public health risks. Partly because of the fact that I no longer want to be part of the cause of the suffering and death of these animals, which, if they lived in my garden, I'd rather make friends with than kill and eat. In fact, since I have no doubt that all creatures have some kind of self-awareness and inner life, the more I think about it, the more eating even fish and fowl seems barbaric. After all you can have a pet chicken, or a pet fish. It even seems presumptuous to draw a line at, say, shrimp. I knew a boy once who had a pet huntsman spider, and who was depressed for days when the spider moved on as winter came.
Imagine if we didn't kill and eat- or just kill- the other creatures in our earth family. Imagine if butterflies and birds, deer and squirrel gathered and played with us in our gardens. I'd like that. Maybe we would learn how to communicate.

I happened upon a dog-eared copy of The Secret Life of Plants, in which I was reminded that plants have anxiety attacks when someone starts "harvesting" their garden-mates, or even when this person enters the greenhouse. So how will billions of humans live peaceably on the planet with a natural biosphere flourishing around them... what would they eat, if not everything?

Then I thought of fruit. Not so much apples and pears and the other northern fruits, but the wildly diverse fruits of the tropics from which our species came: mangos and mangosteen, rambutan, salak, durian and papaya... and dozens of others, which surely, in their great variety, might cover most of our nutritional needs. After all, if a giant fruitbat, with a six foot leathery wingspread can fuel it's flight on fruit, I should do fine.

Fruit, alone among all the things we eat, are made for us (primates primarily) to eat. That's why they generally come in lovely colors, smell good, taste sweet and moist, and give us energy; they want us to eat them, so we'll deposit their seeds in a fertilizer envelope at some distance from the tree.. They seduce us to have a taste.*

If we ate only fruit, we wouldn't be chopping up or slaughtering other life forms. Fruit-bearing trees release their ripened fruit all by themselves -a bright and transportable pod of nourishment, essentially saying, "Here, take this, it's ready to eat"; the tree lives happily on for decades. Like a cow gives milk, fruiting trees will continue to produce food for us as long as they live.

I can imagine a world in which fruiting plants have been cultivated for a wide range of nutritional benefits, and most of the growing land on the planet is devoted to our fruiting companions.

*And they may tend to make us more seductive to each other- fruiting trees would select for traits which by some means could over time increase the number of their 'seed-porters', thus securing their future generations. The way to do that, beyond offering essential nutrients and energy, would be to stimulate mating activity on the part of the seed-porting species. Clearly, forage-able vegetables would have no interest in offering such an inducement, lest they be eaten up by rapidly multiplying herbivores.

___________________

Update: Here's a video peek at some of the tropical fruits mentioned in this article...