A Good and Happy Year 2012

CO₂ emissions will matter in 2012 and beyond: Carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels increased last year by a record high of 5.9%. For comparison, the average increase since 1990, the reference year, is 3.1% annually. This increase of 5.9% is very alarming and must activate all sirens in every place and city of the world, as chances that the 2°C temperature increase above pre-industrial level will be largely surpassed, causing catastrophic and irreversible consequences for our planet and our civilization. 2012 is not a year to rest.

Meaning, Cause and Purpose: in changing into a new economic paradigm, it is important to build a common understanding and sharing of what we value as important. Simon Mainwaring emphasizes in his book “We First” that produces and consumers strongly value meaning, purpose in consuming, producing, promoting. That is consume and produce, at the same time support an important cause.

Education: It is important that education needs to reach everyone. Also young people need to discipline themselves for learning and consciousness development, they must stay away from alcohols and drugs that can strongly impact their mental and physical condition, being the sources of depression. It is all right to celebrate successes or for a break, not abusing of what we consume.

Erich Fromm in “Haben oder Sein” attributes the increasing consumption of drugs (alcohol inclusive) on the “Haben” or having. Rather than being self, young people satisfy or, according to my theory, substitute their materialist instincts through drug consumption. It is a high risks substitution that can end with the loss of the self or “Sein” through drug dependency and eventually a fatal outcome.

I also believe that education for leadership requires more than just good business administration. Today we are mainly facing challenges related to humanities, our natural environment and economics. Leaders need to learn and reach a deep level of insight into the anthropogenic and industrial causes and processes, responsible of climate change, and the consequences and risk for our entire civilization.

It is not only shareholder value which is at stake. Downsizing, strategic divestitures or mergers and takeovers are not the only agenda items where strategic leadership is required. The question is more, whether we can save humanity from climate and environmental disruption, how the collapse of our civilization can be prevented in time.

Business Valuation: in neo-classical economics, cost of business does not take into account the costs related to the use of the natural commons, the natural resources and the environment. We all agree that no longer we can proceed with this path. Aware of the difficulty to valuate and attribute these costs, we no longer can ignore them. There can be several reasons for internalizing environmental costs. Natural and vital resources have become scarce. If we continue to deplete rainforest and pollute the atmosphere we destroy the vital resources which allow us to breathe, which are the condition for life on Earth.

A New Game: let’s use the game of chess, its board and pieces for comparison. Right, we are more than two players. But most important, the game board itself changes during the course of the game. Also rather than taking the opponents’ pieces, they players need to negotiate, trade and coordinate, who takes what, where and how much. We also need to bring new players into the game, to assure, that we can continue the game 20 years from now.

Goal Setting for Sustainability: What goals do we need to pursue to secure resources, peace, quality and justice today and for future generations across all cultures and societies? Our goals might differ, but here are 3 goals, which need to have highest attention and priority:

• Protect the tropical rainforests, as a major source of oxygen and biodiversity;
• Cut CO₂ emissions, rather than betting on geo-engineering or carbon capture and sequestration;
• Work intensely with producers and consumers to achieve the goals of sustainability under the triple bottom line of society, our planet and the global economy.

Getting prepared and ready in heading into a Great Recession, Great Depression: We should not be afraid for an evolution, which is systemic and which we cannot control ourselves on an individual level. If we have achieved high standards of living through continued growth in production and consumption in the industrialized countries, we have to understand that on our planet, resources are limited. We also have to understand, that with population growth from today 7 bn to 9 bn in 2050, we have to change our way of life, our material aspirations. That means we have to step away from resource waste towards a way of life based on sufficiency or just enough for everyone. We should not fear to adopt this new lifestyle, one that is fair and just. There is immense hardship in the Global South, where entire populations suffer most from climate change already today. Intergenerational justice is mandatory. Emerging economies and countries see hope for a better future. As industrialized nations we see opportunities. For both, industrialized and emerging economies, these opportunities must be realized under the premises of sustainability and the safeguard of planet Earth. Urban expansion and development – 70% of world’s population is forecasted to live in urban areas by 2050 –relates to the construction industry, the heaviest industries with regards to CO₂ emissions. These developments mainly occur in emerging economies, increasing climate change pressures and impacts in the developing world. What industrialized nations have achieved up to date, emerging economies are repeating, and they cannot be blamed for doing so. We have to support and help these nations to grow in a sustainable way.

Let’s change together now, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, it is never too late to start: Why together? It is easier to change together. Start in your family, with your neighbors. Start small, little actions of give and take. Exchange, ideas, goods you crafted, created. You will learn that both, sharing and your community will grow naturally.

The entire global community has to go through this process. Building strong communities, we can help each other out, where hardship is present or even dominant. It is not “someone’s” task, an anonymous body, the very rich. It is the task of each of us. And it will not resolve on its own. Don’t wait, it will not come alone. We all have to take our lives in our own hands to build a carbon free society. We all have our vision of a healthy planet, with beautiful wilderness, magnificent valleys and mountains, wild rivers, beautiful redwood forests, tropical rainforest with immense biodiversity, oceans where under the sea surface fascinating and wonderful living creatures unfold. Let’s imagine we are artists, painters and in our imagination we paint the vision of our planet, of today and tomorrow. Yes we can, and yes we “are”. We have strong senses, and we should not forget about them.

So what is material in all that? Nothing. The “Being”, being ourselves together in a strong community, it is by all means something essentially natural. And this is our foundation. We have all the ingredients we need to build our future, to preserve all the natural resources and the beauty of our planet.

Together we can build resilience, which allows us to adapt to climate change. It involves all aspects, green technology, local organic farming, sustainable fisheries, rainforest conservation to just mention a few. The overall goal is to bring drastically down our CO₂ emissions and to build a carbon-free society as fast as possible.

We have to cut our path through strong opposing forces: It want go easily or smoothly. Just think about the oil lobby? Do you think they invest their fortune into green technology if they don’t have to, if cash flows into their pockets as oil flows into ours? Be aware of “green-washing”. What about businesses who strongly rely upon fossil fuels in transportation and shipping? What about the airline business? They want to keep the stream of money flowing freely into their pockets to grow their businesses. The very wealthy don’t want to abandon or renounce to luxury. There are huge interests from resource rich countries and their wealthy people, as well as the luxury industry, to maintain the legacy and run business as usual. Nonetheless we know, that such behavior can be catastrophic for our planet and our civilization. It is very important to bring all stakeholders together, to work and communicate together.

Yes, we have to accept that we will be deceived, denigrated and that we have to deal with a lot of frustration. Recently during a guest lecture at the university, where I am taking classes in corporate sustainability, a friend of mine to which I gave highly consideration, gave this guest lecture. In front of all my student peers, he denigrated me, accused me out of the blue. Yes I was very deceived and disappointed about that person. Thinking the situation over I believe that it was fear, that caused this person to act in such a bad way, perhaps fear that the content of his lecture was not at the university level? In fact his lecture was well structured, and very interactive. The lesson is that we have to accept fear, in the process of transforming our society and ourselves. Fear is as natural as any other emotion, such as love. The lesson I took with me was to always stay tolerant, accept the feelings of the other, who eventually have to deal with hardship at that right moment.

Yes, there will be many obstacles we have to come over, and our path will be stony. And yes, we have no choice but to move forward, step-by-step, in being smart, using our skills and intelligence. Lobbies are huge and powerful, so are criminal organizations acting internationally, e.g. drug cartels. And sometimes criminal organizations are tangled up with international businesses, where illegal practice and corruption are common practice. We are powerful and strong, too. And we can make use of our social networks to get even more powerful. And we have the strength of our hearts, our strong vision and values which leads us to the preservation and the safeguard of our planet. Global competition is fierce under tough global economic conditions and strong financial pressures. In working towards the safeguard of planet Earth, we are riding the waves of the Blue Ocean (Chan Kim & Mauborgne) in which creativity and innovation is dominant, making competition obsolete.

The Great Transformation: Governments, Business Corporations, NGOs and all stakeholders have to work hand in hand. We need good government, good business practices, good in the sense of ethics, with regards to the respect of fundamental human rights, climate ethics, good in the sense of sustainability of economics, people, nature and our natural commons to develop a culture of mutual trust and strong relationships. Rather than talking about recession or depression, we should use for the era we unknowingly entered decades ago the term “Transformation”. Recession and Depression are associated to financial and economic crisis. In the era we are living today, we could reuse this terminology again. But the situation is different. It is not only the economy, it is a triple crisis (in reference to Jeremy Leggett) of climate change, energy and economics. Therefore it make sense to rather use the term “The Great Transformation”, which implies change, governance, strategy and action for the sake and to meet the resource and livelihood needs of the world’s population today and in the future.

While it is in our hands and in each ones responsibility, as consumers and producers, governments, national and local, together with business corporations need to stimulate, support and give directions and roadmaps to achieve this transformation. Each of us is a genius. Each of us holds a plenitude of ideas, of creativity. Bringing all this energy and ideas together, we can foster ideas, turn them into innovation for transforming our society, together with government, business enablers, entrepreneurs, eventually also venture finance.

A Good and Happy Year 2012: Let’s change together. Let’s build and become part of strong communities. Let’s exchange ideas and goods for a better world. Let’s be responsible in what we produce and what we consume. Let’s protect and care about our planet, being aware that we are many and that our planet’s resources are scarce. We want to wish all of you and to all the people on our planet a good and happy New Year 2012.