Green Thought Leaders

A Transitioning to Green™ webcastJanuary 7, 2011

narrated by Linda Morris Kelleylmkelley@transitioningtogreen.com

…we stand on the shoulders of giants

Thought Leaders realize that things change

Green Thought Leaders realize that our current economy and its supporting business practices are unsustainable.

Greening Business and the Economy

Our Green Economy cannot hatch fully formed… … but must grow as a tree does with

roots, branches, leaves; it flowers and sows seeds. One generation gives rise to the next, producing numerous fertile hybrids

…we stand on the shoulders of giants• We can do what we do only because of Thought Leaders who came before us, those who

asked questions, made connections, realized consequences and seized opportunities. Their actions changed what would become our world.

• This is as true now as it was in the past. We could today say what John of Salisbury wrote in the 12th Century referring to Bernard of Chartres.

"Bernard of Chartres used to say that we are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, but because we are carried high and raised up by their giant size.“

("Dicebat Bernardus Carnotensis nos esse quasi nanos, gigantium humeris insidentes, ut possimus plura eis et remotiora videre, non utique proprii visus acumine, aut eminentia corporis, sed quia in altum subvenimur et extollimur magnitudine gigantea")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_on_the_shoulders_of_giants

…of Giants, Seeds, Roots andMental Models

• On whose shoulders are we standing?

• What seeds have they bequeathed to us?

• What roots have they cultivated that we can graft to?

• How did/do they see the world?

If you want to understand sustainable economies, the greening of business and the imperative of urgently changing to business, and living practices that can support prosperous human societies now and into the future, join with me in listening to the thoughts of a few pioneers in the green space.

Let’s continue to the next slides to meet some (but most certainly not all) giants of green. Either click on the video rectangles, or click on the url’s

below the videos to hear what they have to say.

Some Historical Threads• 18th Century recognition of “landscape” and the aesthetics of position and placement in the environment as being valuable.

Introduction of the word “sustainability” in reference to Saxon forests and scarcity of wood.

• 18th Century wholesale enclosure of lands that were formerly Commons, prohibiting common people from their use

• The Industrial Revolution process; moving populations to work in urban areas

• Montesquieu. The right of the Commons: to whom do the land and water belong? And, climate influences the material conditions of man (1731) De l'esprit des lois

• Thomas Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (published in 1764)

• John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), regarding the harm principle, that “the only purpose for which power be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.” The Principles of Political Economy, and, “Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature;”

Fast-forward 100 years to:• Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948)

• Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962). The Story of Silent Spring• Edward Goldsmith, Blueprint for Survival, and The Ecologist (1970)

• Limits to Growth (1972), Donella H. Meadows, Dennis Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens. “In 1972, the book "Limits to Growth" was published. It argued that unchecked consumption and economic growth on our finite planet was leading the Earth towards 'overshoot' of its carrying capacity, followed by disaster.” http://limitstogrowth.net/

Green Thought Leaders who have helped define the field of Green Business

• Gro Harlem Brundtlandt• Hazel Henderson• Herman Daly• Bob Willard• John Doerr• Lester Brown• Stewart Brand• John Elkington

Gro Brundtlandt

Gro Harlem Brundtland - The Environment and the United Nations (1hr)http://vimeo.com/17820951

“Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

Our Common Future, Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development (June,1987)http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm

Hazel Henderson

http://www.viddler.com/explore/ethicalmarketsvideos/videos/7/

http://www.ethicalmarkets.com/

“Dr. Hazel Henderson is a world renowned futurist, evolutionary economist, a worldwide syndicated columnist, consultant on sustainable development, and author of Beyond Globalization, and seven other books. Her editorials appear in 27 languages and more than 200 newspapers syndicated by InterPress Service, Rome, New York, and Washington DC. Her articles have appeared in over 250 journals, including (in USA) Harvard Business Review, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Challenge, Mainichi (Japan), El Diario (Venezuela), World Economic Herald (China), and Australian Financial Review.” She has been a green activist for many decades, starting with her involvement with citizen public interest groups such as Citizens for Clean Air in 1964, and quite rapidly moved into work regarding the economics of sustainability.

Hazel Henderson speaking at SB’10 (18 min)

Herman Daly“Dr. Daly began as a Professor at Maryland School of Public Affairs after working at the World Bank as a Senior Economist in the Environment Department, helping to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. While there, he was engaged in environmental operations work in Latin America. Before joining the World Bank, Daly was Alumni Professor of Economics at Louisiana State University. He is a co-founder and associate editor of the journal, Ecological Economics.” He is the author, with theologian John B. Cobb, Jr. of For the Common Good (1989) http://vimeo.com/11507591

Solutions Series. From a Failed-Growth Economy to a Steady-State Economy (1 hr)

Bob Willard“Bob is a leading expert on quantifying and selling the business value of corporate sustainability strategies and has given hundreds of keynote presentations to corporate, government, university, and NGO audiences. Bob applies his business and leadership experience from his 34-year career at IBM Canada to engage the business community in proactively avoiding risks and capturing opportunities associated with environmental and social issues.”

http://www.sustainabilityadvantage.com/about.html

http://www.mefeedia.com/watch/25609644

Bob Willard interviewed by Randall Craig on www.ProfessionallySpeakingTV.com (1 hr)

John Doerr

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXJFbJNltgTEDTalks Director John Doerr. Seeking salvation and profit in greentech (19 min)

“John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Together with KPCB's partners, John has backed many of America's best entrepreneurial leaders, including: Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Eric Schmidt: Google [GOOG], Jeff Bezos: Amazon [AMZN], Scott Cook, Bill Campbell: Intuit [INTU], Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Bill Joy, Vinod Khosla: Sun, and the founders of Compaq, Cypress, Macromedia and Symantec. These ventures have created more than 150,000 new jobs.”

http://www.kpcb.com/team/doerr

Lester BrownThe Washington Post called Lester Brown "one of the world's most influential thinkers." The Telegraph of Calcutta refers to him as "the guru of the environmental movement." In 1986, the Library of Congress requested his personal papers noting that his writings "have already strongly affected thinking about problems of world population and resources.“ http://www.earth-policy.org/index.php?/about_epi/C32/

Brown is the author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization.

Lester Brown, Keynote at the CERES Conference 2009, http://vimeo.com/4416240

Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand proclaims 4 environmental 'heresies' http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environmental_heresies.html

Stewart Brand is co-founder and president of The Long Now Foundation and co-founder of Global Business Network. He created and edited the Whole Earth Catalog (National Book Award), and co-founded the Hackers Conference and The WELL. His books include The Clock of the Long Now; How Buildings Learn; and The Media Lab. His most recent book, titled Whole Earth Discipline, is published by Viking in the US and Atlantic in the UK.

John Elkington

Julie's Bicycle Bands Touring - John Elkington (16 min)http://vimeo.com/13299639

John Elkington coined the term Triple Bottom Line, in Cannibals with Forks: The Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business (1998). He is a co-founder of SustainAbility and founder of Volans. “Volans, launched in April 2008, aims to find, explore, advise on and build innovative scalable solutions to the great global divides that overshadow the future. His work in this area has been celebrated and supported by awards including the UN Global 500 Roll of Honour, the Fast Company Social Capitalist Award and a 3-year, $1 million Skoll Foundation grant (2007-2009).”

http://www.volans.com/people/team/john-elkington/

A Few Green Thought Leaders who are practicing sustainable business

• William McDonough, and Michael Braumgarten• Ray Anderson• Amory Lovins• Mindy Lubber• and, Zero by Herman Miller

William McDonough

Cradle to California, Bill McDonough interview on Climate One (first 28 min)http://fora.tv/2010/09/30/Cradle_to_California_Bill_McDonough

William McDonough is a world-renowned architect and designer and winner of three U.S. presidential awards: the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development (1996), the National Design Award (2004); and the Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (2003). Time magazine recognized him as a "Hero for the Planet" in 1999, stating that "his utopianism is grounded in a unified philosophy that—in demonstrable and practical ways—is changing the design of the world.“ http://www.mcdonough.com/full.htm

Amory Lovins“Amory B. Lovins, a 63-year-old American consultant, experimental physicist and 1993 MacArthur Fellow, has been active at the nexus of energy, resources, environment, development, and security in more than 50 countries for 35 years, including 14 years based in England. He is widely considered among the world’s leading authorities on energy—especially its efficient use and sustainable supply—and a fertile innovator in integrative design.”

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Amory+B.+Lovins

Integrative Design: Amory Lovins at Autodesk University (15 min)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RZjDN3v650

Ray Anderson“The story is now legend: the “spear in the chest” epiphany Ray Anderson experienced when he first read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, seeking inspiration for a speech to an Interface task force on the company’s environmental vision. Fourteen years and a sea change later, Interface, Inc., is nearly 50 percent towards the vision of “Mission Zero®,” the journey no one would have imagined for the company or the petroleum-intensive industry of carpet manufacturing which has been forever changed by Anderson’s vision.”

http://www.interfaceglobal.com/getdoc/618a4adb-479e-4bce-a209-a9a0b7195e69/Ray-Anderson.aspx

Ray Anderson on the business logic of sustainability (16 min)http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_anderson_on_the_business_logic_of_sustainability.html

Zero by Herman MillerA phenomenal goal from Herman Miller, as told by Fairly Painless Advertising

http://vimeo.com/10952764

Mindy Lubber“Mindy S. Lubber is President of Ceres, the leading coalition of investors, environmental organizations and other public interest groups working with companies and investors to build sustainability into the capital markets and address sustainability challenges such as global climate change. She also directs the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of more than 90 investors representing approximately $10 trillion in assets that coordinates U.S. investor responses to the financial risks and opportunities of climate change.”

CEF 2010 (Corporate Eco Forum) Gala Dinnerhttp://www.ceres.org/Page.aspx?pid=494#lubber (7 min)

Ah Ha’s

Pause for a few minutes to write down, and date:

• What have you learned, in general and in relation to your field(s) of interest?

• What new insights are you now contemplating?• How might you build on what these Thought

Leaders have bequeathed you?

The future is now• With its inherent tension between holding what you already know and value,

and innovating for better business and a sustainable world

• With a palpable urgency to broaden the concept of Leadership so that it encompass not only “the” Leader but also includes leaderfulness throughout an organization

• The respons-ability is yours, the respons-ability is ours

Thank you for engaging with the thoughts put forth by these leaders.

Thank you for engaging with what you have to offer for a sustainable world.

For further information, please contact: Linda Morris Kelley, lmkelley@transitioningtogreen.com