by kevin, on September 17th, 2009
Continuing where I left off yesterday, to begin crafting a clear brand message and chart a path to an alternative, we need to recognize where we are. Some of the existing environmentally related brand messaging, such as triple bottom line, don’t recognize the relationship between past, present, and future. They solve no problems. Therefore their message has no discernible path to follow. The best aspirational messages should take into account, how we arrived at this point, the realities of today, and the intended future target. A new sustainable brand must assist in the transition from industrial age to sustainable age thinking. So where are we and how did we get here?
It’s important to note that the Industrial Revolution was not designed. There was no underlying plan. McDonough and Braungart point out in their book Cradle to Cradle that it took shape gradually, “as industrialists, engineers, and designers tired to solve problems and to take immediate advantage of what they considered to be opportunities in an unprecedented period of massive and rapid change.” Even without an overall master plan, there are four key components that are fundamental to its success – a virtually limitless supply of raw materials, increasingly inexpensive energy, a large pool of low-cost labor, and the ability to externalize any expense associated with the care or preservation of the environment. That’s an over-simplification. The Industrial Revolution was a scientific and sociological achievement so complex that its history and effects are still debated. But those four give us a good starting point for discussion. What’s key about them is that they no longer exist in the same form they did fifty or one hundred years ago. I’ll go into greater detail in later posts, but today I’ll keep it brief.
We know that raw materials have been extracted to the point of exhaustion or extinction. Wood species have been over harvested and depleted, large and easily accessible mineral deposits are gone and have been replaced with more expensive extraction methods, the world is experiencing peak oil, and more. Today, virtually every aspect of industrialized raw material supply is in decline or shortage.
Oil, natural gas, and coal facilitated and expedited the Industrial Revolution. Until their discovery and utilization, energy was low-grade, expensive, and unreliable. Manufacturing relied on animal, human, or natural sources (movement of water or wind) to generate the energy they required. But those fossil fuels were vast stores of ancient energy ready to be consumed. And consume we have. According to Thom Hartmann in his book The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight (reviewed here), “humans have extracted 742 billion barrels of oil from the Earth. Currently, world oil reserves are estimated at about 1,000 billion barrels.” If true, we’ve crossed the mid point of remaining supply. The second half of any oil field is much harder to remove from the ground, and the final third or quarter is so difficult that most drilling stops and the field is typically abandoned. We are moving into an era dependent upon fossil fuels that will be increasingly costly to produce. This fact is likely to bring an end to inexpensive energy.
Early in the Industrial Revolution, most people lived in rural settings. There were large cities, but a minority of the population resided in them. At the very moment industrialization needed low-cost labor, a migration away from farming and agriculture toward urban centers had begun. That migration continues today. In developing and developed nations, more than half of all people live in cities. History has shown that nations who industrialize raise their standard of living. As those standards rise, so does the cost of labor. Industry has had to chase cheap labor around the world, constantly looking for the next bargain priced pool of workers. Eventually, and probably sooner than we expect, as global markets flatten those pools will be in short supply.
For those not familiar with the term, an externality is a cost that neither the manufacturer nor the consumer pays but is transferred to a third party. Often, the third party unknowingly bears that burden. In states like West Virginia and Pennsylvania, electricity is predominantly produced by burning coal. That process releases carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen into the atmosphere, and are the cause of acid rain and air pollution. A direct externality is the cost associated with the environmental damage and higher health costs. Energy companies in those states do carry those costs as line items on their balance sheets. Nor do they carry the indirect environmental cost for mountain top removal coal mining. In states like Texas and Louisiana, electricity is primarily produced by burning oil. Along the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is the largest concentration of oil refineries in the country. This region also has the nation’s highest concentration of cancer – it’s nickname is cancer alley. The increased rates of cancer and other health issues are linked directly to the refining operations, yet those costs are transfered to the public. After two centuries of industrialization, corporations have become rather skilled at finding ways to externalize costs. But change is on the horizon. Cap and trade is essentially a method seeking to eliminate externalities that have an environmental component. The Waxman-Markey bill is hopefully the first of future legislation that stops this pernicious practice. Business plans in the twenty-first century will need to account for cause and effect in real economic terms.
What if we use these four components as the basis for organizing sustainability in a way that focuses on solving specific problems related to industrial age thinking? Starting with them, we can address where we are and where we want to go in a logical and meaningful way. This gives us a foundation or framework for messaging. This will be the topic of my next post. Please return tomorrow for the next segment in this series.
[...] from industrial age to sustainable age [...]