All can enjoy the bounty of life while living in balance with nature.



Capitalism as defined by Wall Street’s narrow metrics – where profits are required to grow exponentially quarter by quarter for companies to satisfy investors – is in direct conflict with Nature. Unlimited exponential growth in Nature is the domain of the cancer cell. Everything else grows to maturity and then seeks its own sustainable limit. Whether it’s our bodies, a population of deer in the forest, the number of fish we can sustainably harvest, or levels of C02 in the atmosphere. All can enjoy the bounty of life while living in balance with nature.

I have some experience with large corporations to back up my views here. In the 90s and for the next decade plus, I started and ran a consortium of multi-national companies. Members included Nike, Ford, Xerox, Harley-Davidson, DTE Energy and more including BP and Shell. We worked with visionary pioneers inside these companies who – at some personal risk to their careers -- were determined to be business leaders for sustainability. Their aim was to learn from each other in efforts to eliminate waste, decrease carbon footprint and use of toxic materials while increasing innovation in design of “green” products and services, with the goal of pursuing the “triple bottom line” of healthy profit, people and planet. It worked in some cases, with Nike for example, shifting from being a labor-practices pariah to an acknowledged and awarded leader in Corporate Social Responsibility and products designed for sustainability. But for many of these companies, their Scorpionic nature prevails despite the best efforts of individuals within them. Witness Deepwater. The calculus is simple: at the proverbial end of the day in the CEO suite, when profits compete with people or planet, narrowly defined profits too often win. Period.



I participate in a monthly meeting via conference call with several women leaders from our consortium, people I’ve worked with for years. I have huge admiration for their brilliance, integrity, humor and courage. As an example of their stature: one ran a multi-billion dollar division at a Fortune 100, another was the CFO reporting to the CEO of a major oil services company, another, a PhD chemist and 25 year veteran of a world-leading petroleum company, another an engineer and manufacturing leader at one of the Big Three automakers. In our call this month we spoke of the Gulf debacle and our views having worked within and/or for these mega companies.

My co-founder of the group, a professor at a prestigious Business School began, “Do you think we were being duped by BP all those years and that they just used us for green-washing, or do you think they weren’t intentionally malicious, just full of arrogance and hubris?”

Our PhD petroleum company veteran responded, “There is too much fragmentation in these companies. Risk is assessed by one group, management and investment decisions by another. Communication is poor and no one wants to imagine the worst.” Our finance expert continued, “I was at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) recently and the talk was of stakeholder engagements and strategic community investment. They were trying to bring these metrics into the calculation of NPV (net present value) for the issues we all care about. But the bottom line is these companies will not self-regulate. And why are we trying to re-define old measurement in a failing systems instead of designing things in a completely new way that works?


Then our auto engineer spoke up, “Do we need a worst disaster than the financial crisis and now this? Where’s the leverage? We need a true revolution at this moment. The whole system has to change.”

Now remember, these women are successful business leaders and all about innovation. They KNOW we can and must do better. Our billion dollar division leader added, “It’s shocking how the ‘drill, baby, drill’ mentality is still alive and well here in the Midwest and I'm sure elsewhere. I’m visiting my mom and had a conversation with her husband and about all the alternatives that are available TODAY if politics, misguided corporate interests and media misinformation didn't get in the way. Encouraged, my mom said "Why don't we hear anything about all that?" It’s time we heard the good stories of what’s possible in creating a world where all people thrive.



Here are a few things that I believe:

1. Life here on planet earth was not created to destroy itself. There is more than enough for all of us to thrive.
2. We don’t have an energy crisis, or a food crisis, or a climate crisis. We do have a crisis of imagination, generosity and political will.
3. Large, publically traded companies that fopcus only on profit are “scorpions” by definition. They cannot and will not self regulate. With strict regulations, oversight, penalties and incentives for the good gals and guys to do the right thing, they will do what innovators do by nature and create great beauty and prosperity.
4. Politicians need to answer to the public, not to publically traded corporations. Corporations can no longer be allowed to overly influence our government for democracy to prevail.
5. To help innovators create products and services in alignment with natural law – clean, green, pristine energy food and water – as is our birthright on this planet; governments must change priorities in resource allocation. If you are a parent, would you spend $100 on guns for your kids for every $1 you spend on books? Yet that’s the ratio of our federal budget investment these days. It’s time to start spending our money on the pursuit of life, not death.

Lots more to be said, but my 8 year olds just came up and said it’s time for lunch and a bike ride and swim as I promised. It’s what we call a “Color Purple” day, referencing Alison Walker’s book and movie of the same name. In the story, the protagonist sees a magnificent purple flower and says to her companion. “You see that flower. That purple flower is here now only. You know God gets pissed off if you don’t take a moment to love and bless that flower.”

The kids, the Gulf, this day, this Earth, this life, it’s all Color Purple. Let’s love it with all we’ve got.