Jared Diamond asks "Will Big Business Save the Earth?" in NYT oped

[kristopher]

Will Big Business Save the Earth?

By JARED DIAMOND
Published: December 5, 2009


THERE is a widespread view, particularly among environmentalists and liberals, that big businesses are environmentally destructive, greedy, evil and driven by short-term profits. I know — because I used to share that view.

But today I have more nuanced feelings. Over the years I’ve joined the boards of two environmental groups, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, serving alongside many business executives.

As part of my board work, I have been asked to assess the environments in oil fields, and have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I’ve also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability.

The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

What’s my evidence for this? Here are a few examples ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06diamond.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Author of arguably one of the best environmental discussions in the public realm - Collapse.

Diamond's discussion of failed cultures and the way their collapse was intertwined with environmental degradation is something that everyone should be required to read.

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

[LooseWilly]

1. The epitome of a practical analysis... and the judgement is toward going "green".

Always a pleasure to read Diamond's work.

[Betty Karlson]

2. Mr Diamond is an outstanding researcher.

His opinion is one of the few heard throughout the world - deservedly so.

[ipaint]

3. If Americans do what they need to do to cut consumption where does that leave companies

like walmart and coca cola. Do we really need them to survive when their survival relies on our over consumption.

I cut my consumption to the bone which means shopping local for food and second hand for clothes and furniture and household stuff. I took a carbon footprint test online and my house hold of 2 produces 6 tonnes a year, the average per american is 20.4 tonnes. I am still over the world goal to combat climate change which is 2 tonnes per person.

If Americans ever get serious these corporations will be in a world of hurt.

[cbdo2007]

9. "If Americans ever get serious...."

Luckily, for big business, the American people actually getting serious about anything in their best interest is about as realistic as Aliens landing and taking us all to a new planet when we finally break this one beyond repair.

It's just like the banks and their overdraft fees. It's a no lose situation for the banks...betting on Americans to spend more than they have in their account.

American's are always going to over consume, so big businesses are going to be the catalyst to change...NOT the American people.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. More to the point is "Who else could?" Or will...

One simple fact is that no government or organization has the resources that large businesses have. Should they decide to act green, they can do it faster and more efficiently than anything else.

And this is nothing new. Over 20 years ago 3M found methods of recycling industrial waste that were profitable. Arounbd the same time General Motors found ways to paint cars taht were cheaper than dumping excess paint in the Hudson River.

And I was personally involved with efforts to mitigate oil spills when the Water Quality Improvement Act of 1970 was written by the chairman of the insurance company I worked for.

There is a recalcitrance toward being enviromentally, or even socially, responsible by many busniess leaders, and I knew plenty of the worst offenders. But they don't run everything and many of them can be worked with. I knew some of the people who worked with GM and the Hudson plant-- the lawsuits and demonstrations didn't work, but a few engineers sitting down with the plant manager and coming up with a plan that he could take to Detroit did. He didn't like the dumping either, but he had to have something to take to the bosses to get the money to change it.

I even remember the old management at Exxon refusing to take the easy way out (this was long before the Valdez) and considering part of the job of being the biggest showing the rest of the world how things should be done.

None of this means that it will be easy or that every business out there will be happily jumping on the green wagon, and I expect very few to for quite some time. And, as times get tough things are just as likely to get worse as competition heats up. But, it does give us some hope.

[Hannah Bell]

5. only if they destroy the basis of their power, so why would they?

[kristopher]

14. If you read the article he answers that...

but the short version for those with truncated attention spans is that it is profitable for them to do so.

If the regulatory policies are structured properly they will pursue green goals with the same zeal they pursue polluting goals.

[Hannah Bell]

29. "green goals" = corpspeak. expansion of profit depends on expansion of

markets.

[kristopher]

31. Not always.

You are grasping at straws of ill informed bias.

[Hannah Bell]

33. lol. i notice you give no examples.

[kristopher]

39. Actually I did, I posted the OP.

[Hannah Bell]

44. of how profits expand without expanded markets, i.e. more consumption.

[kristopher]

45. Oh my...

Or you could reduce overhead by increasing efficiency in the flow of materials and/or energy, i.e. less consumption.

[Hannah Bell]

47. that "reduction" = reduced profit for somebody, buddy boy, & an

expanded market for whoever picks up the pieces = more concentration of capital = more monopoly power = higher prices.

= more need for profit in the next round = more need to expand markets.

[kristopher]

52. I surrender

You are too much of a crackpot for me.

[Hannah Bell]

53. it's crackpots who think name-calling wins arguments. too bad you got nothing to back up your

claim but ad hom.

[blindpig]

40. Wrong

They will subvert any regulation which denies them maximum profits.

Is the current finance mess not illustrative enough for you?

[blindpig]

6. Diamond is out of his mind on this one.

What part of capitalism does he not understand?

He needs to read some John Bellamy Foster.

[kristopher]

24. Actually I think it is the part that you don't understand that is the problem...

"Capitalism" makes a good curse word, but that doesn't really speak to the inter-relationsip between capital and government. If left to it's own devices then you are correct, capitalism can run amok. But when it is part of a properly functioning government that sets goals based on the welfare and values of the population then it can be a powerful tool for change.

[blindpig]

34. Government functions as a branch of capitalism

You are confusing the tail for the dog. Is that not too obvious today? The mandate of capitalism, ever increasing profits for the capitalists, is absolutely opposed to the general welfare. The best they will do is trickle down on us.

[kristopher]

38. The US is the most unregulated economy on earth.

That doesn't mean that the face of capitalism that you know is the only way it can work.

We have experience 30 years of the application of an ideology that is based on removing government from it's role as the institution that sets social goals that reflect the norms of the people. The final collapse of that system under Bush may have gone unnoticed by the Sarah-Beckians, but the rest of the country saw it for what it was.

There is a way to move towards a much fairer and more equitable social order that involves corporations and capitalism. You may not know of it, and you may not understand it, but when a person of Diamond's established credentials tells you it is possible, you owe it to everyone to learn more before you make kneejerk criticisms based on your own shortcomings.

[blindpig]

41. In case you didn't notice

the US government has always been at the beck and call of business, consider the land giveaway to the railroads in the 19th century. There is a little ebb and flow as their crisis bubbles blow up in their faces periodically, a little faux contrition, though our banksters have hardly bothered with that, and business as usual.

Simply because you and Diamond have no understanding of capitalism or choose to deny it does not make it something it is not. It is my observation that when scientists stray from their specialty they often get into deep water, consider the scientists backing creationism, hardly a biologists among them.

I should no more accept Diamond's benighted pronouncements on political economy than I should accept all of the weird shit that Alfred Wallace pronounced in his latter years.

[Hannah Bell]

48. lol. us capitalism = the *most* regulated environment on earth - in favor of big capital.

[AllentownJake]

7. LOL

This guy is an idiot. Typical dumbass vapid liberal. A few executives are sent by their companies to go meet with him, and he swoons. Meanwhile in the board room they care about their bottom line.

Go look at China and ask yourself if Big Business is about to go green...because it is where they export the manufacturing.

:rofl:

[XemaSab]

10. Word

n/t

[kristopher]

13. Isn't that cute...

not only do you pan every renewable energy project you ever comment on, but now you are endorsing the characterization of Diamond as a "typical dumbass vapid liberal"?

Your true colors are shining through.

[XemaSab]

54. I thought "Collapse" was one of the worst written, worst thought out

books I had ever read.

[kristopher]

11. Let's see.. Jared Diamond or Allentown Jake

who do I think has a better handle on the way cultures allow environmental degradation to occur?

Who do I know is an independent researcher?

Sorry Jake, but you don't measure up.

Diamond's work speaks for itself and it it shouts its message loud and clear, he is not a "typical dumbass vapid liberal".

I'm also intrigued by that characterization. Diamond is a leading voice in bringing the consequences of environmental destruction home to the masses, yet you call him a "typical dumbass vapid liberal"...

What does that make you?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. "I'm also intrigued by that characterization."

Ayup. Classic Freudian slip.

[anonymous171]

16. Diamond's argument/belief is fucking retarded.

I don't care how smart he is supposed to be.

[Occam Bandage]

19. It's fair to say his argument is both unconventional and demanding in supporting evidence.

However, to call it "fucking retarded" is nothing more than an attempt at a counterargument from authority: to paraphrase,'I say it's retarded, so it is.' Given his impressive track record in analyzing the causes and effects of environmental degradation, it's easier to discredit your claim than it is to discredit his.

[kristopher]

20. Well I guess that settles it.

:dunce:


:rofl:

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. What part of this do you think is "fucking retarded."

A. "It's the goal of corporations to make money for their investors."

B. "If corporations realize they will save/make money by being environmentallly responsible, then they will be environmentally responsible in line with point A."

[anonymous171]

26. A should be tweaked

Their goal is not to just "make money" but to "generate a profit." Diamond's examples show corporations are doing this simply by increasing efficiency and cutting back on waste. They are not thinking about the environment. If a CEO had to choose between his job and an acre of the Amazon rainforest, he would still choose to save his own hide and let the forest burn. This shift is nothing more than a reaction to the increasing scarcity of certain resources. It is not some kind of global shift in corporate consciousness as Diamond seems to suggest.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. Oh great point. Making money is totally different than generating profit.

Wow, he's such a "retard."

[kristopher]

30. "consciousness" = awareness, not the development of conscience

Consciousness of new green behaviors that can be more profitable than their old polluting behaviors is what he is speaking of, not the development of some sort of new moral foundation.

Perhaps your reading comprehension error is what led you to your inappropriate criticisms?

[anonymous171]

32. That lack of moral foundation is what I was taking issue with

Thank you for restating my argument :)

[kristopher]

36. That is a straw man.

Since he doesn't predicate his argument on a moral foundation you are only talking to yourself when you throw that out as an objection.

If you want to address what he wrote, then you'd need to explain why pursing profit is a bad way to motivate a corporation.

I can understand your skepticism, but if you read his book carefully and take a course in natural resource/environmental economics, I think it would become much more understandable.

[XemaSab]

55. I read his books carefully

and I got an A in natural resource economics and I still think his argument is crap. :shrug:

[blindpig]

23. Diamond is a fine biologist

'Guns, Germs and Steel' was very insightful, however it appears that his understanding of our economic system and possible alternatives leaves a lot to be desired.

The guy does have a monumental ego, it is easy to conceive of the scenario the above poster mentioned as happening.

[kristopher]

25. Actually his "understanding of economic systems" is excellent.

It is your own that is suspect. His point is based on basic, well understood principles of how corporations behave.

[blindpig]

35. Corporations exist solely for profits.

But it seems a little greenwash goes along way, even with smart guys.

[kristopher]

37. What an absurd post.

[Hannah Bell]

49. corporations are in business for some reason other than profit? news to me, & everyone else in the

world.

[GoCubsGo]

8. Eugene Odum preached this for years.

Dr. Odum is the Father of Modern Ecology, and pioneered the concept of the ecosystem. Even more, he was one of the first to include the relationship between human activity and the ecosystem. Dr. Odum always preached that pollution is waste. Waste is caused by inefficiency, and inefficiency is a drag on the bottom line. I am glad to see that Jared Diamond has taken up his torch on this issue.

[anonymous171]

15. CEOs aren't the problem. The Corporate System is.

CEOs may be nice people, but they are not the corporation. The Corporation exists to generate profit, nothing more. The Corporation will do whatever it can to preserve itself, including raping the environment.

[kristopher]

18. You clearly have never read Diamond's work

I suggest you read (or reread if you didn't get this the first time) Collapse and note the way he explores the mechanisms for failure and compares that to similar cases where failure was avoided.

You are opining from blind bias, he is opining from intense research.

[Occam Bandage]

17. Diamond's "Collapse" is required reading for anyone interested in environmental degredation.

"Guns, Germs, and Steel" is required reading for anyone interested in history, anthropology, or even politics.

[sofa king]

21. Yep, the two are really important.

Diamond's opinion in this article and in Collapse is pretty consistent. In Collapse Diamond writes that some of the newer resource exploitation operations are so concerned about local public opinion that they seek to improve the sites, rather than risk losing it all to local opposition and insurgency.

Although some of it, from Diamond's own description in the book, sounds like a pretty specifically targeted operation to impress Dr. Diamond himself. If that's the case, it worked.

Edit: I should add that the movement toward kinder, gentler resource exploitation comes simply from the fact that it's becoming more and more expensive to get those resources. They have to care what people think now because it's becoming too expensive to fight them, drive them off land, and otherwise screw them over, because if they come back and blow that pipeline, the entire investment can be lost. So there's nothing particularly hopeful about human nature in Diamond's argument. It's still all about the money.

[kristopher]

27. Yep.

It is still about the money.

That is why it is a valid analysis. If it depended on another motivation for corporate behavior it would be pie in the sky.

[Ignis]

42. So many replies, and so few people have read Collapse.

Do yourself a favor and read Collapse before passing judgment on Diamond's "retardedness" based on a single, brief article in a newspaper.

He's a brilliant cross-disciplinarian, and worth a listen--even if you don't agree with his proposed remediation to the problem.

[blindpig]

43. An opposing view

The social relation of capital, as we all know, is a contradictory one. These contradictions, though stemming from capitalism's internal laws of motion, extend out to phenomena that are usually conceived as external to the system, threatening the integrity of the entire biosphere and everything within it as a result of capital's relentless expansion. How to understand capitalism's ecological contradictions has therefore become a subject of heated debate among socialists. Two crucial issues in this debate are: (1) must ecological crisis lead to economic crisis under capitalism?, and (2) to what extent is there an ecological contradiction at the heart of capitalist society?

What is at issue here can be best understood if we turn to Marx. One of the key elements in Marx's ecological analysis, as I explained in Marx's Ecology, is his theory of metabolic rift. Marx employed the concept of a rift in the metabolic relation between human beings and the earth to capture the material estrangement of human beings within capitalist society from the natural conditions that formed the basis for their existence. One way in which this manifested itself was in the extreme separation of town and country under capitalism, which grew out of the separation of the mass of the population from the soil.

Nineteenth century agricultural chemists, most notably Justus von Liebig, had discovered that the loss of soil nutrients--such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium--through the exportation of food and fiber to the city--was disrupting the soil nutrient cycle and undermining capitalist agriculture, while burying cities in waste. Rather than constituting a rational form of production, British high farming (the most advanced capitalist agriculture of the day) could be best described, according to Liebig, as a "robbery system" because of its effects on the soil. The historical answer of the system to this declining soil productivity was, initially, importation of vast quantities of bones from the Continent and guano (bird droppings) from Peru, and, later, the development of synthetic fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers, however, created further problems. Thus arose an ever widening and more complex metabolic rift, leading to the severe disarticulations in the nature-society relation that characterize contemporar y agriculture and industry.

Marx recognized that this metabolic rift represented a problem of sustainability. In an oft-quoted passage he remarked that capitalism sapped the vitality of the everlasting sources of wealth--the soil and the worker. Nor was the problem of the metabolic rife confined simply to the soil. Marx developed an account of sustaiability--the conservation and if need be "restoration" of the earth so that it could be passed on in an equal or "improved" state to the succeeding chain of human generations--chat directly addressed such issues as soil nutrient recycling, pollution, sanitary conditions, deforestation, floods, desertification, climate change, recycling of industrial wastes, diversity of species, the commodification of species, and other issues. His closely related studies of evolutionary theory led him toward notions of coevolution. His conflict with Malthus forced him to consider the historical (rather than natural) sources of "overpopulation" (a term Marx used while Malthus did not). Marx's analysis of pri mitive accumulation pointed to the separation of workers from the land as the formative contradiction of capitalism. His critique of political economy highlighted the commodification of all of life and the dominant role played by accumulation without end, rooted in exchange value as opposed to use value. Quoting Thomas Muntzer, the revolutionary leader of the sixteenth century German Peasants War, Marx observed: it is intolerable that '"all creatures have been made into property, the fish in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth--all living things must also become free'" (Muntzer, Collected Works, p. 335; Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 3, p. 172).


http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1132/is_4_54/ai_91659884/

[kristopher]

46. yeah, you just keep waiting for that Marxist revolution...

In case you haven't heard, that was tested in an extremely large real world experiment which, as I recall, didn't work out very well.

[Hannah Bell]

51. lol. you just keep waiting for your "regulated ethical capitalism," too.

not working out very well the last 300 years or so...

[LostInAnomie]

50. Is he the guy that played Screech or the guy that sang "Cracklin' Rosie"?