{"id":2957,"date":"2014-04-21T12:59:03","date_gmt":"2014-04-21T17:59:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=2957"},"modified":"2014-04-21T12:59:03","modified_gmt":"2014-04-21T17:59:03","slug":"some-earth-week-optimism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ecooptimism.com\/?p=2957","title":{"rendered":"Some Earth Week Optimism"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hunter<\/a>

Hunter Lovins speaking at The New School. Photo: David Bergman<\/p><\/div>\n

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Amidst some intense deadlines, I\u2019d started a couple of EcoOptimism posts in the past few weeks, and then discarded them because they weren\u2019t, well, optimistic.<\/p>\n

In my EcoOptimist-in-chief role, I sometimes find myself in a hypocritical position when I rail on a topic without presenting at least the silver lining. So I canned the critique of a new chair that was eco but, in my opinion anyway, quite ugly and counterproductive to the perception of ecodesign. And I bit my digital tongue when I began a rant on yet another round of climate deniers\u2019 contorted and illiterate BS.<\/p>\n

My malaise was released the other day when, concurrent with the completion of a major deadline, I attended a talk with green business expert Hunter Lovins. A prolific author and speaker, Lovins keynoted a New School student\u2013organized event called (and I\u2019ll try to reign in my non-EcoOptimist snarkiness here) Sustainapalooza.<\/p>\n

The gist of Lovins talk was a twist on the old phrase \u201cwhat\u2019s good for GM is good for the country,\u201d modernizing it into \u201cwhat\u2019s good for the environment is good for business.\u201d Or to put it the other way around, in Lovins\u2019 words, \u201cthe assault on the environment is also an assault on the economy.\u201d Citing sources and businesses including the Harvard Business Review, Unilever and even Goldman Sachs, she emphasized that companies focusing on environmental performance are also leading in economic performance, particularly in the long run. \u00a0(That long run vision is strengthened, as Lovins noted, by the decision of people such as Paul Polman of Unilever to stop filing quarterly reports, a policy I\u2019ve long advocated since the pressure of quarterly reports only serves to encourage short term thinking at the expense of looking at the bigger picture.)<\/p>\n

Central to her talk was what she and John Fullerton have labeled The Regenerative Economy or, as they titled it in their FastCo article<\/a> last fall, \u201ctransform[ing] global finance into a force for good.\u201d In its current state, she explained, \u201cour economy has become a financial system that expects human beings to serve its dictates and desires, rather than serving basic human needs and delivering prosperity in ways that can long endure.\u201d In other words we work for the financial system instead of the financial system working for us. The needs of the financial system determine the economy, which determines the impacts on the planet when it should be the other way around.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

A slide from Lovins\u2019 presentation<\/p><\/div>\n

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Lovins cited a plethora of stats that support the premise of EcoOptimism:<\/p>\n