The Great Transition

150 years from now my grandkids' kids - who we are all workin' for, by the way, will study our time. What will they say? And how will they say it? I hope the lesson is brought by a well paid teacher supported by the appropriate amount of technology. It will likely be easy to display the economic history of "modern" times on some plasma HD touch sensitive carbon - free, RF neutral screen. But what will it say about us? What will our time be called? They will read about the Great Depression and several successive recessions. They'll read about pyramid schemes debilitating the world economy. The "war on terror" and the great election of 2008. But what will be on the other side of all that? Will it be the crisis that spawned an economic revolution? Will it be that we tried but not enough?Will it be that the world they enjoy owes a debt of gratitude to this time....the time of the Great Transition? The time that led to respect for culture, for global economic systems that made for the most possible enjoyment for the most possible people? Will unicorns run free?



I dunno, there are so many ways to say it..."in crisis there is opportunity" ; "when life hands you lemons...." But really, as we look around, read about the world and learn daily about another economic collapse and another social tragedy, do we have a choice? Because the choice is, really, change or die. Because either the planet or the people will revolt. The question is which will take longer to heat up? The polar ice caps, the dessicated brush or the dispossessed peoples?



At the risk of saying "this is our time" and sounding like a cheese-ball half-time pep talk...this is our time...'cause there might not be a second half. So tell everyone you know to change. Change every single thing you can about your life that makes less waste, that helps other people gain equity, that proves that people and business can be engines for change. Because I want our time to be The Great Transition, not the Second Great Depression. Or the Even Greater Depression. Or The Great Decline.


How can I, you, we start thinking about this, visualizing it and making changes? Look ahead. Look at the world you want and then look back to today.

This is a process called "backcasting" used in the Sustainability framework called "The Natural Step". http://www.naturalstep.org/

Look at the results you want, the outcome you want...the outcome we need and then make decisions based on getting there. Input all the places and decisions you make in your everyday life into this equation. In The Natural Step it is called "the funnel". It refers to the declining natural resources and the expanding demand. The declining resources is a downward curve, the expanding demand is an upward curve. They meet at a vortex....hence the funnel... on the other side of the funnel is the desired outcome.

I am oversimplifying the process...you can read all you want at the link I provided above. In my simplistic way...put all your opportunities for change into the big side of the funnel...and one by one, make the changes you can and encourage others to do the same. Start with some easy things...buy fair trade organic coffee or tea. Stop using corn sysrup. Buy paper products made from 100% post consumer waste. Compost your food waste. Recycle. Re-Use grocery bags. There are some many little things...and big ones like house and car, commute and investments.

What am I doing? You may have asked by now. I have had my successes and failures but the net as of today is that we've been able to do some good things. We went from two cars down to one. That one runs on biodiesel. (insert complaint about biodiesel here....)

We get our veggies from a local CSA Farm - Community Supported Agriculture. We bought part of a cow from our neighbors who raise cattle in the region in a sustainable manner. We buy our lamb from a local farm. It is hormone free, organic, natural, etc.

We eat organic foods and we don't eat much processed food at all. We've done some remodeling of our craftsman home with some sustainable building products like Richlite and Marmoleum. We used low/no VOC paints. We have some radiant heat flooring and a tankless water heater. We've installed some efficient windows and some insulation but still have a ways to go on that score.

We haven't been successful composting. We did it for a while but there are some difficulties with it that we are overcoming with a new system. We want to move our investments into socially and environmentally responsible funds and haven't done that yet. It should happen this year.

The things we have done we've done over time from our first remodel in 2001 until today. So that's eight years!

And if you are in business then you can have a great force multiplier, exponential impact. Make changes in your work place. If you are the boss or can influence the boss...make changes that have a positive ripple affect through your company, your customers, your vendors, your supply chain.

I feel like I want to write more about this concept of The Great Transition. I am hopeful about it. I think our government is fostering hope now and I know that business can be the engine for this Great Transition just on good old fashioned financial common sense. And it can be now.

On that note...I will write more tomorrow about attending a talk by Amory Lovins earlier this evening. His thought leadership is a powerful spark in The Great Transition.

thanks