Corporate Role Models — Focusing on Sustainability

Soon we’ll be getting started with a blog that I propose to call “Corporate Role Models,” in which we herald some of the good things corporate citizens are doing in lowering carbon footprint, and aiming at sustainability more generally. We’re trying to focus especially in lifecycle analysis, looking backwards at all parts of the supply chains, and looking forward at the use and ultimate disposal of products.

There are many reasons I want to do this:

1) A great deal of the content here might suggest, at least at the surface, that corporations are bad. Starting with the oil companies and branching out from there, I often write about corporate malfeasance, or about our broken legal system, which has wrong-headedly bestowed corporations with far more rights than were intended under the U.S. Constitution. But in truth, there is nothing bad about corporations per se; in fact, they’ve played a critically important role in the entire development of Western civilization, beginning in the days of ancient Rome, when they were the vehicles by which the aqueducts, roads, and universities were built.

2) There are millions of good people working in these settings who are honestly trying to make a positive difference in the world. It would be quite unfair to paint every one of them with the same brush, simply because of the evil of a few.

3) Focusing attention on the bad in the world is not a strong idea in the first place. Stupidity and greed get enough ink without my constantly adding to it. Here’s an opportunity to point to the innumerable acts of vision and high purpose that happen all day long, unrecognized by most of us.

I hope you’ll enjoy this – coming soon.