How are you going to convince someone to care about the future of the planet if they believe that we are currently living in the biblical End Days, and that the Second Coming of Jesus Christ will occur in our lifetime?
Tell them that being a good steward of the land is in the bible too.
Bible Verses Related to Stewardship
Genesis 2:2-3 – God rested
Psalm 118:24 – The Lord’s Day
Ecclesiastes 3:1 – A time for everything
Matthew 25:15-30 – Parable of Talents
Luke 12:15 – Abundance
Matthew 6:20 – Treasures in heaven
Matthew 10:8 – Freely given, freely give
I Kings 17:1-16 – Widow of Zarephath
Genesis 1: 31 – Creation is Good
Genesis 2:15-20 – Adam as steward
Psalm 104 – Creation Psalm
Matthew 6:25-34 – Lilies of the Field
Matthew 19:16-22 – Love neighbor
Luke 19:1-10 – Zaccheus
Mark 12:41-44 – Widow’s Mite
Luke 10:30-37 – Good Samaritan
John 6:1-14 – Feeding 5000
Luke 15:11-32 – Forgiving Father
Leviticus 27:30-32 -Tithing
Deuteronomy 16:17 – Give as blessed
Matthew 6:31-34 – First things first
Matthew 22:34-30 – 2 commandments
Mark 10:17-25 – Riches
Luke 16 – Faithful stewardship
Luke 18:9-14 – Pharisee A tax collector
Romans 12:1 – Offer yourself to God
I Corinthians 16:1- 2 – Money to help
II Corinthians 5:16- 6:2 – Work together
II Corinthians 8:1-12 – Generosity
II Corinthians 9:6-15 – Generosity
Ephesians 2:1-10 – Created for good work
I Peter 1:3-5 – Born anew
I Peter 2:9-10 – God’s own people
I John 4:13-21 – We love because of God’s love for us

How do you expect a Wall Street executive to have long-term concerns about eliminating carbon emissions if all he cares about are short-term profits?
Make going green profitable in the short term. Whole Foods Market seems to get lots of money out of people’s wallets. I should know I worked there.

How do you convince a hardened gang member of the virtues of recycling when all he is trying to do is live to see tomorrow?
Get him a job at the recycling plant so he can look forward to tomorrow’s paycheck. http://www.p2pays.org/ref/34/33912.pdf

Natural Capitalism: Making the Case for Sustainable Business
Hunter Lovins and Jim Garrison
http://integrallife.com/node/47989

Hunter Lovins, President and Founder of Natural Capital Solutions, talks with Jim Garrison about some of the real-world solutions to climate change that are already taking effect around the world. While many people condemn big business and big industry as anti-ethical to the environmental movement, Hunter helps makes the case that these sorts of large companies are actually in a better position than most to deal with the bulk of the ecological problems we are all aware of. Sound too idealistic? What if we told you that many of these companies have already begun cutting carbon emissions, reducing waste, and increasing efficiency, without any sort of major incentive from the governments of the world.

Why are they doing it? Simple: to turn a profit! Surprised? Be sure to listen to this interview for more details. If you have ever wondered how we can begin to accelerate our response to climate change in the short term, you will find Hunter’s insights invaluable.

Topics Include:

• Belief vs. Reality: Jim asks Hunter what she thinks about the stubborn denial we often see in political and economic reactions to climate change, to which she responds by saying “the Earth doesn’t care about what you believe in.” There is a lot to be done, and not much time to do it in—no one likes the precarious situation we find ourselves in, but putting our collective heads in the sand isn’t going to make things any better….

• Green Rewards for Green Solutions: Cutting against conventional wisdom, the degradation of the environment is not due to the inherently destructive nature of capitalism. Quite the contrary, we are damaging the planet because we are being bad capitalists. Hunter makes the extremely important (and seldom heard) point that we don’t need to drive our budget into the ground in order to adapt to the mounting pressures of climate change—in fact, businesses can begin eliminating waste and increasing efficiency right now, while turning a substantial profit doing so.

• The Principles of Natural Capitalism: Hunter explains the three-step approach she takes when working with major companies to help steer them on the path toward sustainable operations: first, buying ourselves more time by eliminating unnecessary waste throughout society. Second, re-conceptualize how we manufacture and deliver goods and services. Third, help restore human and natural capital (i.e. “people” and “planet”) as explicit bottom lines for businesses everywhere. How successful has this approach been? You might be surprised….

• Keeping Up with the Abelones: Consider one of the most fundamental laws of the physical universe: energy is neither created nor destroyed, it just changes from one form to another. Now that is efficiency. Hunter talks about some of the exciting new developments that are coming out of the field of biomimicry, which attempts to learn from the natural intelligence of evolution and allow that intelligence to inform and align our own technological innovations, helping us to develop more efficient and more creative solutions to the ecological crisis we all find ourselves in.

• Exemplars of Sustainable Business: Believe it or not, we are already beginning to see a bit of a sea change in the way some companies conduct their business, taking the initiative to reduce their carbon footprints and phase into much more sustainable practices. And we aren’t just talking about local kite shops in Boulder, Colorado, but massive companies like DuPont and Walmart who are beginning to set a lead for other companies to follow.

As you probably already know, making the required institutional changes that would help mitigate the effects of climate change is an exceptionally daunting task. It seems that we need to make so many changes in such a narrow amount of time, it’s like turning an aircraft carrier around on a dime—there is simply so much societal momentum at our backs, pushing us down the same soot-covered road we’ve been on for decades. A great many people are beginning to see a cliff at the end of this road, a nearly bottomless plunge that we may never be able to crawl out of again if we step too far over the edge.

Recognizing our seemingly imminent peril has helped galvanize a great many people to begin trying to initiate the sort of change we need to see in the next few years. But it has not been easy. Human nature tends to struggle with long-term change, responding only to the problems that we are facing right now, and putting off our more abstract problems—no matter how urgent—until much later, when we begin to feel the effects. And by then, of course, it is often too late.

But here is the twisted irony—we are in this situation not because capitalism is inherently destructive, but because we are being bad capitalists. That is, there are ways to become environmentally sustainable without adding a massive burden to the budget sheets—we can, in fact, begin to clean up the environment at a profit! Highlighting these aspects of sustainability has allowed people like Hunter Lovins to find much greater success in working with large companies, helping to minimize waste and maximize efficiency, thereby maximizing profits in a very short period of time. We may be resistant to change in the abstract, but if there is a profit to be made, we will jump right on it. Talk about “going green….”

Of course, this flies in the face of the sort of bureaucratic resistance we have seen in governments and corporations when confronted with the great preponderance of scientists who say we need to respond to the pressures of climate change right now. In many cases, people are actually spreading lies (or at least half-truths) about the real-world implications of cutting carbon emissions, saying things like a 7% decrease would bankrupt even the largest and most profitable companies. No one seems to have told this to companies like DuPont, who self-initiated a plan to cut their carbon emissions by 65% by 2010—a goal they have already met, and which has saved them an average of 2.2 billon dollars per year. Walmart must have also missed class that day, since they have recently declared their bold ambitions to become 100% powered by renewable resources, to eliminate their carbon footprint, and to only sell environmentally sustainable products.

What is going on with these companies? It’s not like we’ve seen a sudden flurry of eco-friendly mission statements, a new gamut of incentives from the governments, or packs of CEOs-gone-philanthropists roaming the streets and picking up litter. It’s all just good business—common sense, really. Maximize the efficiency, minimize the waste, and pass the savings on to the shareholders. Including the people and the planet in a company’s bottom line does not hinder its profitability; it actually enhances every aspect of its value—to shareholders, to employees, and to the world.

We live in very precarious times, and it is hard not to feel inundated by fear and anxiety when we think of problems so massive and so complex as climate change. It is as though the more we open our minds and our hearts, the more pain, perplexity, and plight we begin to see. But as overwhelming as it can be, there is more than enough cause to be hopeful—as Hunter reminds us, we are faced with a very practical set of problems, with very practical solutions. It’s not like evolution has never steered itself to the brink before—the self-organizing system that it is, evolution triggers its own emergence by creating the right sets of problems at just the right time, forcing a species into an existential ultimatum: evolve or die.

We are already beginning to see hints of evolution occurring all around us, all over the world, as the human race continues to find new ways to thrive and adapt in a rapidly changing world. We see it in the work of pioneers like Hunter Lovins, Jim Garrison, Ken Wilber, and thousands of others around the world. We see it in countries like Brazil who are stepping up to the real challenges of our times, forging a new path for other industrialized nations of the world. And we see it in people like you, who are seeking new ways to relate to the planet, to each other, and to yourselves; ensuring that we all have a future on this precious little rock.

http://integrallife.com/node/47989

I can say that Walmart is carrying organic yogurt and green building materials. Somehow they are worried about their image (can’t imagine why..) but I think if they do go out of their way to do the right thing let’s applaud that. Think about the exposure their customers are getting. Then maybe Target or Sears or random box store X might join in. Right now Green is like Gucci. It’s hot. I say we let this play out and not let it die. LEED is making sense to people. They say that greenwashing, no matter how lame, can be good because it puts the ideas out there. The ideas were what your article is about, right? Getting the thought in people’s heads so the physical world one day matches up.

Our president is funding green building initiatives. That really freaks me out!! Honest! It’s like.. is this actually happening? Let’s stop questioning everything to death and just run with it, everyone will be behind us.

The advantage you have is your compassion and dedication to others is as great or greater than the message and intellect that you are teaching us. Keep it up… I know it can’t be easy.

And from what I’ve observed at least two stages behind on average. Such a differentiation of the nuances helps to differentiate and clarify the emerging world centrism of the rational industrial stage as a spear point of awareness, the sharp edge of cognition, and a mere linear logic level of intellect (e.g. linear perspective organization of thinking). But when it comes to identity, values, emotional development, and so on, it appears to be much more correct to refer to the rational industrial stage as market or nation/state centric–at least a huge level or two from a true world centric grounding.

You asked “Or is there a more nuanced version of reality at play here?”

When talking about the integral map (especially altitudes of consciousness), i think it is always fair to assume that reality is far too nuanced to fit in our charts and graphs–even if we are using our very best, most comprehensive, and most meaningful charts and graphs. Which is one of the reasons why i love Ken’s description of altitudes of consciousness as “probability waves”–it really softens the boundaries and emphasizes the spontaneity and occasional absurdity of our moment-to-moment experiences. Even if we were to bring the full arsenal of integral philosophy to bear, including quadrants, quadrivia, lines, states, stages, types, etc., all of which would offer an important piece of the puzzle, the total puzzle itself would still only look like a skeletal approximation of reality, a momentary snapshot of infinity, a crude carving in the cave of being. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatiolon, than are dreamt of in integral philosophy.

Without having personally met any oil company executives or employees, i can say that i am not at all surprised by what you say. I think that there are a great number of vision-logic thinkers at work in the world, especially those in careers that deal with issues of massive complexity. And i think you are correct when you point to the difference between cognitive development and moral development as they play out from individual to individual. For example, i know Sean Esbjorn-Hargens is fond of pointing out that both self-identity and values lines seem to lag a full stage or two behind our cognitive development.

But of course, even the most highly developed individuals are not working in a vacuum–they are plugged into entire industries, and in the case of “Big Oil”, extremely powerful industries, themselves plugged into a massively complex matrix of political, industrial, military, and economic realities. I think it’s probably fair to say that the more powerful an individual or company becomes, the more seductive that power becomes–that is, the more “above the law” someone or something becomes (in the sense of being free from accountability to amber, orange, and green legal/ethical codes), the more our “red” is free to do whatever the fuck it wants. Money is not the root of all evil. Lack of accountability is.

Which is not at all to say that the average engineer, biologist, lawyer, etc. is seduced by power simply by virtue of working in the oil industry–but industries like these tend to be such power-and-profit-driven zeitgeists unto themselves that even the most well-developed and well-intentioned individual would have a very hard time doing anything to cut through the status quo. Sadly, the power elite and the developmental elite don’t seem to have a lot of overlap =\

And i agree–this post was just intended to be an “info-bomb” of integral theory, which will hopefully support future explorations into more particular issues, as you recommend i do. I took a similar approach when i posted the “Integral Trans-Partisan Politics” piece, which was another recapitulation of Ken’s work in the context of political science, and which i followed with a piece looking at current events in Iran.

Believe me, i am far more interested in the real-life application of integral in the world (such as my recent pieces about race and gender) than i am in abstract meta-theory (which is saying a lot, considering how much i love the pure theory)–and you are right, if someone wants to know Ken’s theory they can find it themselves online. But i figured i would offer my own expressions of the Integral vision here on my blog, if only to offer the essential concepts without forcing someone to hop around the internet trying to fill in the gaps.

Thanks again for the comment, Jim!

So what would be an alternative? How about if instead of restating integral philosophy, you make an effort to ILLUSTRATE it thru posts which tackle various social issues. All we get these days from society is “debates” between green and blue (or green and orange – using the Spiral Dynamics colors). Blue-orange says “we have to control our border!” and green replies “you must be a racist!” End of conversation. How about a post in which you tried to offer an integral perspective on that subject, going beyond the extremism, the black-and-white thinking inherent in the stuckness?

The fact that integral is accepting of others where they are doesn’t mean that we can’t publish material that may just move them. It seems to me that the biggest opportunity that exists now is to challenge the greens who are ready to advance, if only they were given some guidance, a perspective alternative to the green perspective that is hammered at us every day.

My sense is that extreme green tends to lock both orange and blue into their positions, rather than to invite them to consider alternatives. What will it take to invite ready greens to move? My guess is that though the above post may be a good start, you will need to write something more ENGAGING….

Good luck! Jim

Jim