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Dear
World
My
4-year-old daughter spent the afternoon at a local science
museum the other day, exploring an exhibit on biodiversity.
She returned home full of determination, found pencil and
paper, and composed a letter. Now she distributes copies to
friends and strangers alike. The letter begins:
From Jenna to the world.
Please stop making all this pollution. It’s making all the
animals sick and die. The fish can’t live if the coral can’t
live and the polar bears can’t live if the fish can’t live
. . .
Approaching the problems of polar bears and coral reefs by
writing a letter to the world makes sense if you think like
a 4-year-old. Surely, people would not knowingly live in ways
that threaten polar bears or coral reefs. If people understood,
things would change.
My grown-up mind wishes my daughter’s theory of world-changing
worked. But I’ve tried it enough times myself to know that,
while asking people to act for the good of the future is essential,
it is unlikely on its own to change the world.
So I’ve been trying to prepare my little girl for the possibility
that her letter won’t save the polar bears. We’ve begun to
talk about the fact that people can know the polar bears are
in danger and nevertheless feel unable to change course. “Sometimes
people don’t do what would be best for something far away
or for the future because they feel trapped by something else
more immediate, more close by.”
This is a simple idea, but 4-year-olds aren’t the only ones
who suggest that the best way out of our environmental and
social messes is for people to be more responsible to the
future. Listen to these words, from speech President George
W. Bush delivered in early March.
“The
whole design of free-market capitalism depends upon free people
acting responsibly. Business people must answer not just to
the demands of the market or self-interest, but to the demands
of conscience. The bottom line of the balance sheet defines
a business’s goal, but not the sum of responsibilities of
its leaders. Management should respect workers. A firm should
be loyal to the community, mindful of the environment. ”
The president calls on people to be better: more mindful of
the environment, more respectful of workers. He is right,
of course. We won’t get anywhere if we don’t expand the boundaries
of what we feel responsible for. But, important as it is,
a sense of social and environmental responsibility is not
sufficient if economic decision makers, from consumers to
CEOs, don’t have enough information to make choices informed
by that sense of responsibility. And all the responsible feelings
in the world aren’t going to slow the climate change that
threatens polar bears and coral reefs unless the economic
actors who make choices out of a sense of what is best for
the long term are able to thrive economically in the short
term.
Consumers who don’t know the social and environmental costs
of the products they buy cannot act responsibly, no matter
how much they might want to. Businesses struggling to survive
in an age of consolidation have no choice but to put short-term
profit ahead of long term environmental and social concerns.
Survival in our current economic system is measured by a bottom
line that takes no account of impacts on polar bears or coral
reefs. As long as that is true, the most responsible CEOs
in the world will be forced to make choices that place next
quarter’s profits ahead of the 50-year future of the polar
bears. Doing otherwise risks going out of business or being
replaced by a more profit-oriented executive.
If we want a world that is livable for polar bears and coral
reefs (and thus for people), we must redesign our economic
policy so that polar bears, coral reefs, and everything else
that we care about is brought into economic decision making.
This will require incorporating the true cost of things into
their prices. It will require paying people for the value
added in the careful stewardship of natural resources. It
will require getting the taxes, incentives, and rules adjusted
so that our market system delivers the kind of return on investment
people really want—strong communities, beauty, vibrant ecosystems,
healthy children.
These ideas are not all that complicated. We could explain
them to 4-year-olds. “To keep the polar bears really safe,
we need to make sure that people know enough about the things
we sell and buy. We need to make sure that prices include
all costs so that the choice that is best for individual people
in the short term is the same choice that is best for the
polar bears in the long term. We don’t yet know exactly how
to do all of this. But we have some good ideas about where
to start.”
More than anything, I wish that I could tell one particular
4-year-old that we are ready to begin.
—Elizabeth
Sawin
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