As the mess in the Gulf has washed ashore, I’ve felt incredibly conflicted about what to say about it all. There’s not much good to say, except that it might be the event that will help us finally take big action we’ve put off for decades.
There are also plenty lessons within this situation for individual organizations that are working towards sustainability. For now, this is the overly-simple and not-quite-brilliant lesson that I’ve taken from the whole BP fiasco:
We’re due for some big changes. And things will never be perfect as we go through them.
These may sound like bland platitudes or something that doesn’t match up to the seriousness of the situation, and I’ll concede that both are probably true. And at the same time, I’ll maintain that we may not have many other choices at this juncture. In order to meet the requirements posed by our massive and interconnected social, energy, waste and water challenges, we need to simultaneously (1) maintain a big-picture view and (2) embrace the idea that we’re making up our next story as we go along. We need big-picture, imperfect action.
First, we’re going to have to maintain a big-picture view. Other systems thinkers share this view. Alex Steffen of worldchanging.com was first that I noted when he wrote: “If we want to change our impacts, we need to change our systems, on a scope we almost never talk about, stretching through essentially every aspect of our society.” And my colleagues and good friends, Maura Dilley and Derm Hickish did a great job of putting words to the general sentiments from The Natural Step community: “This spill can be another entry on the long list environmental and social tragedies…or it can be used as a rallying point for a bigger movement in the direction of sustainability.”
Both of these sentiments are right on. Rather than getting stuck in making little changes in engineering “solutions” and government permitting processes, we must confront our principled challenge of depending on fossil fuels and make really big changes to our collective trajectory.
Second, we’re going to just have to go ahead and do all that we can to clean up our messes. It doesn’t matter what our next steps are, as long as they’re in the right direction and not doing any additional harm (for instance, indiscriminately and purposefully spraying toxic chemicals into a large body of open water). For the oil spill, employing out-of-work folks to skim the water and scoop up tar balls is a good idea. Getting the biggest “whales” we can find to filter water is a good idea. Even the Costner centrifuge is a welcome treat right now.
And, at the same time, it should be clear that these imperfect and reactionary steps are not going to be enough to get us to where we need to go. There are no quick fixes available for the problems with the larger systems here. Our work will require lots and lots of patience. Scooping up miles and miles of tar-ball-infested sand takes a while. Changing our consumption habits will take a while. And certainly switching to a clean energy economy will take a long while. (Much to the Sierra Club’s chagrin, oil drilling won’t stop overnight – we’ll need fossil fuel energy to make our patient, and imperfect transition to an un-burning economy.)
This is the place where the really difficult work lies. The act of looking at the big picture and really acting to avert our core issues takes a deep level of patience on the part of many players. And the act of “just getting something done” requires a deep faith in a larger, collective direction. The chasm that exists between these dichotomies is the place where our challenge resides.
Your organization most likely doesn’t have any direct involvement with the BP Spill. But we are all facing sustainability challenges. So, what can your organization do to advance these efforts?
Plenty.
There are three basic things:
- Make sure you’ve taken advantage of the easy, first-win actions that are available to you. (We have partners who can conduct thorough energy and waste audits).
- Develop an understanding of your organization’s sustainability from a big-picture perspective. (We offer a one-day, 56-question, to-to-bottom Sustainable Business review that is the most thorough available anywhere today).
- Begin the process of developing the organizational capacity it will take to (1) stay patiently focused on the big picture, while (2) doing everything that you can to get there. (We offer strategic planning workshops that can help your team develop a common understanding of your organization’s direction and capacity for change).
For now, the most effective “solutions” are the ones that invite big-picture and imperfect action.
