I was arrested with 47 others because we refused to obey an order to move from the “picture postcard” section of the sidewalk in front of the White House.  I was arrested during a protest of an oil pipeline. I was arrested because the President’s decision of whether or not to allow the construction of this pipeline affects Canadians and Americans that I know and deeply love. I was arrested because this decision is an important one for hundreds and thousands and millions of people all over the world.

This pipeline would pump bitumen from Alberta strip mines (that cover an area the size of England) to refineries along the Gulf Coast. This pipeline would be a $13 billion loss in the transition to clean energy.  This pipeline would deliver the carbon that gets us to a “game over” climate change scenario.  This pipeline is another desperate tie to our fossil fuel habit.  This pipeline bisects our chance to create a new story for ourselves.

Here’s how GASLAND filmmaker Josh Fox puts it:

This arrest was something new for me.  My role as a sustainability consultant is to help guide the future, not dwell in the past.    I’ve never fancied myself as an activist, and I’m not a fan of yelling.  And maybe that’s what attracted me to take the action we took – the whole tone of the civil disobedience action was respectful, reverential, somber and loving.  The day was focused, well organized and professional.

I always prefer finding common ground, shared intents and collaborative outcomes.  I dislike making either-or choices because when we do it means that communication has broken down to the simplest and least-productive terms.  But yesterday was about posing a black-and-white question: is the President of the United States with us right now?  Is he willing to make change he promised?  This is a line in the Tar Sands.  Yes.  Or.  No.

There are points in history when these decisions must be made.  There are points in history where the use of civil disobedience is both justified and necessary.  I was arrested yesterday because this is one of those moments.  This is just the beginning of a new time for us. This is when things change.  Right now.

You, too, can join in this action. Protests and arrests are continuing through September 3 (except for a day of rest to honor the dedication of the memorial to the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Junior).  It is likely that more than 1,000 people will be arrested peacefully.  And it will not stop there.

Change is ahead.

Let’s make it happen.

Abraham Lincoln
Annual message to Congress, December 1, 1862

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:

1. 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).
2. 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).
3. 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.

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Walmart has shown impressive action toward sustainability by recommitting themselves to their sustainability strategy in spite the recent economic slowdown.  Actions already include energy retrofits to refrigerated display cases in over 500 stores, a 57% waste diversion rate from their U.S. operations, building partnerships to work towards the creation of a Sustainability Index and helped form the Sustainability Consortium to develop metrics for measuring the environmental impacts of consumer products across their life cycle: asking their 100,000 global suppliers to voluntarily divulge key data about their environmental and social practices.  The Natural Step attended Walmart’s Green Business Summit in Vancouver days before the Olympics and were impressed by the commitment of Walmart Canada CEO David Cheesewright: “If you’re not willing to do something different and do it first, then you’re not leading.”

Walmart’s efforts are already providing huge dividends and seem to be well aligned with their current business model.

But will their trajectory actually lead to sustainability?  Sustainability is both a road and a destination so while we applaud Walmart’s commitment and early actions, we are asking three basic questions that we ask of all of our partners.  In our experience, the answers to them define a lot about the capacity of an organization’s overall sustainability efforts.  We see Walmart’s situation in this way:

What is Walmart’s definition of sustainability?

(1) Use only renewable energy.  (2) Create zero waste.  (3) Sell “sustainable products.”

With this definition, Walmart sees sustainability as a key driver for helping them fulfill their core business mission: “Saving people money so they can live better.”  These two visions are, indeed, closely aligned.

Converting to renewable energy sources will help Walmart better weather the coming storms of peak oil and climate change in the coming decades.  Pursuing this goal reduces their exposure to energy price fluctuations, allows them to get a head start on reducing their CO2 footprint ahead of government cap-and-trade schemes and generates high-profile projects for the company to showcase.  This transition will save Walmart, and their customers, money.

Eliminating waste is a no-brainer.  This goal closely aligns with the cost-cutting and efficient operations that all companies strive for.  On their “Sustainability 2.0” DVD, Chairman of the Executive Committee Lee Scott sums it up perfectly – “Everything we throw away, we’ve paid for. We’ve paid for the cardboard, we paid for the pallets, and we paid for the inner packaging. Walmart paid for all that.  The customers paid for all of that.  I think it makes all the sense in the world to create zero waste.”  Eliminating waste saves Walmart, and their customers, money.

Selling better products helps Walmart reduce their environmental and social impacts while improving quality. By simply asking their 100,000 suppliers to simply answer 15 questions about their own operations, Walmart has made huge waves of interest in sustainability around the world.  It also provides them a platform from which to address much of the criticism they have received on Wall Street and in the general public. The bottom line?  Improving their image and buying better products will save Walmart, and their customers, money.

Walmart’s core business mission is indeed aligned with their understanding of sustainability.

But do these three goals represent the whole story?

What is Walmart’s gap to reaching their sustainability goals?

The better question may be: is Walmart able to see just how wide their gap is?  By any measure, it is huge.  They have admitted that they have lots of work to do to close the gaps they have identified.

But taken from the whole-systems perspective of the Natural Step Framework, Walmart’s definition of sustainability falls short. Their approach does not cover all areas of risk that threaten them, and it could even possibly obscure other sources of innovation, efficiency, and above all, savings, available to the company.  Their truncated definition of sustainability could actually be one of the things that will keep them from achieving their future goals.

Walmart’s sustainability approach has particular shortcomings when seen through the whole systems lens of The Natural Step Framework.

First, it does not address some of the major sustainability challenges that we face.  For instance, there are no questions in Walmart’s 15 Questions for Suppliers of the large increase of toxic chemicals and heavy metals within our communities that emanate from many the products they sell and production methods used to create them.  These toxics threaten human and ecological health, and are a major source of risk to all of us.  By not assessing the whole picture, Walmart is leaving itself open to the possibility of future regulation and market risk.  Early steps are being taken, but are far from being integrated into Walmart’s supply chain.

Second, Walmart draws a clear line between “environmental sustainability” and “social sustainability.”  As the example of toxics demonstrates, there is really no difference between these two elements.  They are inexorably intertwined.  While both aspects of sustainability are addressed within their reporting, Walmart’s three main goals do not encompass social sustainability issues, relegating them to a secondary status.  Until they delve further into this aspect of their work, Walmart will not provide themselves with the ability to reap the bottom line benefits that could be created through the ongoing reduction of personnel costs and an increase in employee productivity and customer loyalty.

Finally, Walmart’s current analysis does not let them even imagine the larger picture: what are the flaws in Walmart’s core business model (selling more and more goods over time to meet growth projections)?  While Walmart has created ambitious sustainability goals, they have not embraced a concrete, holistic definition of sustainability that allows them the real strategic benefit of becoming a very different organization.

How will Walmart close their sustainability gap?

Walmart has taken first steps and critically important ones at that.  They have made a commitment, and have already begun to reap the benefits of much of the ‘low hanging fruit’ that is available to them.  Furthermore, they have engaged stakeholders through the Sustainability Consortium and by working with their 100,000 suppliers.  >See their 2009 Global Sustainability Report

But what will happen when they run out of the ‘easy’ wins?  Will they be willing to look at the big picture revisit their gap assessment and redefine goals?  Will Walmart be leading?

And to achieve their core mission of helping “people live better,” will Walmart be willing to save more than just money?

That question, helping people lead more fulfilling lives with less stuff, and how we move to more sustainable consumption patterns, faces everyone. Some leaders in business are starting to take it seriously (see World Economic Forum debate www.weforum.org/globalagenda2010 – Sustainable Consumption) But can change on that scale happen thoroughly and quickly enough?

Time, and the narrowing funnel of resources and ecosystem services felt through the worldwide retail market, will soon tell.

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Sustainability is at a tipping point.

The “lone nuts” of sustainability - Paul Hawkin, Donella Meadows, Karl-Henrik Robért, Armory and Hunter Lovins, Ray Anderson, David Suzuki, Tim O’Riordan, Peter Senge, Manfred Max-Neef, Sim van der Ryn, Bill Reed, Bill McDonough, Bob Willard (and so many others) – boldly braved the spectacle and discomfort of dancing to the beats that they heard blaring from the world’s speakers.  We may actually be past a crucial threshold based on David Suzuki’s welcomed presence in front a couple thousand CEOs at a Walmart Sustainability Conference (did we think THAT would happen 10 years ago?) as well as ‘mainstream’ chatter like the Green Police ad during the Super Bowl.

At the same time, I do think that there are two lessons from Derek that we need to heed.

The first is about simplicity – we must constantly work to make sustainability, which is inherently a study of everything, simple enough to follow. The “green world” is incredibly scattered and wide-ranging, and can be difficult to make heads or tails of it – simplicity, without reduction, is essential. To make matters worse, we have recently seen the damage that the poor (and unethical) communication has done to the climate change dialogue.  We must make things easy to follow.

The second lesson is about making it fun.   Sustainability, especially in business, is a massive exercise in risk management, and it can be all too easy to get wrapped around the fears that come with such a sobering topic.  But we also know that sustainability offers a brighter and more liberating existence, and if we can exude confidence in that vision, we’ll attract far more people willing to dance their butts off.

The “lone nuts” have done a fantastic job starting the dance.  Now it’s up to us to keep the party going.

Below is a direct quote:

“The oughts were in many ways a decade of fear, having begun with the Y2K hysteria, buoyed along by the duct tape defense mentality, and winding to a close amid the H1N1 vaccine frenzy.  Fear can certainly be a great motivator; political leaders and marketing executives have taken full advantage of that fact.  But there’s a fundamental problem with making the focal point of the dialogue an undesirable outcome, rather than that which we wish to see transpire.  It’s awfully hard to imagine, much less build, a better world when you’re overcome by fear.”

“Then what of the teens?  Perhaps it’s time to try a new motivator.”

“It’ll have to be something powerfully compelling, something intensely alluring – dynamic enough to hold humanity in its spell, to hold each and every one of us to a higher standard of moral conduct.  It’s tempting to think that it will be some new idea or trend or even technology.  But more likely it will be something that’s been here all along, something enduring, if not eternal – something we call fall in love with all over again, unleashing in us a level of devotion we never thought possible.  The world as we know it, the one we appear to be hellbent on destroying, seems full of possibility in this regard.  Consider sunsets; great blue herons; spurts of laughter so overwhelming they end in tears of joy; a child’s sense of wonder; the Crab nebula; skinny-dipping by moonlight…”

“Is the beauty of the Earth enough to save humanity from itself?  Or are human beings so inherently dualistic that we can go on loving the world while concurrently ensuring its, or at least our, destruction?  One way or another, the answers to these questions will become clearer in the coming decade.”

Thank you to Orion for taking the big picture view and putting things back in the basic context that we must face:

“It’s time to let truth, thoughtfulness, justice, and beauty capture our hearts and minds; time to stop living in fear that things will go wrong and start making sure that things go right.  It’s time to change the way we live.”