This is the text of a speech Randy Hayes gave at the SRI in the Rockies Conference (for social investment professionals) in late September in Utah. Randy Hayes is the former executive director of Rainforest Action Network, one of the most effective environmental NGOs in the world. He now serves as the Directory of Sustainability for the City of Oakland, California.
by Randy Hayes
It is an honor to be here with so many pioneers of responsible economics. As an understudy of David Brower, I came to understand that the most important environmental policy is economic policy. With your work in finance and investment, you are at the heart of the effort that I believe will save the planet.
As some of you know, I stepped away from running the Rainforest Action Network to figure out some new strategies. Working with groups such as Greenpeace, Global Exchange, Bluewater Network, Friends of the Earth, and As You Sow, we soften up or set the context for a number of companies to cooperate with things you want them to do. It was good fun, though I did end up in jail about 18 times through some non-violent civil disobedience actions. We put the rainforest issue on the map.
Heroic as our rainforest-saving victories over Burger King, The World Bank, Home Depot, Citibank, Bank of America, and many others are, they are insufficient.
As Jane Goodall pointed out to us, wild nature is disappearing in our lifetimes. We are going from 6.4 billion people to 8 billion and then 10 billion. The great ecological U-turn to save the world isn’t happening. Frankly, I’m quite scared, as I imagine you are. We don’t have forever to stop this eco-cidal madness.
David Brower used to tell a story. If you were standing on the edge of a cliff and about to fall into oblivion, the solution isn’t so terribly complex. Turn around and go a fundamentally different direction. We are the ones to turn things around, so, how do we intensify our effort?
During this recent period of pondering, I served as the President of San Francisco’s Commission on the Environment, and as Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown’s Director of Sustainability. We pulled off a number of bold initiatives and learned some lessons about the power of local action. But that is enough pondering about new strategies for me, clarity has emerged.
I recently took the Executive Director position of a think-tank on the global economy called the International Forum on Globalization (IFG). I am fantastically excited about a new campaign we’re calling: Earth Economics. With my new seven-person team, I am working on three related projects to step up the fight for the planet.
First, we are getting 60 of the top thinkers from around the world together in San Francisco. This meeting is top priority.These are leaders connected to many movements including human rights, student movements, the environment, labor, women’s issues, progressive churches, indigenous peoples’ movements and more. We need these movements focused on a positive agenda as well stopping the bad. We need all our extensive networks working much more in sync if we are going to change the course of planetary destruction. In this and other meetings we will begin drafting a plan to Ecologize Free Market Capitalism.
At IFG we started a shift to the alternatives a few years back. With people like Vandana Shiva, Jerry Mander, Martin Khor, Maude Barlow, Walden Bello, John Cavanagh, and David Korten, we published Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible. In it, we call for the elimination of the Bretton Woods Institutions: The World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and the WTO. We cannot allow them to write the rules. We call for the creation of new UN agencies such as one addressing Corporate Responsibility.
The principles of Earth Economics and true-cost pricing are well documented. When those rules are operative, the cleanest way to live is obviously the most sustainable and affordable. As we achieve the cleanest is the cheapest equation, we will make major progress on the U-turn. All economics needs to be Earth-minded Economics. Related to this, at IFG we are creating Green City Revolution: Positive Change Kits.
Given that international environmental conventions are not working, and national governments (controlled by big business) are not shouldering their responsibilities, we need to look to local government. If corporate led economic globalization is the problem, community led economic localization is the antidote. This is a major tenant of Gar Alperovitz’s book, America Beyond Capitalism.
Cities are the place to focus our efforts. Don’t give up on public governance. Inspired local governments worldwide are rising to the occasion. We can and must foster that powerful new movement. The creation and distribution of action kits, using about 21 model city ordinances, is one of the steps toward Earth Economics.
In San Francisco and Oakland we are planning 75% reduction of waste by 2010. Our comprehensive energy policy targets include 50% renewable electricity by 2017 and 100% by 2030. Oakland is studying ways to produce 30% of our food (organic/ non-GMO) from rooftop and community gardens. We have passed a strong Precautionary Principle Ordinance. We have reduced pesticides in public parks by more than 90%.
With the action kits we are looking at the 21 most important policies. With most policies there will be three versions, each getting progressively stronger: Basic, Bold, and Paradigm Shifting. For example, a municipal green building ordinance would include:
* Basic: All new municipal government owned buildings have to achieve a LEED Silver rating or higher.
* Bold: All new commercial, government, or institutional (hospitals, colleges etc) buildings meet that same metric.
* Paradigm Shifting: All new buildings – including residential – meet the same standard, and implementation of a system to get all existing buildings up to that level and beyond. All buildings old and new need to be green buildings.
In your work you know where you are making Basic changes vs. Bold ones. We all need to remember, Basic won’t stop ecological catastrophe in time, but it is sometimes the best next step. With Basic level changes, business will not be truly sustainable. Over the course of 100 years we can and must shift to bold actions and paradigm shifting actions.So, can we boldly ecologize capitalism? If so, how?
It has been said in economics that the market makes a good servant, a bad master, and a horrible religion! There are plenty of free trade religious zealots, from Reagan to Bush Sr. and Jr. They believe free trade is free from ecological limits. It is not. Limits can be hit. Bubbles can burst. Market signals have to tell the ecological truth.
I believe history will record that industrial civilization is a bubble economy. Why? Because it does not tell the ecological truth. It does not abide by the immutable principles of ecology. Economics is a sub-set of ecology.
A campaign has never been launched to drive that point home. With your help, we will launch that campaign. We need an economic systems where the ecologically cleanest is the cheapest. There is perhaps no greater leverage point for change than the ecological rules of the economic system.
Giant corporations are externalizing machines – socially and environmentally externalizing machines. And that is not OK. In free trade regimes, greater trade flows simply increase pollution problems for this and future generations, and cause extinction of species so precious to all of us. While WTO-style free trade regimes seek to reduce “subsidies,” they do so essentially with import and export tariffs. These captains of industry callously ignore pollution subsidies. Failing to incorporate a cost for pollution in the price of goods and services constitutes a negative subsidy. As
Bobby Kennedy, Jr. likes to say, “Show me pollution and I’ll show you a subsidy.”
Polluters cheat nature’s sustainability systems and mislead citizens by giving false feedback – “this product is financially cheaper and hence better” – when it is not. We desperately need an ecologically minded trade and industry system with rules that reflect true cost pricing. We need Earth-minded Economics.
Again, the principles of Earth Economics and true-cost pricing are well documented. There are methods for internalizing externalities. There is even an International Society for Ecological Economists. When those rules are operative, the cleanest way to live is obviously the most sustainable, affordable, least destructive, and therefore the least expensive way to live. As we achieve that fundamentally important equation, we will finally make major progress protecting the planet’s life support systems.
At that point, an individual buying a short to put on their back will not be decimating a species, an ecological system, or the planet’s ability to support life.
The social change movement lacks extensive, hard-hitting campaigns to put these principles into practice. This can and must change. At IFG we will use our capacity to convene key groups and movements and host a series of small roundtable meetings to brainstorm a long-term campaign. This will lead to a major IFG Teach-in on Earth Economics in 2007. At the 2006 roundtables, we will discuss, document, and report to funders and groups on key campaign issues such as:
* accessible campaign language
* campaign tools and tactics (speeches, op-eds, fact sheets, press kits, trainings)
* what are the polling questions that need answers?
* how do we fast-track the Polluter Pay Principle and the Precautionary Principle
* how do we step up shareholder activism
* how to deal with scale, especially with the size of corporations and the markets they serve
* pros and con of post-capitalist alternatives – what would a system without “usury” be like?
* ways to reduce high consumption lifestyles and still have vibrant lives with upward mobility
* codes of conduct: Equator Principles, Global Reporting Initiative …
* product take back systems (intelligent product system)
* cradle-to-cradle closed loop zero waste systems
In many respects the job is about packaging the many great things going on that internalize externalities, such as your work, into a coherent global effort destined to win.
Remember that it is not enough to care. It is about what we do! Remember that it’s about moving from basic to bold to the paradigm shift! Remember that is about spreading love. Love for the planet. Love for her glorious forests and creatures.
We have to put a stake in the ground. We reject the idea of helplessness. Some would have us think they have the power and that we are helpless. We must reject this. I see a time when each generation leaves the world with a smaller and smaller ecological footprint, allowing for Nature’s needs to restore. I see how the earth could look in 20, 100, 500 years from now – and it is beautiful. As poet Gary Snyder says, “We live with clear language and good dreams.”
There is real joy in pursuing what is just and right for Nature and the future. If we can dream together a dream of a better world – an ever renewing, organic-based Earth Community with Earth-minded Economics – we can achieve a large part of it in our lifetime.
David Brower used to say that our ability as humans to function together was formed out of wildness over four billion years of the evolution of life. Together we can make a bigger difference, as the whole is truly greater that the sum of our individual parts. Together we can become storytellers of how we recaptured the power of public governance – the legislative and economic area – and harness it to achieve justice for nature, people and the future. Together I believe we can still make that great ecological U-turn to a socially just and better world. We must.
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Randy has submitted a number of foundation proposals for the larger money to run the campaign. He still needs to raise $25,000/ month for the next two months. That support will get the campaign started until the larger money kicks in.
Randy Hayes is Director of Sustainability, Office of Mayor Jerry Brown in Oakland, California.
This speech is reprinted with permission from Randy Hayes.
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