In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

DECLARING INDEPENDENCE

In Business, March/April, 2004, Vol. 26, No. 2, p. 32

SUSTAINABLE COMMERCE

Robert F. Young

IT IS TIME to bury sustainability and announce the birth of independence. In our society, cutting edge social action is often centered on the development of new, progressive buzz words. In the seventies, it was “appropriate” as in “appropriate technology” that topped the buzz word charts. The eighties saw the emergence of “alternative” which was added to a pastiche of categories such as “alternative energy”, “alternative agriculture” or “alternative health care”. By the nineties, “sustainability” was on the scene, and again, the old “buzzfix” (like a prefix only hipper) was torn off and the new, cooler moniker was welded onto the beginning of each phrase. So over a 30-year period, “appropriate” technology became “alternative” technology and most recently “sustainable” technology. And the same has happened each in turn to “appropriate/alternative/sustainable” agriculture, health care, energy, technology, etc, etc.
During each of these phases the names have changed but the work has remained the same. Those in the field of farming have continued to explore ecologically sound, organic methods and markets regardless of the nom de jour that their efforts have been labeled by. The same is true for those working on solar and wind energy, recycling, composting, cycling, mass transit, land trusts, and women's health to name a few. Underneath the hydra headed tyranny of multisyllabic labels that (let's face it) could only have been dreamed up by some bureaucratic wonk whose major hope is that the essence of these ideas never be easily communicated with average citizens, has continued a vital and important struggle for the future direction of our Republic.
Each of the previous phrases begs the question: more appropriate than what, alternative to what, sustainable for who? It is in this sense that these labels really come up short. Rather than eternally beating around the bush and hiding behind these obtuse phrases, we should declare openly what it is we are striving for.
Though the name given by others to each of these important efforts (“appropriate” one decade, “sustainable” the next) keeps changing, the essential objective of those working honestly in these fields has not. Their work has focused on establishing community, state or national institutions independent of the control of large corporations or bureaucracies. So, the energy, food or health systems that they are fighting for are not more appropriate, alternative, or heaven forbid sustainable ones. Rather, plainly stated, what we are fighting for is our independence. Independence from agricultural systems at war with the entire biosphere. Independence from energy systems that put us at war with entire regions of the globe. Independence for our bodies to be healthy in their own right and manner. Independence for our communities to have a role in determining how we will derive our food, energy, technology and health care rather than existing only as passive sources of power or profit for those far away from our own concerns and visions. It is independent agriculture, energy, technology and health care that we are fighting for.
Over 200 years ago, our forefathers did not sign on to a Declaration of Sustainability hoping to derive a more appropriate or alternative relationship with what was then the world's greatest power. Rather, they risked their “lives, fortunes and sacred honor” for a slightly nobler goal. “That these United States are and of right ought to be free and independent states.” It is time again for the colonies that we have come to live in to gain their freedom. To do so, we must be clear in our goals and, as our forbearers did before us, be done with half-hearted phrases and declare for independence.

Robert F. Young is codirector of the Sustainable Business Alliance and runs an organic farm in New York State.