In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

THE BIG PICTURE

In Business, November-December, 2004, Vol. 26, No. 6, p. 31

SUSTAINABLE COMMERCE

Robert F. Young

THERE IS NO DOUBT that the lion's share of folks engaged in sustainable business felt a let down with the results of the last national election. Throughout the ranks of solar installers, wind power advocates, organic farmers, biodiesel entrepreneurs, fuel cell producers, green architects, recyclers, and energy conservation firms, there was hope that a Kerry victory in November, while perhaps not leading to peace in Iraq, would provide a definite boost to federal support and investment in sustainable commerce. As the constituency best positioned to increase our energy independence and establish new, environmentally sound directions for the economy, they stood to gain from a new administration not slavishly wed to the oil industry and its interests.
But these hopes, even if overly generous, were denied. The result for many was a return to the more modest objectives of their enterprises and trust that, perhaps four years in the future, their message of a clean, green economy will be heeded.
Yet there is more at work and at stake here than a focus on the four year cycles of our presidential elections reflect. In order to understand its place in the events of our times or the possible futures that await, sustainable businesses must understand their potential part in the bigger picture of both history and future trends.
The position of the United States has changed markedly in the four centuries since European settlements were first established on the North American continent. Beginning as a simple appendage to the global economy, the Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, French and English colonies on this side of the Atlantic played the rudimentary role of supplying raw materials to the empires of the greater global stage. Pelts, timber, and fish were abundant supplying both the local populations as well as the markets of Europe. As the colonies grew, this role expanded following the development of the agrarian economy. Soon agricultural products from North America flooded Europe, drowning their own domestic producers beneath a tidal wave of grain, tobacco, cotton and beef cattle.
With the American Revolution came the right to engage in manufacturing, previously denied by the British crown, laying the ground work for the industrial revolution to come. With its arrival, the United States began to rival the entire world, not only in agricultural output but in the production of myriad kinds of finished goods as well. Supporting this conversion to industry, the United States also established itself as the primary developer of the fuel sources necessary to drive mass production industries and rapidly became the world's largest producer of oil and coal.
The dynamic power of this economy soon drew to the United States the financial resources of the world and the cultural envy and imitation of societies across the globe. With the advent of the First and Second World Wars, the United States added to this impressive list of powers the strongest military the world had ever seen.
The conclusion of hostilities in 1945, however, set events in motion that would affect the trajectory of this impressive rise. The destruction wrought by the war allowed Europe to freely integrate a new economy and embark on an unprecedented period of peace that supported their return to the pantheon of financial, cultural, and technological powerhouses. Humiliated by its loss, Japan turned its attention from military aggression to industrial development and was followed by other Asian economies such as Korea and China. Independence movements in the former colonies of Asia, Africa and the Middle East established low-cost agricultural, manufacturing and energy providers outside the immediate control of the West.
With the departure of America's industrial base to the growing manufacturing regions of Asia and Latin America, the United States began to import much of what it once supplied for itself. Some of the most marked transformations in this regard are in automobile manufacturing, electronics, and oil. Once the undisputed giant in each of these fundamental categories of contemporary modern society, the U.S. now imports two-thirds of its oil supplies, no longer boasts a single domestic producer of televisions and, beyond SUVs, does not produce any automobile that is competitive in the world market. The fruit of this hollowing out of the US manufacturing base is the increasing reliance on borrowing from abroad to support domestic purchasing. As a result, in the 1980s, America went from becoming the world's largest creditor nation to becoming its largest debtor.
Once simultaneously the greatest military, cultural, financial, manufacturing, agricultural, and energy force in the world, in the few short decades since the end of World War II, the United States now holds dominance solely in Hollywood movies, weapons production, and monocrop agriculture. Even this last category is tenuous as Brazil has, according to The New York Times, “increased productivity levels beyond those in the United States and Europe, challenging their traditional dominance of the global farm trade” hoping to become the world's largest agricultural producer over the next decade (NYT 12/12/04).
As any historian can tell you, there has to be more to shore up an empire than soybeans, F-16s, and action films. In many ways the war in Iraq can be seen in this context. It is an effort by the United States to regain undisputed dominance in the energy arena and in doing so gain back its financial reserves thus restoring some portion of the nearly unlimited powers it enjoyed after the Second World War.
Should this effort remain deeply mired, either militarily or more likely financially, the weakness of our remaining pillars may begin to show most markedly. The deficit purchase of manufactured goods cannot go on indefinitely, agribusiness will erode in the face of foreign competition and without cheap fossil fuels and, as England and France discovered during the Suez incident in 1957, military might cannot be exercised when those to whom you owe money do not approve.
At this point, America may again undergo a significant shift in its place in world affairs. From a colony on the periphery to a nation at the pinnacle of empire, the United States may find itself faced with becoming a second tier power behind a renewed Europe and a rising Asia and Latin America led by China, Japan, and Brazil. Unable to control world events through overwhelming superiority in finances, industry, or military power, the United States, if it is not to be relegated to very difficult times, will have to turn to its entrepreneurs in the field of sustainability. They hold the key to maintaining an independent role in the world. Presently, the United States is reliant on other nations for its energy, manufactured goods, and finances. Last June, as evidence of further dependency, the US imported more agricultural products than it exported. Under these conditions, the United States will not be able to maintain its current position. Only the firms focused on renewable energy, materials recycling, regenerative agriculture, and green manufacturing will be able to supply an independent industrial base for the United States. Given these trends the time may be fast approaching when sustainable commerce won't have to beg for an audience on the national stage. In fact, it may become the only show in town.

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