In Business, Creating Sustainable Enterprises & Communities

THE RULES OF THE GAME

In Business, September-October, 2006, Vol. 28, No. 5, p. 32

SUSTAINABLE COMMERCE

Robert F. Young

SUSTAINABLE products, services and companies are starting up all over the country. Such individual efforts are promising; however, there is a counter movement taking place that is limiting the future of sustainable business. The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a central player in that movement. Well funded and professionally run, ALEC's agenda includes opposing the emerging framework of a sustainable economy.
Founded in 1973, ALEC rose to prominence during the Reagan and first Bush administrations. Behind the rhetoric of Jeffersonian ideology, ALEC seeks to undermine legislation that would favor companies that promote sustainable products and services. A watchdog organization recently noted that “one of ALEC's central concerns is government regulations of business, especially regulations that protect the environment and/or public health.” In their stead, ALEC promotes model state legislation that favors weakening or eliminating environmental laws and regulations that would enhance market share for sustainable businesses and products.
The funders of ALEC include approximately 300 corporate sponsors including the American Nuclear Energy Council, American Petroleum Institute, Amoco, Chevron, Texaco, Shell, ExxonMobil, Phillip Morris, R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, and others. ALEC's annual budget is over $5 million. In 2003, one corporation, Exxon, contributed $290,000 to ALEC of which $190,000 was earmarked for work against legislation seeking to slow global climate change.
ALEC states that “during the 1999-2000 legislative cycle, ALEC legislators introduced more than 3,100 pieces of legislation based on our models and more than 450 of these were enacted…In the legislative sessions of 2000, there were more than 2,150 (legislative) introductions promoting ALEC policy.”
ALEC has promoted a wide range of bills that counter efforts to raise the bar on environmental performance. By doing so, they are quietly preventing companies with sustainable product lines from gaining competitive advantage. One example is their opposition to state actions to enact the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. Through attacking state-based Kyoto legislation, ALEC has obstructed and put a chilling effect on state requirements for greener procurement, construction and design guidelines. ALEC's “State Responses to Kyoto Climate Change Protocol Act” prohibits state adoption of any element of or related to the Kyoto Protocol before the Protocol is passed nationally.
ALEC's influence is broad. Approximately one-third or 2,400 of the nation's 7,500 state legislators are members of ALEC. This membership includes: 32 speakers and speakers pro tem of state legislatures, 22 state senate presidents and presidents pro tem of the state legislators, 22 senate majority and senate minority leaders, 30 house majority and house minority leaders. In addition it has acted as a “farm team” for future higher level officials. ALEC alumni include eight sitting governors, three lieutenant governors, two senior level cabinet members and over 80 members of Congress.
As noted by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Defenders of Wildlife, ALEC is “corrosive, secretive and highly influential” in a manner that directly limits the opportunities and markets for sustainable businesses and products.
If we hope to “reinvent commerce,” we cannot allow the rules of the game to be written against us. ALEC is doing just that, quietly and effectively. We need to be able to counter and supercede their actions by developing sustainable business-friendly legislation and harnessing coalitions of community groups, NGOs, legislators and sustainable companies that can see their passage through.
Organizing an “organization of organizations” committed to establishing a sustainable economy can be a means to do that. For those sustainable companies that would eschew political action in favor of “sticking to business,” ALEC's success poses the question of how much business such firms are already losing (or stand to lose) because of the existence or future passage of legislation that ignores or obstructs emphasis on products that are climate neutral, environmentally certified, recyclable or produce renewable energy.
By organizing as a coalition and moving to the next stage, sustainable firms can create the opportunity to blunt attempts at legislation that undermine their product lines and instead advance legislation that supports them. In this manner, profits to sustainable companies can be carried forward in two directions: eliminating negative legislation that undercuts profitability while promoting positive legislation that will enhance it in the future. Thus reinventing commerce and expanding market share can go hand in hand.
If your organization or company is interested in joining in efforts to build a coalition to fight for a sustainable economy, send us an email at the address listed below or contact us through In Business magazine.

Robert F. Young is a partner with Green Cities Associates and runs an organic farm in New York State. His email is rfy1@cornell.edu.