The Exxon Way

A revealing article in this Sunday's New York Times showcases the perspective of Exxon Mobil, the largest company in the world. If Wal-Mart is the greatest elaboration of the low-cost, low-price model for retailing, Exxon Mobil seems to be the epitome of a closed-loop corporate culture literally strapped to an economic IV of fossil fuels.

Exxon Mobil still believes that oil is the future and with company assets that rank between Austria and Greece in a ranking of world economies you wonder about their ability to impose this vision of the future on the rest of us. In fact, the article paints an eery picture of low-level recruits trained in the Exxon way that disregards dissent in a ruthless push for efficient extraction of oil and natural gas. These recruits get infected with the Exxon DNA that reminds one of the Borg in the The Next Generation Star Trek series. A recent suggestion at a shareholder's meeting that maybe the company should think about a carbon-free future was quickly dismissed.

Perhaps the most interesting fact in the article is that with its vast cash reserves and completely clean credit sheet, the company is well-positioned for all kinds of extracurricular activities that have nothing to do with oil extraction, such as lobbying federal agencies, influencing, through various means, the affairs of developing countries, and manipulating financial markets in more dubious ways than through rollercoaster gas prices.

The Exxon way is described as patience, determination, and long-term vision -- all qualities that in an of themselves are admirable. They have worked together to create a well-oiled (excuse the pun) organizational model and culture uniquely suited to the era of globalization. These values applied to the movement for a carbon-free economy might prove equally useful. Still, the inefficiencies not allowed by the Exxon Way are often the source of innovation. Unproductive muddling becomes the source unprecendented invention. When the earthquake comes, in the form of peak oil, rigid companies like Exxon Mobil will likely be the first to fall.

Redemption

In the spring of 2004, I had the privilege of spending 2 1/2 weeks in South Africa and Bostwana scouting study abroad programs for the college I was working for at the time.

South Africa was a revelation for me. I knew a bit about the history of South Africa as divestment in the apartheid regime was a hot topic as I was graduating high school and entering college. The injustice I read about and saw on television was a psychic link to the battle for Civil Rights in the American South. Here, I was living through what seemed confined to the black and white films of an earlier time. My senior year in high school, Victor, a young black activist from South Africa, came to our high school as part of an international peace program. The police had imprisioned Victor in South Africa and my friends and I spoke late into the night with him about the situation in South Africa and about Bishop Desmond Tutu, who he knew and looked up to as a leader.

So, I knew a bit about South Africa when I got off the plane in Cape Town. What I wasn't prepared for was the spirit of transformation that permeated the country. South Africa is in many ways still a desperate place. Life is still far too cheap. Violence is still far too common. When I was there South Africa had the highest rate of sexual assault in the world. And yet, around every corner it seemed was a country that was consciously trying to re-invent itself, a country trying to find redemption by looking the pain of the past in the eye, by bearing it all.

It's difficult to visit South Africa and not come away hopeful about the capacity of human beings, both as individuals and as a species, to turn a corner. There is a story in today's Los Angeles Times about Amy Biehl, an American student killed by a mob outside Cape Town and how her parents dealt with this tragedy. The story is remarkable and the article doesn't do it justice.

When I was in South Africa I visited the township where this happened. I spent a night there and played checkers with a young girl for over an hour as her family fed me dinner. Outside the smoke of the township was thick and sooty. What the Amy Biehl Foundation represents should never be forgotten -- a courageous and compassionate heart can cut through the smoke and open up the sky.

Time for Direct Action?

During a discussion last month at a gathering of the Clinton Global Initiative, Al Gore called on young people to engage in civil disobedience to stop new coal-fired power plants from being built. Reports indicate that President Clinton, who was moderating the discussion, quickly moved the discussion on to another topic.

I was able to find a partial transcript.

Also of note is Gore's hammering of "clean coal" as an illusion. Joe Biden recently said something similar in a rope line, but was then quickly reigned in by the Obama campaign that is courting votes in coal-producing states, such as Colorado.

I think everyone is holding their breath right now waiting for the election to see which way the energy debate is going to tip. Obama has said that Gore would be a close advisor on climate issues. A recent article in the Durango Herald discussed "clean coal" and its nebulous meaning.

What do you think? Is civil disobedience a good strategy to stop coal-fired power plants? What about China's plans to build numerous power plants to spur their economy? What should young people do? Is there potential for students in the U.S. to work with students in China to stop what Gore called at the Clinton Global Initiative "insanity."

Wither the Global Economy

The financial crisis that's dominated the news this week and the conflicting prescriptions for how to deal with it make one thing clear. No one knows how the global economy works anymore. Sure, some people have some ideas. But no one really knows exactly what to do. The most straightforward explanation of what's going on that I've read comes from Paul Krugman at the New York Times.

But the entire episode highlights what many environmental authors have been saying for some time: the global economy based on cheap energy is extraordinarily fragile. Today folks dismissed as doomsday scenariarios, predicting financial collapse and a return to backyard gardening, seem a lot closer to reality than those extolling the virtues of global cosmopolitan culture. If this last week is the beginning of a true shift in the structure of our economic lives, what will the future hold? What aspects of the global economy will remain in place and which will become distant memories of a bygone era?

There is a great longing for economic security in this country, a security based on a reliable supply of life's necessities. Here in La Plata County, our local food movement is spirited but still far from providing anything close to what we need to survive. The counties and towns that I think will thrive in the future are those with a re-invigorated commons that provide for food production and materials for housing. This is the basic structure that will allow communities to make the most of their natural, social, and financial capital.

What do you think? Should what will be the structure of the economy in the future? How will we define "wealth" and what is responsible action today, at this very moment?

EC Core Values League

Welcome to the EC!

Greetings,

The Fort Lewis College Environmental Center is gearing up a great year! We are at a critical time in the history of our country and the history of our world. There is so much great work to be done, so many exciting changes that are now within our reach. The Environmental Center brings students together to make change happen -- on the Fort Lewis College campus, in Durango, and across the Four Corners. In the process, students learn skills that they can apply to create change once they graduate, spreading the influence of the EC far and wide.

This year we will be helping Fort Lewis create a sustainability action plan to guide the College as it seeks to become a greener campus. Part of this plan will lay out a timeline for becoming a "carbon neutral" institution. We will also be collaborating with the Garden Project of Southwest Colorado this year to help mobilize around community gardens. We will continue to develop a new youth leadership program. This weekend is the retreat for the LIFE (Learning to Invest in the Future of the Earth) program. And in November we will help release the Be Local Coupon Book, which will help jump start a new independent business alliance for La Plata County. All these projects are expressions of our core values: positive action, integrity, community, creativity, and learning. Ben Rogers, our communications coordinator, will be posting a movie we've made about our core values on this blog next week. Check back to see our Core Values Super-heroes in action!

A Teenager with a Squirt Bottle

Tuesday during Earth Week 9th grader Kiki Brown appeared on the front page of the Durango Herald. She held a squirt-bottle she was using to tie-dye a t-shirt at one of the EC’s Earth Week events. At the same time some commentators were saying with the fire sale on Bear Stearns that the world was on the brink of financial collapse. The juxtaposition of these two facts brought the apathy that so many young people feel into sharp relief. Last week, the EC held 11 events for Earth Week focused on engaging young people in the most important questions facing the world. But who were we kidding? When we can be brought to edge of a worldwide depression by the failure of a mortgage underwriting firm, it’s time to look up in the sky to see who’s really pulling the strings. Before last week I would have guessed that Bear Stearns was a football player. The whole episode made me feel that there are so many layers of entrenched interests with an unquestioned expectation of privilege that any measure of equality, justice, and opportunity is far beyond our grasp.

And then there’s Kiki with her squirt bottle. Why did the EC focus on youth for the month of March? The answer for me is that young people recognize truth. While apathy is certainly present, it most often grows from witnessing how adults and the adult world either ignore or compromise the truth to serve self-interest. The adult world has walked away from the truth of climate change, the truth about poverty, the truth about themselves and their potential to change. Young people recognize these truths, and when the truth faces off with entrenched and moneyed interests, it makes for an interesting staring match.

It is this ability that can shake the corporate foundations of our world. And it is this ability of young people to recognize the truth about the world’s challenges, about how people should treat each other, about the tradeoffs that are a part of life, which will rise from the rubble if our world should collapse. The shirt that Kiki was making that Tuesday had facts on it about the environment and was one way to demonstrate what young people already know about these issues. It was a small way to give voice to the truth. In a staring match between truth and entrenched interests, I’ll take the teenager with a squirt bottle every time.

Appreciation or Action

Greetings,

First entry for the EC's blog from the EC Coordinator's Desk. Leading up to our Youth-Powered Earth Week Celebration, we decided to feature the topic of youth empowerment. Here's a question for those interested in such matters....Should environmental education for youth focus on teaching appreciation and love of the natural world or focus on changing the world by passing on concrete, community problem-solving skills? The easy answer is both.

But let's not make it easy. Say you've gotten a grant to start up a program for sixth graders. You have to choose a focus. You either teach these young people how to identify trees or how get their school to start a recycling program.

For many years, conventional wisdom in environmental education was to start with apreciation and then move to knowledge and then start teaching problem-solving skills. The problem was that surveys of EE programs showed that students never got to these higher-order outcomes. Other research has shown that the supposed link between knowledge and action is not there. More knowledge can create apathy and despair.

An alternative is to jump right into problem-solving, but without an appreciation for the natural world, problem-solving loses its mooring. Without experience of the non-human, it is easier for youth to discount its value.

I've worked in environmental education for almost twenty years and tried it both ways. Forced to pick, I would teach problem-solving first with numerous breaks for rolling in the leaves and starring at stars.

What do you think?

The Environmental Center at Fort Lewis College