Page 84 - ECOlogic Book

wildlife. 100

We come to this task of helping businesses become more “green
with the humble recognition of the genius that built Detroit and changed the
world, and a deep belief that the same genius can be channeled toward
sustainability. We believe that many people in business today recognize that
profound change is required and want to do the right thing. We hope to
change the consciousness of those who still believe in short term gain and
inadequate cost-accounting, assuming that it is only a lack of information
that perpetuates such archaic attitudes. Paul Hawken reminds us:
Business requires more than criticism. It needs a plan,
a vision, a basis – a broad social mandate that will turn
it away from the linear, addictive, short-term economic
activities in which it is enmeshed and trapped.

When this happens, the effects can be far wider than just physical
sustainability. People will enjoy their work more, knowing they are
contributing to the solution rather than the problem. The problems are
systemic, we know that. We see glimmers of awareness in the past that
were snuffed by economic urgency:
In 1941, Ford designed a prototype car which had
a body made of soybean plastic, was powered by
ethanol, and ran on tires made from goldenrod.
Confident that oil prices would rise after the war,
Ford believed that we would soon be “growing cars”. 101

The car never went into production because the cheap oil prices that
followed World War II made plastics more economical. The artificially low
price of oil is still holding back innovation of this type. If Henry Ford were
alive today, would his amazing vision grasp the fact that business as usual is
no longer either profitable or sustainable in the long run? Would he see
clearly the hidden costs to the environment of doing business as usual?

Without romanticizing a man who was full of contradictions, I believe if
Henry Ford were alive today, he would. He did, after all, make substantial
contributions to help establish bird sanctuaries across the country, and
created a wildlife preserve on the grounds of the Fairlane estate where he
supported thousands of birds in his “bird hotels.” His vision at that time was
incapable of extending to how his world at the auto plant and his Fairlane

100 Hawken, Paul, The Ecology of Commerce,(Harper Business, New York, NY., 1992, P. 54).

101 IBID, P. 67.

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