February 5, 2008

John Grant: Waking Up To Green Innovation

__x7bhnRA7nIA_R6eUZxkTjgI_AAAAAAAAAoA__BhpHD33y08_s1600_Slide13.jpg John Grant has a post on his site that is a follow up to his book Green Marketing Manifesto. He points out that change hasn’t been as fast as he hoped, we only just started to think about the impact and concern of our environmental impact. He says that he knows change will come:

The likelihood is that what – it was claimed – was a sea change in public attitudes, in the regulatory framework, in the acknowledged responsibilities of business, was in fact just the start. We haven’t yet dramatically changed our ways of life. But we will. We haven’t yet seen businesses in every market divided into two categories; part of the problem and part of the solution – and this in turn having a dramatic effect on their fortunes. But we very likely will. History suggests that when a problem becomes acknowledged as an urgent priority then just such a polarization does happen. For instance with the issue of obesity, brands of sugar based drink, fast food and unhealthy snacks are now in serious trouble. You only have to look at Coca Cola’s share price for the last ten years; Coke’s fell by 20% while Pepsi’s grew 100%. The difference? Pepsi innovating its way out of the unhealthy corner with juices and so on. Coke on the other hand ‘not getting it’,

We are headed like it or not for a low carbon economy. In a week when Shell announced record profits it may sound strange to say this (but consider that the $100 per barrel price which makes its current prospecting discoveries viable is also already crippling the global economy). Leaving to one side the spectre of peak oil (if the oil does start running out sooner than expected, it would herald economic and societal meltdown on an unimaginable scale) in the next ten years real progress must and will be made. There will come a point soon when a continuation of business as usual combined with tinkering at the fringes cant continue. Whether it is rationing, further humanitarian catastrophes, profound recession… the pressure to reduce our collective impact will become sufficient to create an emergency economy comparable to that of wartime Europe. In an emergency economy, the needs of individuals are subsumed to a shared effort – an increased effort. By then it may or may not be too late to stop climate changing. But not trying will not be an option.

…What is called for is breakthrough innovation. Human ingenuity seems to thrive under such conditions of extreme stress (consider the rate of innovation during WWII, from radar to the atom bomb) “necessity… the mother of invention”.

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Article categories: Environmental, Ethical Consumerism