Amy's writing | Environmental Debt

Feelings, not facts: negotiating for a new business paradigm

First published in the Huffington Post, March 6th, 2014

When I first started working with corporations on transformative green technologies, I would discuss my excitement to other environmentalists, and they would retort: “But they’re only doing that because they’re greedy… not because it’s the right thing.” I would reply, “Who are we, the morality police? They’re taking a great leap forward.” Very few businesspeople and politicians are primarily motivated by a grand vision of a better world. Some certainly are, and we need more of them — but they are often fired or dismissed as the office nag, lunatic or nuisance. It takes a huge amount of courage to be a whistleblower or to suggest something out of the box. Keeping a company profitable is daunting enough. The lyrics from Frank Loesser’s Broadway show, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying says it all… the song is called “The Company Way.”

Finch: When they want brilliant thinking, from employees
Twimble: That is no concern of mine.
Finch: Suppose a man of genius,makes suggestions?
Twimble: Watch that genius get suggested to resign.
Finch: So you play it the company way?
Twimble: All company policy is by me OK.
Finch: You’ll never rise up to the top.
Twimble: But there’s one thing clear: Whoever the company fires,I will still be here.

Ain’t that the truth? But the company way ain’t gonna take us where we gotta go. Only emotional intelligence and peer pressure will help us breach the delta between today’s business as usual and a radical rethink of sourcing, operations, profits and products. While accountants and consultancies are planning the future of financial reporting, it is time for the rest of us to pave the road for true profits. That road is less

Human error: how business can learn from past mistakes

First published in the Guardian on February 7th, 2014

There are at least two areas where I agree with most major religions. First, we must treat one another with compassion and kindness – the golden rule of do unto others as you would have them do unto you applies. Second, humans are inherently imperfect. We make terrible mistakes and we are capable of incredible negligence and cruelty in addition to our numerous finer qualities such as valor, graciousness and creativity.

Somehow, in our use of technology and chemicals, we presume that this second maxim of imperfection and moral failings doesn’t hold. That’s why we think it’s OK to have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons globally despite the launch codes being in the hands of the imperfect humans who have manufactured them. No surprise, then, that 92 US air force officers who hold these codes are in the middle of a scandal involving cheating and drug use. Errors could obviously be catastrophic – blackmail and impaired judgment do not mix well with nuclear capabilities.

We continue to deploy technology with the running assumption that humans won’t make mistakes or behave badly. That is genuinely stupid; history continues to show us so on every continent and in every culture. These kinds of disasters are not black swan events: they should be anticipated if we just presume that humans will err. As Mark Twain noted, “Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”

With this in mind, one of the most important guidelines for 21st century business, where technological prowess is unbelievable, is theprecautionary principle. First adopted by the United Nations in 1982 as part of the World Charter for Nature, the precautionary