Grassroots action is always the best way to start a movement. The monumental shifts in society have been driven by people of action. Is sustainability and climate change going to be different? People are having a tough time understanding the complexities surrounding multi-faceted sustainability and climate change issues. Other social change shifts have been a little easier to explain and visualize, civil rights for minorities and women for example.
Sustainability, climate change, being green, whatever one wants to call it, is hard to paint a picture with. The consequences of our actions are still unknown and exactly how to fix it is the topic of hot debate. Can the people in a local community, state or country rally together to make the change needed to turn back the dial on climate change?
The proactive actions of consequence have been taking place in the business world. Granted some have been driven by government legislation as well as consumer interest, but the majority of efforts have been internally motivated. There are proactive organizations that understand a competitive advantage based on sustainability is the only way to survive in a carbon constrained world.
I was a part of a conference call last week where a potential client was looking at an application in a large rail yard to monitor the quality of the diesel fuel moving in and out of storage there. This single rail yard, of which there are hundreds of similar ones in the US, uses around 15 million gallons of diesel each month. Multiply that a few hundred times and one can see why so much is in the hands of business when it comes to a carbon constrained planet. Granted they are working to meet our demand, but it is still up to them to improve their numbers. CSX has aggressively worked at being more efficient and over ten years they moved nearly twice as many tons of freight with the same amount of fuel.
This type of improvement sets up CSX to be an industry leader when the price of diesel doubles or triples. Those railroads with old equipment and inefficient practices will disappear when fuel spikes.
Like it or not, business is a key part of sustainability. Businesses and consumers are so deeply intertwined that we need each other to work hard at making the planet a good place to live for the next millennium.