by BILL SCHLEIZER

Dreams

I dream that one day down the road that I won't be working in the environmental field. I won't be an environmental associate at an environmental non-profit working on environmental quality issues. My graduate degree in environmental analysis and decision making that I spent way too much money on will no longer be of value in the advancement of my environmental career. I know this sounds quite damning, so I will explain.

I often say that I work on things that are just common sense. The real query is, "Why do things that make common sense have to be worked on so intensely, shouldn't it not be a problem in the first place?" That is true, but not the reality of our situation. I dream that one day it will be. Environmental quality issues that I work on have been left out of the "system". If empire building and the Industrial Age have taught humankind anything, it has been the unfortunate method to outsmart ourselves into discounting and externalizing the consequences of our actions. Economics and the pursuit of increased productivity and growth have allowed people and businesses to remove environmental impacts from the calculation of the bottom line. It looks much better if one doesn't have to calculate all that nasty. The environmental movement has attempted several ways of getting those real impacts back into the equation. Some scream and shout in an attempt to stuff our impacts down our collect throats to stimulate change and break apart apathy. The "Hey! That's really shit and you shouldn't be doing that!" foot-stomping, public advocacy and education has gotten some things done. Silent Spring, the book that is credited as a major foundation for the modern environmental movement, challenged people to think what would happen if there were no more birds due to the effects of toxic chemicals. The installation of the U.S. Superfund program after the Love Canal tragedy also helped move things a bit forward; companies did not want to have to pay the costs of remediating their toxic sites, so they starting paying a little more attention to some of their activities and their consequences. However, the many programs, activities and other whatnot did not get things like true-cost accounting and lifecycle analysis into the operational procedures of many companies. In a previous life, I worked as an environmental consultant whose firm did a few small projects for a company that allegedly budgeted one million dollars a year to pay environmental fines. The company still viewed their impacts, even though there was a price tag assigned, as an externality. Some environmentalists, like myself, try to get environmental impacts woven back into the system by showing that in the long run it makes better business sense. Speaking the language of business (and government) and getting them to see the whole picture by putting into terms that they understand has been quite influential in improving the reincorporation of environmental consequences into business strategy.

When I said that I dream of not being in the environmental field, I really meant that since these issues have omnipresence over all aspects of our lives, they should be put back where they belong and not purged from their true place to be swept into a corner. To obtain my environment undergrad and grad degrees, I had to take courses in anthropology, business, history, law, geology, chemistry, management, policy, ethics, and engineering as well as several other interdisciplinary classes housed in a multitude of departments. Now, I didn't mind because I like knowing a little bit about everything, but overall it would be much more effective if all these aspects were taught thoroughly in each of their departments so that the wasn't a need for an education like mine. The industrial engineering optimizing a process that makes it the most resource efficient before installation, the business manager that plans around the consequences of natural resource depletion and includes it in their operational strategy, the entrepreneur who develops new ideas based on societal impact instead of just potential revenue, that is my dream. And the good news is that this is starting to become much more common. Systematically speaking, the inclusion of environmental aspects and impacts is being dealt with at a personal, institutional and corporate level and humankind is starting to practice environmentalism in everyday life without it being such a burden.

Fears

I fear that I will be working as an environmentalist until I am using a walker. I fear that we have breached the ingenious buffer system that the abiotic and biotic elements around the globe have setup to maintain a dynamic equilibrium that supports such a vast array of life. I fear that I fear too much. I always fear that this column gets depressing, so I'll end with my true dream:

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