Deeper Shade of Green

Key note presentation to my fellow employees

I woke up this morning and took a stroll through a forest, thinking to myself just how will I deliver my message to you. I decided on truth. I will tell you the truth, hopefully scare you in the process and by the end of it empower you to take positive action.

What am I talking about? Sustainability and our common future on this planet. I stand here today proudly as your colleague, friend, husband, father and citizen of Earth. As such, I have responsibilities.

• Responsibility to you, my fellow co-workers to help you out and help this company flourish.
• To my friends to be a good friend not just in good times, but to be a good friend in need as well.
• To my wife, to be a loving husband and support her so she can be the person she wants to be and achieve her life goals.
• To my child, to be the best father I can possibly be and to make sure my child has a future on this planet.
• To my fellow citizens of this Earth, to thread lightly on this planet, to make sure they have the same opportunities to pursue happiness, have food and shelter and can flourish
• To the forthcoming generations, so when I leave this Earth, they too, can pursue a happy life and can have a future

I am here today to deliver an important message to you. We all live on this beautiful planet, our common home. This home has no emergency exits; shall we destroy our home, we have no escape. We have only one home and we have to make sure it’s clean so we can all live happily in it. Unfortunately, our home – our planet, is ill and in dire need of help. The environmental destruction we’re creating, in order to support our wasteful lifestyle is wreaking havoc on our planet.

• If we continue living the way we do, within mere decades, our oceans will collapse, and most of its millions of different species will disappear.
• By 2050, one third of species on Earth will be wiped out
• Half of marketable forests in BC are wiped out by pine beetle – due to Climate Change
• Our glaciers are melting and by the end of this century, they will be gone. This will affect our rivers and fresh water resources. Indeed, many nations in the world are already facing very dire water limitations, such as Australia and the US.

I could go on and on and on. If we don’t act, we are looking at the most devastating consequences humanity have ever seen. As climate change affects our environment and shifts patterns, water will become scarce, arable lands as well, populations will be displaced, economies will collapse and wars will erupt between nations fighting over dwindling resources essential to our very survival.

Is this the future we want for ourselves? Our children? Their children? Not me!

I hope this scares you. It scares the living daylights out of me. But why would I scare you so? Why would I depress you? Because I believe that in order to act, we need to know what we are faced with.

Just like Neo in the movie Matrix, we have a choice. We can either take the blue pill, or the red pill. If we can take the blue pill, we go back to our regular lives, pretend the problems our humanity faces don’t exist or that they are in a different world, far far away and cannot affect us. Or we can take the red pill, awake from our collective slumber and start seeing the world for what it is.

You see, if we choose not to ignore the problem, we can surmount it. Every time people have come together in the past to overcome formidable challenges, they have succeeded.

• We have allied ourselves to get rid of Hitler.
• We have put a man on the moon.
• I am confident that in few decades we’ll put a man on Mars.
• And we can lick this Climate Change thing. We owe it to ourselves, we owe it to the people in third world countries, we owe it to our children, we owe it to the unborn generations.

Wow. All this must sound pretty daunting. You may feel like “but what can I do, I am just one person”. “I am too busy, I have no time”.

Never forget that alone, we are but one drop, but together, we are an ocean. When people band together, they can move mountains. Every gesture we undertake, small or big, makes a difference. If we collectively say “we’re doomed”, then we are “doomed”. If we instead say “we have a problem, let’s fix it”, we will fix it.

You cannot be possibly too busy with your lives to make meaningful changes. You take the time to make sure you invest financially into your future, so you have money when you retire. But what would that matter if there would be no future? No environment to sustain us? Never forget that you cannot eat money.

Every time we go and buy something, every action we take has repercussions. They can be negative or positive.

• You can go out buy food, bring it back in plastic bag, styrofoam, with plastic utensils, napkins from our disappearing and badly needed virgin forests, or you can bring your plate, use your own utensils and cloth napkin.
• You can buy a coffee and then throw out the mug, contributing to our landfills. Or you can bring your own mug and fill it with organic, ethically sourced coffee.
• You can print out every bit of info on your computer, on single sheets, or you can print less and on both side of paper
• You can buy clothes as you do now, and contribute to the environmental devastation that comes from cultivating cotton – the most heavily pesticide plant under the sun, with the clothes being made in third world countries where many workers are exploited, or you can buy organic cotton clothes, made ethically
• You can buy prepared food, that is nutrient deficient or you can buy organic, local food and go meatless for some days of the week
• You can leave lights on in every room, or you can turn them off when you leave and use CFLs – through conservation alone we can have power for many decades to come.
• And the list goes on and on

The point I am trying to make, is that we can turn things around and it doesn’t take much on individual basis. But it does start with us reprogramming our thinking. We have to start thinking – and then acting, more sustainably. You vote with your dollars and your actions speak volumes. Every time you buy a sustainable and ethical product, you send a message to the companies. And they are listening. Let us not let convenience, or our set ways, get in the way of what we aspire to: a better world.

Remember too, that less is more. The three R’s do come in a sequence of priority. Reduce whenever you can, only then reuse and finally when no other option, recycle. Recycling alone won’t solve the whole problem.

Living more sustainably isn’t for treehuggers such as myself anymore. It is easy to do and empowering.

The problem we need to solve is indeed huge. Many people turn to despair or ignorance. Neither solves the problem. But taking positive steps in your lives and knowing that millions of people around the world are doing the same thing is extremely empowering, because we start taking control of the problem. We own the problem, the problem doesn’t own us.

So where does all this brings us to? Well, more and more companies are coming to the conclusion that sustainability makes sense on many fronts. It makes sense financially, it makes sense from human resources point of view, it makes sense ethically. More employees are now seeking employment with companies that have some form of ethical, social and environmental commitment. People want to belong, be part of the solution, not part of the problem and they want to feel proud of their workplace.

Our company realized all this and today we are pleased to officially announce the green committee. I am extremely proud to be working for a company that knows that sustainability is of utmost importance. But we cannot do it alone. The green committee is comprised of passionate volunteers from this company. We want to encourage you, help you out, educate you – but ultimately whether this company becomes more sustainable or not depends entirely up to you. The green committee cannot change the world alone – but you can.

Two years ago I made a lifetime commitment to live sustainably and preserve our beautiful home – our planet – for many generations to come. I hope that you will join me on that journey and help make this a better place to live.