“If anything can save the world, I’d put my money on beauty.”
—Doug Tompkins [1]
My friend, mentor, and adventure buddy Doug Tompkins made the impossible possible. His keen ability to manifest unrealistic ideas in the real world, defied logic. Long before most people heard the words ‘climate crisis’ or ‘biodiversity loss’, Doug had convened scholars and activists to refine and promote the ethical rights of Nature to thrive. In the early 21st century he applied his considerable entrepreneurial zeal to creating parks in some of the world’s most wild and beautiful places, aiming to die broke investing money earned in the late 20th century as co-founder of a successful global clothing company in activism, conservation, and rewilding. Doug loved beauty in all forms: architecture, cultural diversity, and most of all, wild nature. Hypothermia took him in 2015 when he capsized while kayaking across a wild and remote Patagonian lake. The deep blue, drinking-water clear lake and its surrounding mountains, air, rivers, trees, weather, and animals, radiated beauty. This place he knew and loved.
For the last 18 years my colleagues and I have worked to help business leaders ‘see the world anew’ and align their organizations with the way the world works best. My journey began with many years in wild places exploring rivers, followed by immersive scholarship into the philosophy of Deep Ecology[2], which led to an aha moment while attending a Natural Step 4 System Conditions[3] lecture. Soon thereafter we founded Blu Skye on the insight that a radical application of sustainability principles by companies was the greatest untapped source of competitive advantage in this century. Now adoption of these same principles has become table stakes and tomorrow’s winners will be proactive in regenerating cities, landscapes, oceans, political culture, rivers, atmosphere, and human psyches – going beyond sustainability to rewild, renew, and re-generate human and non-human life. This is what’s being asked of us.
Despite much sincere and meaningful work of friends, colleagues, groups, communities, companies and institutions, the trend lines in atmospheric carbon, deforestation, ocean and land health, biodiversity, and other baseline conditions for life on earth have gone from mildly disturbing to extremely distressing. Eight billion people doing what they do today, the way they currently do it, isn’t going to work for us too much longer. As Doug used to say, “in order for things to stay the same, they must change.” As I reread this paragraph, I’m struck with how much it looks like so many other paragraphs I read from scientists, authors, and practitioners in the sustainability space. We know what we should do, but still humanity stumbles and bumbles forward like a drunken sailor in a howling gale at midnight towards the end of the dock into an ink dark sea.
My relationship to all this has evolved over the years. I began with the naïve notion that once leaders saw the data; they would shift direction. Leading in sustainability served self-interest, and early application of the principles lowered costs and increased efficiencies. Sustainability was good for business; good for the world and companies could do well, by doing good. Then, I experienced how often inertia, incentives, and fear of failure trumped facts, stalling new rational actions. This isn’t surprising. It is often easier to keep stumbling down the dock towards doom, than it is to acknowledge my folly, turn around, and walk a new direction. During this phase, my energy was tinged with a righteous indignation towards people, institutions, and their stupid ways and inabilities to see what is so plain to see. I and a lot of people working in ‘sustainability’ felt frustrated and we showed up like martyrs. There’s a lot of righteous energy available in this orientation, but as a practical matter, it is not a successful approach if you don’t have authority to force people to act differently, which I and my consulting colleagues don’t have. We can and should acknowledge the distressing trend lines, but our power lies in our ability to enroll people in a new way of seeing and being in the world by focusing on what inspiring, creative, beautiful things we can do together.
Today, my orientation continues evolving. I’ve observed how sustainability actions have reactions, many of them unintended. When California puts a huge amount of solar energy on the grid, it shifts demand for hydro power energy, changing dams’ water releases into rivers from day to night when the sun doesn’t shine. This in turn threatens the fish and the ~$1 billion river recreation industry. Increasingly I’m humbler in the conclusions and recommendations we reach in our work. I have an appreciation for life’s challenges for all beings, often wondering what it’s like to walk in other people’s shoes, be them CEO of a Fortune 10 company, middle manager in an apparel brand, Madagascan tilapia farmer, Nebraskan beef rancher, student activist, or the unemployed and unhoused person on the bike in my hometown. I also wonder what’s it like to be the red fox behind the barn, or the red tail hawk that flies overhead, or the redwood tree outside my door that has been alive since the time of my great, great, great grandparents. I can’t know for sure, but I can wonder.
And this leads me back to my friend Doug’s enigmatic quote about beauty saving the world. I’m not 100% sure about what we should do to ‘save the planet,’ but I am increasingly sure about the world I would want to live in. And the world I would be proud to leave my daughter and future generations to come. And that world is one where beauty matters, where people appreciate their relationships to each other, places, and other living things. A world where we humans collectively choose to make soil healthier, forests and oceans more diverse, air and rivers cleaner, political relations cordial, families nurturing, and individuals creative and engaged. These intuitions motivate me and can entice others. To me, this is beautiful. And just maybe it could save our world.
[1] Butler and Lubarsky, 2017, p. 1
[2] Deep Ecology
[3] The Natural Step