I found this on Facebook today -- great food for thought:


A long excerpt from Paul Hawken's book Blessed Unrest. Too good not to share.

In regards to the idea of Spaceship Earth.

"How would one design a spaceship to support biological life for two million years, or four billion? This is a question I have sometimes posed to corporate managers who could not see the practicality or necessity of transforming their business practices into ecological ones. One event at a large company that specialized in agricultural chemicals was particularly instructive, because it was precipitated by a vice president's sharp retort to a colleague's statement that there needed to be equitable distribution of resources as a prerequisite for moving toward a more sustainable world. His exact reply: "That is communism, socialism - it has nothing to do with ecology or the environment." Sixty of the company's chemical engineers were then divided into four teams, each with the same task: in two hours, design a spaceship that could leave earth and return in one hundred years with its crew alive, healthy, and happy...

All four proposals were sophisticated, but one stood out as the preferred ship for the long voyage out and back. The winning designers set up some unusual features. Instead of bringing caches of DVDs and display screens for onboard entertainment, they decided that a significant proportion of the passengers should be artists, musicians, actors, and storytellers. To endure for one century, the passengers needed to create a culture rather than simply consume one. They brought onboard a large variety of weeds, not just useful seeds, to enliven the soils and bring minerals to the surface.

They brought mycorrhizae and other fungi, bacteria, insects, and small animals - everything their company poisoned on earth for a profit. ...Of the several thousand products this company made, none were invited along on the trip. The designers realized they were too toxic to be released in a small environment, that being a spaceship five miles in diameter. Essentially, the winning team created a diverse ecosystem within which a socially just and equitable society practiced organic agriculture and designed all objects for disassembly, reuse, and recycling.

When the participants were asked if it was fair that 20 percent of the passengers received 80 percent of the fruits, vegetables, and medicines produced onboard, all of them, including the vice president...shouted the idea down and agreed that it would be unacceptable. Then the VP realized what he had said. After the exercise, a group of employees began an organic garden at headquarters, and several engineers quit their jobs."