Yesterday we lost a true giant, a green pioneer, dear friend, and mentor to so many: Ray Anderson.
I first met Ray in 1995, when he gave a speech at a greening of Habitat for Humanity event Global Green organized in Atlanta. Bill Browning, a good friend and colleague who was helping with the meeting, told me, "You have to meet Ray Anderson. He's doing some amazing things."
Bill was right. With the help of President Mikhail Gorbachev In 1996, Global Green USA honored Ray -- we bestowed our inaugural corporate environmental leadership award upon him. Problem is, Ray was a tough act to follow. Who could live up to a man who was both brutally honest about what we were doing to future generations and the planet, while also putting his money where his mouth was in changing the course of his business (and humanity)?
Ray was a radical industrialist. To him, it was plain and simple: there was no other way to create a product and hold out any hope for a future for our children. So he set his sights high -- aiming to run a zero-footprint business, if not a restorative enterprise -- and set the best possible example for other businesses, big and small, to follow his lead. That is his legacy: hope for the future. Ray believed in humanity, despite our plundering of the Earth.
Ray was a powerful speaker. See the clip from his inspiring talk at the TED conference in 2009. "We have a choice to make during our brief visit to this beautiful blue and green living planet. To hurt it or to help it," he said. "For you, it's your call." Ray started every talk by getting the audience to hug. I loved that, and as with many things with Ray, took it as inspiration that a corporate CEO was getting everyone to hug. And his Southern way: he was saying we need to connect and love one another if we are going to turn things around.
As Ray said, "For theft of our children's future to be a crime, there must be a clear demonstrable alternative to the take-make-waste industrial system that so dominates our civilization, and is the major culprit, stealing our children's future, by digging up the earth and converting it to products that quickly become waste in a landfill or an incinerator. In short, digging up the earth and converting it to pollution."
I hope we heed his words. Thank you Ray, for taking responsibility for your corner of the world, and inspiring so many others to do the same.
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Ray Anderson read this poem during his TED conference talk regarding sustainability.
Tomorrow’s Child
© Glenn Thomas
Without a name; an unseen face
and knowing not your time nor place
Tomorrow’s Child, though yet unborn,
I met you first last Tuesday morn.
A wise friend introduced us two,
and through his sobering point of view
I saw a day that you would see;
a day for you, but not for me
Knowing you has changed my thinking,
for I never had an inkling
That perhaps the things I do
might someday, somehow, threaten you
Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son
I’m afraid I’ve just begun
To think of you and of your good,
Though always having known I should.
Begin I will to weigh the cost
of what I squander; what is lost
If ever I forget that you
will someday come to live here too.
An industrialist with a conscience and a deeply held respect for our planet.
"Interface leads the industry in the application of renewable energy through on-site solar energy generation and green energy contracts, including wind and bio-mass. The company is a charter partner in the U.S. EPA Climate Leaders Program, a voluntary partnership challenging businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and is also a founding member of the Green Power Market Development Group (GPMDG), a partnership of leading multinational corporations, the World Resources Institute, and Business for Social Responsibility. Interface Flooring Systems is one of 20 founding partners in the Green Power Partnership, a U.S. EPA program aimed at boosting the market for renewable energy alternatives that reduce the environmental and health risks of conventional electricity generation."
In harnessing the power of the landfill nearby the plant........
"The magnitude of this project is such that it offsets the greenhouse gas emissions for all of Interface's North American carpet manufacturing facilities, making them all climate neutral," said Wells, explaining that
unburned methane is 21 times as potent as carbon dioxide in its contribution to global warming."
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/panther-lounge/2011/08/foundation-mourns-green-business-hero-and-former-board-member/
His company Interface is just down the road from us in LaGrange, Ga. I became inspired by him when I worked briefly for a flooring company and in searching on the internet found his company with his commitment to the environment. There once was a link to David Suzuki's Foundation. Here is a photo of David Suzuki and Ray...on this link.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/panther-lounge/2011/08/foundation-mourns-green-business-hero-and-former-board-member/
He will be sorely missed.
http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312544553#Excerpt
A toolkit is being developed to accompany the film to help businesses improve their efforts for sustainability.
But "group hugs" and "zero footprint" or "carbon offsets" are just feel good measures created by hollywood and Al Gore so they can fly their jets around without guilt.!! We need serious R+D to find new energy solutions that are cheap and clean for the mid to long term. In the short term term we need to become energy independent by tapping into natural gas and our own oil.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
and get back to us.
And by the way, Obama has poured money into research for alternate sources of energy, research for islet cell DNA for cures for diabetes, etc.....through many universities. Stanford, some research facilities in Alabama......
www.propublica.org
look into news at Stanford online also.
www.offthegridmpls.blogspot.com