Telling the Green Story - and Making People Listen
Here's the story (Swan): hyper-active kid grows up, decides to become an adventurer and, because he read a lot of cool books as a kid about Artic exploring (and Antartic exploring, as well), decides he wants to retrace the steps of the original explorers in the Antartic. All good. We get that. All of us know enough about the topic to predict what happens next. Two things, actually. One, money is hard to raise for such an exploration. That's easy to figure out. Two, the explorers get in trouble. All this makes the story interesting. There's a twist in all this that makes it even better: the explorer becomes a green advocate and tries to change the world. Also predictable, if you think about it. I could stop now, but we need to consider the topic.
There are politics that make a solution for our green problems hard to solve. The science of our green problems is hard, as well. We don't know precisely what to do, especially when we balance the green problems with the capitalistic need for growth.
The federal government, in all sorts of ways, is trying to spur business to recognize the need for change, and more importantly, do something about it. In my speeches to entrepreneurs, I always try to make clear that there is no free money from the government. If you take a grant or a loan you're going to have to work to get it and then you'd better perform according to your business plan. Or you are in trouble.
So, we have to realize that the government is interested and that the government doesn't know what to do. We talked about capitalistic growth. Well, in less obvious terms, the government is pointing to an opportunity to fix things before it is too late. Take that government money or not, realize that the opportunity still exists for you and your company to do something. Think about it. What are you going to do? And how are you going to make it profitable?
Reference
Swan, Robert and Gil Reavill. Antarctica 2041. My Quest to Save the Earth's Last Wilderness. Broadway Books. 2009.