Focus on speaking

1. Comment on the words of Stewart Udall: “We stand today poised on a pinnacle of wealth and power, yet we live in a land of vanishing beauty, of increasing ugliness, of shrinking open space and of an overall environment that is diminished daily by pollution and noise and blight. This, in brief, is the quiet conservation crisis”.

2. Using the material of the unit prove that humanity has done its best to shorten its own lifetime and that of the planet.

Unit 3 Business and Ecology: Ways out

Pre-text exercises

1. a) Make sure that you know how to pronounce the following words, consult the dictionary if necessary:

environmental, ameliorate, commerce – commercial, weapons, uncompromising, Alaska, authorities, disobedience, Amsterdam, Netherlands, cooperatively, industrialization, to finance – financing – finance, to thrive, urgent, to deplete, issue, dilemma, diversity, imbalance, uniformity, California, retail, clothing, catalog, environmentalism, to purchase – purchase, to attribute – attribute, exclusively, strategy, to merchandise – merchandise, to vary – variety – various, media, sustainability, annual, doubt, to pledge, preservation

b) Translate these words into Russian.

Now read the following text and do the exercises after it.

Text

There are tens of thousands of environmental groups in the world trying to abate or at least ameliorate the destruction of the world by commerce. The best known one is Greenpeace - international environmental organization dedicated to preserving the earth’s natural resources and its diverse plant and animal life. It campaigns against nuclear weapons testing, environmental pollution, and destructive practices in fishing, logging, and other industries and has won immense respect and admiration for their uncompromising determination. Greenpeace was founded in 1971 by members of the Don’t Make a Wave Committee, a small group opposed to nuclear weapons testing by the USA military in Alaska. The group renamed itself Greenpeace to reflect the broader goal of creating a green and peaceful world. Greenpeace’s aggressive style has often led to conflicts with corporations, local authorities, and even national governments. During the 1990s Greenpeace has been troubled by internal disagreements over political strategy. Some members want to persist with a militant approach, emphasizing civil disobedience and physical confrontation. Other members, including the organization leaders, are convinced that Greenpeace must work cooperatively with the companies and industries that have been its targets in the past. Today Greenpeace has about 3-million dues-paying members and more than 40 offices in 30 countries. Its international headquarters are in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

We don’t usually think of ecology and business as compatible subjects. But to create an enduring society, we’ll need a system of commerce and production where each and every act is inherently sustainable and restorative, by integrating economic, biologic, and human systems.

The economy of restoration is the opposite of industrialization. Industrial economics separated production processes from land values, the land from people, and economic values from personal values. In an industrial, extractive economy, businesses are created to make money. Their financing and ability to grow are determined by their capacity to produce money. In a restorative economy viability is determined by the ability to integrate or replicate cyclical systems, in its means of production and distribution. The restorative economy would invert many fundamentals of the present system. We would need to rethink our markets entirely.

Markets, so extremely effective at setting prices, are not currently equipped to recognize the true costs of producing goods. Because of this, business has two contradictory forces operating upon it: the need to achieve the lowest price in order to thrive if not survive in the market place, and the increasingly urgent social demand that it takes on board all the costs of being more environmentally friendly. Without any doubt, the most damaging aspect of the present economic system is that the cost of destroying the earth is not reflected in the prices set in the marketplace. In the restorative economy there is a prospect that restoring the environment and making money would be the same process. Corporations could compete to converse and increase resources rather than deplete them.

We’ve learned that business has three basic issues to face: what it takes, what it makes and what it wastes. The solution of all these three dilemmas is contained in fundamental principles that govern nature. First, in nature waste equals food, as waste is constantly recycled to nourish other systems. An ecological model of commerce would imply that all waste has value to other modes of production so that everything is reclaimed, reused, or recycled. Second, nature depends on diversity, thrives on differences, and perishes in the imbalance of uniformity. Healthy systems are highly varied and specific to time and place.

The restorative economy is beginning to prosper. In the USA alone, an estimated 70,000 companies are already committed to some form of environmental commerce that competes with businesses that are not willing to adapt. California-based retail firm, Patagonia can serve as an example of a “green” company. It’s an outdoor clothing catalog which employs an exemplary method of communicating its corporate environmentalism to consumers. As a result, customers are informed about the company's environmental progress, and they are loyal to it. When purchasing products from Patagonia, customers also buy into a commitment to environmental restoration. Patagonia's example demonstrates good green-marketing strategies.

Patagonia educates consumers on environmental product attributes and benefits. It takes pains to explain its products' earth-friendliness. For instance, in the mid-1990s, Patagonia began using organically-grown cotton exclusively. In addition to highlighting the organic merchandise in product descriptions in catalogs, essays explained why organically-produced products are environmentally preferable. Broad environmental education teaches consumers that although thinking and buying green is more expensive, environmentalism is less taxing on the earth in the long run, and therefore, on individuals.

Patagonia uses a variety of media to educate and attract people. Instead of a catalog packed only with sales information, Patagonia's catalog is more like National Geographic. Demonstrations in Patagonia's retail stores engage customers with interactive displays of the earth's processes. Annual reports, pamphlets and other company literature explain new ideas in environmentalism. And Patagonia was one of the first companies to discuss sustainability in paid media.

Patagonia realizes that customers sometimes doubt corporate environmental claims. To avoid consumer backlash, the company publishes the results of its internal environmental assessment. This report reviews all office, production and merchandising activities and uncovers opportunities to cut waste and reduce energy. Readers can see how Patagonia tries to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, from choosing long-lasting efficient light bulbs to providing on-site child care for employees' children. The grounds around the company's headquarters even feature edible landscaping - banana trees.

Through an environmental grants program, dubbed Earth Tax, Patagonia pledges 1 % of its sales or 10% of its pre-tax profit, whichever is greater, to small, local preservation and restoration efforts. By April 1997, Patagonia had contributed more than $8m to hundreds of such organizations.

Believing that ordinary efforts do the most to raise community awareness of local problems, the Earth Tax program targets smaller organizations committed to issues such as biodiversity, old-growth forests, environmentally preferable methods of resource extraction, alternative energy and water, social activism and environmental education. By funding more than 350 of these efforts each year, Patagonia helps raise community awareness nationwide.