“Minions” by JeepersMedia is licensed under CC BY 2.0

When I opened Winning Sustainability Strategies: Finding Purpose, Driving Innovation, and Executing Change, I hardly expected to encounter a reference to the classic animated movie, “Despicable Me” in a guide to successful business practices.

Yet authors Benoit Leleux and Jan Van der Kaaij credit Despicable Me’s aspiring villain, who reinvents himself as “Vector,” with inspiring the concept that forms the foundation of the entire book. In the movie, Vector exclaims that he chose his name “because I commit crimes with both direction and magnitude.”

Direction + magnitude = success.

The same logic can be applied to making good business decisions. Leleux and Van der Kaaij frame the concept of “vectoring” as the key to an effective sustainability strategy that allows companies to go beyond flashy visuals to exert an impact. Companies need to be the Vectors of the business world, executing their strategies with both direction and magnitude.

These may seem like obvious steps, yet Leleux and Van der Kaaij explain that most companies’ approach to sustainability is “slow at best, sloppy and ineffective at worst.” 

Too many companies get caught up in the lofty narratives of sustainability campaigns and high scores on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors without taking the proper steps to implement a plan of action. Sustainability reporting is important for measuring current company performance, but focusing on the present can distract from planning for the future. Metrics are only numbers unless they are used to further climate action.

Leleux and Van der Kaaij wrote Winning Sustainability Strategies to change just that: walking business leaders through a step-by-step process of developing, marketing, and executing an effective sustainability strategy. It’s a process grounded in purpose, not just profits. 

If you’re like me, technical jargon about corporate sustainability can make my head spin. But Leleux and Van der Kaaij’s book is a breath of fresh air—analyzing Dow Jones Sustainability Index data, thirteen case studies, and thirty company examples in an easy-to-read, motivational piece. 

Nor do you have to be in business yourself to appreciate the tips and tricks these authors have to offer.

Winning Sustainability Strategies isn’t stuck in the conceptual clouds. Leleux and Van der Kaaij back up their recommendations by spotlighting companies that are already making a difference. They highlight top restaurants across the world, Tony’s Chocolonely chocolate, Patagonia, McDonald’s, and Miguel Torres Wines to evaluate gaps in and benefits of current companies’ practices.

The book’s structure mirrors the approach needed for sustainable program development. Part I presents a framework to help leaders develop winning strategies. Part II guides companies in the right, focused direction. Part III recommends strategies to help companies accelerate their sustainability programs, generating speed and momentum to achieve the greatest impact.

Each part is centered around the concept of “vectoring.” The “Despicable Me-” inspired concept of vectoring grounds the entire book as both a “diagnostic tool and a prescriptive method.” Leleux and Van der Kaaij show how companies perform in comparison to their competitors (the diagnostic aspect). Those insights can inform the design of new programs that center on sustainability goals (the prescriptive method). Companies must have this sense of direction so that sustainability doesn’t just lie on a fancy webpage, but is an issue at the heart of the entire companies’ actions. 

ESG isn’t just about excluding bad companies from portfolios anymore. It’s about holistically integrating sustainability criteria into all business practices, shifting money away from fossil fuels while investing in clean energy opportunities. 

Shareholders and the general public are pushing companies to do better. With the help of Winning Sustainability Strategies, companies can be better equipped to develop and implement effective sustainability strategies. Incorporating sustainability considerations into business practices isn’t just altruistic, it’s profitable.

It’s the way of the future.

The Slums of Aspen uncovers the dark realities of one of America’s wealthiest ski towns

Photo courtesy of AspenSnowmass, Jeremy Swanson

Aspen, Colorado evokes images of snowy mountain passes, fancy ski resorts, expensive retreats, and scenic winter views. Its long-standing reputation as the ultimate skiing destination for the ultra-elite in the United States has made it one of the most expensive towns in the nation. If you look closely though, underneath these alluring images of beauty and wealth lies something less enchanting – environmental privilege.

Environmental privilege is the ability for certain groups of people, through their economic, political, or social power, to retain exclusive access to environmental amenities like clean air and water at the expense of others.

Lisa Sun-Hee Park and David Naguib Pellow’s The Slums of Aspen: Immigrants vs. the Environment in America’s Eden calls attention to the environmental privilege that underpins Aspen. Though there has been a growing awareness of the environmental problems that face many poor communities and communities of color, the book seeks to highlight the people and institutions that place these communities in harm’s way in the first place.

Though there’s an abundance of books and studies that cover topics like environmental racism and environmental inequality, less abundant are those that look at the role of environmental privilege in outsourcing these injustices.

The book explains how environmental privilege operates within Aspen for its wealthy tourists at the expense of its immigrant residents. Park and Pellow demonstrate the profound irony that many wealthy tourists and residents are critical of the population growth of immigrants because of the supposed strain on environmental resources they are causing. Afterall, tourists often have 10,000-square-foot vacation homes with heated outdoor driveways and swimming pools that are maintained year-round, ready for a visit. Immigrant workers, on the other hand, barely get by with their meager wages and live far away from their Aspen workplaces in mobile homes located in low-lying regions where they’re susceptible to floods and other environmental harms.

The strength of Park and Pellow’s analysis comes from their ability to zoom out from Aspen and look at how the wealth and privilege of these tourists is magnified globally through capitalism. For instance, the wealth that has allowed tourists to even be rich enough to maintain a mansion year-round in Aspen stems, in large part, from the polluting and exploitative industries that allow the wealthy to line their pockets. These industries, in turn, inflict ecological violence through the disproportionate health impacts suffered by communities of color and working-class neighborhoods around the world that are often located near these industries.

The book does fall flat in the way it characterizes the environmental movement as predominantly nativist, affluent, and white. Park and Pellow blanket the environmental movement as being part of a “politics of the rich and comfortable.” The book even goes further by describing the mainstream environmental movement as one that is not concerned about racial or social justice.

This very broad portrayal ignores the long history that people of color have had as they struggled and fought for their rights to a healthy environment. The assumption that only white people care about the environment rings hollow.

Of course, I can’t be too harsh – this book was only published in 2011 and much has changed since then. For instance, issues concerning environmental justice (or privilege for that matter) have only recently been put at the front and center of the movement.

Despite these weaknesses, the book’s focus on how immigrants are forcibly marginalized and rejected drives the story forward through the very honest accounts of the struggles that they face. Lorena, an immigrant worker who works in hotels in and around Aspen, for instance, explains: “You just feel that you’re not wanted around those rich people other than to do their housekeeping, you know?” Even though immigrant workers are vital to the flourishing of the economy and the vibrancy of the community, they often find themselves left out at best, or targets for racist attacks at worst. Perhaps I shouldn’t be too surprised, merely disappointed. Afterall, the immigrant experiences recounted in this book are not unique to Aspen – not at all.

The book captures the frustration of the authors – a frustration that sits with the readers as they too try to understand the inherent contradictions of how a place like Aspen, often portrayed as environmentally conscious and liberal as it is so often portrayed, falls short of ever being truly aware of itself as a town rooted in environmental privilege.

But more than simply wallowing in their frustrations, Park and Pellow recognize the importance of calling out environmental privilege and the forces that stand in the way of a just and sustainable future – not just in Aspen, but everywhere.

photo: the living green new deal website.

During the 2020 US presidential election, I spent a lot of time working with the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led climate organization. That also meant I spent a lot of time talking about the Green New Deal. The policy’s slogan of “the right to millions of good jobs and a livable future” was usually warmly received, but explaining the details was hard. 

While phonebanking or tabling, I would get questions like:  “What would life be like under a Green New Deal?” “Who wins and who loses?” Despite my enthusiasm for the Green New Deal, I didn’t know how to answer those questions. 

In A Planet to Win, authors Daniel Aldana Cohen, Alyssa Battistoni, Thea Riofrancos, and Kate Aronoff provide those answers. They detail what life under a Green New Deal would be like, why it is necessary, and what it will take to get there. 

Each author’s path to climate activism is different, and each has a different academic background, but in the book, they speak with one voice. Among their ranks are a sociologist, two political scientists, and a journalist, all of whom have spent years reading about and researching the scientific and social intersections of climate change. 

The book is first and foremost a pitch for a Green New Deal. Though the authors draw on the proposal first introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in 2019, they do not limit themselves to it. Pushing beyond the boundaries of the original proposal, the authors discuss the international implications of an energy transition, and make explicit the need to shift away from capitalism. 

When I spoke about the Green New Deal with voters during the 2020 cycle, the economic cost of the proposal was always a top-of-mind issue. Surprisingly, the authors don’t linger on the topic. Funding, they argue, is always available for federal priorities. The trick is making the Green New Deal a legislative priority, so, instead, they dive immediately deeply into a visionary, optimistic exploration of all that a Green New Deal could be. 

Using historical examples and their own imaginations, the authors ask the reader to picture a world where electricity is free to everyone; where jobs, healthcare, and homes are guaranteed; where we work less and play more, enjoying new hiking trails, nature reserves, and urban green spaces; where public transportation is free and electrified; and where democratic processes are a given, not fought for. 

Beneath the almost utopian descriptions of life under a just energy transition, the authors weave together a persuasive argument for action by focusing on four strategic “battlegrounds”: fossil fuels and private utilities, labor, the built environment, and the global supply chains of a renewable transition.

Talking to voters, and even my college peers, the questions I got most frequently after concerns about economic cost were about what would happen to fossil fuel industry workers. In other words, what does a just transition really mean? We were trained to keep it simple: a just transition would be ensured through a federal jobs guarantee buoyed by large-scale infrastructure projects required to enact the Green New Deal. 

Planet to Win expands upon this idea. Yes, a federal jobs guarantee is one solution, but, they argue, “mere job training…isn’t going to cut it.” The authors rely on the idea that, in coal mines and on oil rigs, many fossil fuel industry jobs are harmful to the environment and workers. A just transition would empower all workers by strengthening labor rights, and making work healthier and more democratic. 

With a federal jobs guarantee, and with thousands of new infrastructure projects from retrofitting buildings to expanding clean energy, jobs would be plentiful. Even after the energy transition, there will always be low-carbon care and environmental work available. Coal miners in West Virginia or Wyoming, for example, could be paid by the government to turn abandoned coal mines into national parks.

A year and a half after its original publication in 2019, the book seems more urgent than ever. In 2020, there were 22 major weather and climate disasters in the US, the most in history. Around the world, greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, as does the sea level, and the Arctic is melting much faster than expected.

While I found myself inspired by the picture of the future painted by the authors, I also found myself wrestling with a nagging question: can a book like this really reach the people it needs to? I may be drawn in by the image of diverse neighborhoods, electric buses on every street, and a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers… but will everyone be? 

The authors recognize the need to build a movement that meets the needs of all people, but there is no clear roadmap for how to really build a coalition-based movement, or how to bring those not already signed onto the vision into the fold. Maybe, it starts with all of us who advocate for the Green New Deal reading A Planet to Win, internalizing what the vision we are fighting for actually looks like, and conversation-by-conversation moving us towards a common hope for the future, rather than regurgitating catchy slogans. 

Now is a critical moment. Many of the political and social conditions the authors call fertile ground for the Green New Deal are now here. We have a more progressive president, a slim majority in the Senate, and an active climate movement. Even more importantly, according to the authors, we are in the midst of a serious social crisis (the Covid-19 Pandemic). If the US is going to take the first big steps towards realizing a Green New Deal, this is the moment. A Planet to Win offers a vision of what that would mean.

“When we take, we must not only give back,” writes Naomi Klein, “but we must also take care.” A critique of Western consumer culture, Klein’s harrowing words stress the desperate need to recover our symbiotic relationship with planet Earth before it’s too late…and it’s getting pretty darn close to too late.

Published in 2014, Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate exposes the relationship between corporate capitalism and climate change. Throughout the book, Klein tells the story of her own reckoning with climate change. Employing a combination of personal anecdotes from her research and hard climate data into a worrisome wake-up call for the West. 

How did we get to this turning point? This question, central to Klein’s analysis, doesn’t have a simple answer. Klein proposes, however, a number of factors that hurried us along including over-consumption, free-trade, and corporate investment in climate denial initiatives. 

Klein begins her book by examining Western consumption patterns. She critiques de-industrializing wealthy nations for being those most responsible for our current climate predicament. De-industrializing nations, or nations that previously underwent a technological expansion that resulted in the majority of the current pollutants, include the United States and the United Kingdom.  Zeroing-in on the expansion of free-market capitalism, Klein prescribes a corrective path for the West: “less consumption (except among the poor), less trade (as we relocalize our economies), and less private investment in producing for excessive consumption.”  By following this path, Klein believes Western nations can work to redistribute the large sums of wealth collected during the age of imperialism at the expense of nations like China and India, who are only now undergoing their own massive economic growth.

For hundreds of years, industrialized nations have been exploiting the Earth. Yet, these nations don’t face the brunt of the devastation. Instead, those most affected are historically marginalized groups, including Indigenous peoples, across the world. Specifically, Klein recounts stories from the First Nations people of Canada, to the Micronesian Island Nations, and farther, to the Niger Delta. Klein calls on post-industrial nations to lead the way in emissions reductions since they are most responsible for creating this climate disaster. Seeing this moment as an opportunity “to reckon, as our ancestors did, with our vulnerability to the elements that make up both the planet and our bodies,” rather than fight literally to the death to extract every last fossil fuel deposit on the planet, Klein’s work emphasizes a cooperative approach instead of the volatile alternative.

Next, Klein calls extractivism to the stand. Defined as “a nonreciprocal, dominance-based relationship with the earth,” extractivist policies rely on taking as much as possible. Klein states that extractivist policies work by  “turning living complex ecosystems into natural resources” and reduce “human beings…into labor.” An objectification of life, extractivism places a value on living things, not for the sake of life, but for their profitability, encouraged by Western consumer culture. To overcome the pervasive extractivist culture that Western capitalism perpetuates, Klein calls on wealthy nations to work with developing nations. Instead of outsourcing production to access cheap labor and avoid emissions penalties, Klein recommends that Western nations work to localize their economies once more.

This Changes Everything tells the harrowing story of how unregulated capitalism landed us in a climate disaster. Leaving us with much-needed hope, Klein encourages her readers to channel their frustration at the system into actionable climate activism. The Sunrise Movement, a growing youth movement that values non-violent action rather than traditional bureaucratic approaches, exemplifies the message behind Klein’s book: it’s not enough for us to recycle our bottles and purchase carbon offsets. Rather, we must elect leaders who put our planet’s future ahead of wealth accumulation. In 2020 alone the Sunrise Movement has met with President-elect Joe Biden to help formulate his climate plan, in addition to placing millions of phone calls on his behalf prior to the election. This massive achievement emphasizes the power of collective action and the desire among young people to hold our representatives accountable for the current state of our planet.

Klein’s final takeaway? Live nonextractively. This means “relying overwhelmingly on resources that can be continuously regenerated” like solar power and sourcing food from sustainable farming methods “that protect soil fertility.” Individuals alone cannot solve this crisis. If we as a species want to not only survive but continue growing in the coming decades, it’s crucial that those in power have the best interests of the planet in mind. In addition to this, we must supply “energy from methods that harness the ever-renewing strength of the sun, wind, and waves” and use “our metals from recycled and reused sources.” Readers and leaders alike must choose for themselves whether to continue on a path of climate ignorance or to embrace environmental justice through sustainability and nonextraction.

Damage left by Typhoon Haiyan (Source AP)

In 2013, one of the biggest typhoons in history hit the Philippines. Super Typhoon Haiyan, referred to as Yolanda in the Philippines, brought 300 km/hr winds and storm surges of up to 4 meters. The storm affected 60 million Philippinos, killing 6,000, and hit the island of Eastern Visayas the hardest. Haiyan was the 24th storm to slam the country that year. It was by far the most deadly. 

As Haiyan tore through the Philippines, the destruction it left behind was unparalleled. The storm leveled entire communities within its path. For those right along the coast, storm surges completely submerged them in water. The millions forced to relocate were then left in dire need of resources. These resources came from the efforts of the government and outside aid providers. 

In the wake of the storm, the government of the Philippines received praise for its resilience and approach to rebuilding after such devastation. In the seven years following the typhoon, studies have assessed the work of the government and its approach to resilience. Though the Philippines has been struck by countless storms since 2013, the scale and impact of this storm, allows for in depth criticism on the government response and what it means for the Philippines today.

 A study released in 2017 by Researcher Colin Walch who specialized in disaster risk reduction, goes further in depth into the structural issues that the Philippines faced when recovering from Haiyan. Walch argues that talks of resilience at the national level do not translate to results for vulnerable populations. The government had well developed risk management strategies and a risk aware environment due to the country’s vulnerability. However, the scale of the damage and issues in implementation inhibited their resilience. Policies were focused on technical aspects of resilience and not the root causes of the issues the country was facing. These issues lay in social inequality and land ownership. 

 The Philippines has one of the highest rates of income inequality in the world and it shows through the implementation of its recovery policy. Easter Visayas experienced delays in receiving aid due to the island’s difficult terrain and internal conflicts between the local government and the national government. Delays in aid disproportionately affect lower income populations. Many of those impacted were those that weren’t land owners living in informal settlements. These settlements were often in high-risk areas and these populations were slower to recover.   

Diving into the topic of income equality from the angle of housing recovery, architect and researcher, Ivette Arryo examines and critiques the government response to super typhoon Haiyan through the housing recovery effort in her 2019 study. Arroyo focuses on the intentions of  housing recovery, its implementation, and what factors were holding those efforts back. In the aftermath of Haiyan, the goal was to create permanent housing structures to relocate at-risk communities. 

The government hit roadblocks in this effort. When it came time to rebuild and relocate populations to safer places, this process was slowed because the government did not have enough land to relocate the amount of people that needed housing. The government lacked legal title to land due to private ownership. In some cases, what land they could use had inadequate infrastructure. Private landowners, which consisted of the elite class, have both economic and political power, resulting in policies that favor the middle and upper classes and leave lower classes out cold.

 This lack of land in safe areas led to low amounts of permanent housing and a replication of what made communities vulnerable to prior disasters. The most vulnerable communities were still at risk because they could not afford to move from where they were.

 While the wealthier populations were quick to recover, the most vulnerable had a slower recovery process. True resilience does not come until the most vulnerable populations are resilient. This calls into question what we mean when we say climate resiliency. Climate resilience is the ability to recover or “bounce back” from the effects of climate change. We have to ask ourselves if we consider the ability to bounce back from storm after storm from the perspective of the privileged, or if it takes into account everybody. I hope it’s the latter.

 As the climate changes, cases like The Philippines will become more common, and we need to take the criticisms of the approach to disaster relief  and apply it broadly. Especially as income inequality begins to rise around the world and poor communities will become increasingly vulnerable to natural disasters. While the Philippines may have had a better relief outcome than other cyclone disasters, it should not be the standard, we should continue to strive to be better. 

Most people believe hookworm to be a disease of the past. Known as “the germ of laziness,” hookworm ravaged the American South in the early 20th century causing developmental issues in children, fatigue, and intestinal problems like diarrhea. In Alabama, the tropical parasite forced stricter public health regulations, and a law requiring wastewater treatment was passed in 1927.

However, when Catherine Coleman Flowers developed a mysterious rash after visiting a rural Alabama home mired in wastewater a few years ago, she knew something was awry. Flowers later learned that she had been infected with hookworm, a century after the state required action to limit its spread.

Research found that hookworm was far from foreign in Lowndes County, a rural community in Alabama situated between Selma and Montgomery. Hookworm thrives today because of widespread wastewater management failures and an increasingly tropical climate due to rising temperatures. Over a third of the county’s residents had been infected with hookworm, which only takes skin contact to spread from wastewater to people.

This epidemic might not have been known without Flowers’ advocacy, detailed in Waste: One Woman’s Fight Against America’s Dirty Secret. In the part-narrative, part-autobiography about her fight for racial and environmental justice, Flowers brings a personal and historical perspective to the water infrastructure problems plaguing rural America.

Catherine Coleman Flowers by Audra Melton (via New York Times)

A native of Lowndes County, Flowers is an environmental activist whose mission is rooted in the need to “challenge structural racism no matter where it appears.” The predominantly Black Lowndes County, also known as “bloody Lowndes,” is a community in Alabama’s Black Belt that suffers from a violent history of racism and white supremacy. Flowers’ upbringing in Lowndes during the Civil Rights Movement influenced her from a young age to challenge the systems that perpetuate racism.

To underscore the importance of raising awareness of the water issues rural America faces today, Flowers points out “Flint gained attention because infrastructure failed. In places like Lowndes County, however, there’s no infrastructure in the first place.”

Many rural communities in the US from California to West Virginia rely on septic systems, or standalone ways to treat and store wastewater due to the lack of municipal water infrastructure. As many as 20% of Americans use a septic system to manage waste.

Septic systems consist of a tank where the water is treated, and a drain field where the water gets discharged. However, this process becomes complicated when the soil in the drain field does not allow for adequate water drainage, like in Lowndes County. Not only does its high clay content affect the water filtration process; climate change and the rising underground water table cause septic systems to fail more frequently. 

An estimated 90% of residents in Lowndes County do not have working septic systems, partly due to their high cost. Septic systems cost upwards of $15,000 in Lowndes County where the average household makes $30,000 annually. Even with the investment, new septic systems can fail, forcing residents to discharge untreated sewage straight onto their own property. Homes that are connected to a municipal system in the area also report of sewage getting backed up into their homes. 

Not only are people forced to live in the unsanitary conditions of wastewater if they don’t have a working septic system; they can be fined, or even jailed. Though these laws may have been initially implemented to increase compliance, they criminalize poverty because it penalizes people for not having enough money to set up a working septic system. 

The appalling wastewater conditions in rural communities are an issue of human rights and dignity. At the same time, it is one that is difficult to understand unless experienced personally. Flowers recounts the homes she would visit with yards littered with children’s toys and human waste, feces clinging to the walls outside of the house, and the overpowering smell of raw sewage.  

Flowers standing by a hole filled with sewage (via WSFA 12 News)

To raise awareness and secure funding, Flowers brought journalists, corporate executives, and US senators, from Bernie Sanders to Jeff Sessions to Lowndes County. Despite their political differences, Flowers was able to connect with Sessions based on their shared experiences growing up poor in rural Alabama. Flowers’ working with Sessions provides a powerful perspective on how to build coalitions and enact change no matter the political climate.

Waste brings to light the system struggles of rural American poverty and the conditions it forces people into. Inadequate water infrastructure is only a symptom of this larger, structural issue. Black rural areas lack not only the infrastructure but also the political and economic power to make their environments livable. Flowers ends on a note of hope, and a call to action for all of us to work for change that’s not only powerful, but personal, as well.