Ray Anderson is a bit of a legend in sustainable business circles. He was from Georgia and even played American football for Georgia Tech to which he later bequeathed a Center in Sustainable Business. Today I’ll look at his book — Mid-Course Correction, and highlight the way he saw the role of technology in an environmental impact equation.
Mid-Course Correction Revisited
I should say that the version I read was Mid-Course Correction Revisited. This was edited, and added to, by Anderson’s grandson, John Lanier. This makes it a bit of a strange book. It was almost as though you started with Robert Graves’ translation of Suetonius and ended up with I Claudius. Both can be great but there is a somewhat jarring transition.
I must confess I was more interested in the first half — Ray Anderson’s thoughts. I appreciate things change and books can be seen as a little out of date. Still, part of the reason to read Anderson’s thoughts is to understand the ideas that motivated him. The discussion of God’s currency and Ecometrics wasn’t something you see in every book nowadays but that is one of the reasons to read it to understand Anderson’s thinking
Updating text is also a bit of a mug’s game when things change quickly. For instance, John Lanier’s comment from 2019 seemed extremely dated already (2023) as he contrasted our current generation’s morality with the values of:
…those who fought to create our country, enshrining values in our governmental system that persist today. We remain grateful to them long after they passed away.
Lanier in Anderson and Lanier, 2019, page 17
The US founders were human beings with some admirable points, Washington stepping down is very worthy of praise. Yet, they also had some pretty awful parts and not recognizing that seemed quite dated to me. I’m not buying that we are worse than them. They were human and we are too. Still, the relevant point for the present discussion is that things can get dated pretty quickly, so updating the book doesn’t really help for long anyhow.
The Environmental Impact Equation
One of the most interesting bits of the book is Anderson’s digression on technology. This is always a tricky subject. He clearly believes in the value of technology. The challenge if you laud technology, is that you risk being seen as advocating for doing nothing and hoping that technology will save us. The good news is that given how much Anderson was obviously doing he was pretty safe from that criticism.
He rewrote an environmental impact idea to see technology as a positive for the environment. Rather than being part of the problem, i.e., more technology equals more negative impact, the technology could help mitigate negative environmental impact. In Anderson’s terms, technology would change from being part of the numerator (amplifying the negative impact) to the denominator (reducing the negative impact).
Critically, although Anderson believed in technology he also believed that we need to do something to make the technology do what we want it to. We shouldn’t just sit back and wait for scientists and engineers to save us. Anderson wanted policy action to help businesses do well from doing good.
What will drive technology from the numerator to the denominator? I believe getting prices right is the biggest part of the answer; this means tax shifts and, perhaps, new financial instruments such as tradable emission credits, to make pollution cost the polluter — in effect, a carbon tax.
Anderson in Anderson and Lanier, 2019, page 17
I am excited about the role of technology. I believe it can be a denominator but that doesn’t mean it will be. Anderson saw this as a paradox. Being relaxed, e.g., thinking technology will save us, might make the alarmists’ vision come true if we use tech as an excuse not to take the necessary steps. On the other hand, the alarmists, if their alarms motivate technological improvement, might make the vision of those relying on technology come true.
The Towels
It was interesting to see how problems persist. Anderson took Interface to a hotel in Hawaii where they tried to foster a new environmentally sustainable culture. Part of the exercise was helping/encouraging the hotel to become more sustainable. Interestingly the Interface people noticed that the house-keepers wouldn’t leave used towels on the rack but would wash them whatever the Interface people did to signal that they were happy to reuse towels and instead wanted to prevent unnecessary cleaning. This — excessive towel cleaning despite policies not to — happens regularly whenever I travel. The key point being that when putting in positive policies we need to also work on helping make it actually happen. E.g., talk to the people who will do it and make sure they are on board and it is easy for them to do.
For more on sustainability see here and here. This includes free sustainable marketing cases see here.
For more on Interface’s sustainability see here.
For the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business see here.
Read: Ray Anderson and John A. Lanier, (2019), Mid-Course Correction Revisited: The Story and Legacy of a Radical Industrialist and his Quest for Authentic Change, Chelsea Green Publishing