ecological entrepreneurs, the Fortune 500, and Ralph

John Gulick jlgulick at sfo.com
Wed Oct 4 20:37:04 PDT 2000


Been off-line and not paying much attention to matters political for the last few weeks. But I could not resist passing this along:


>Industrial Ecology 2000


>Global Futures and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business presents
"Industrial >Ecology 2000: Maximizing Shareholder Value, Lessons from the Natural
>World."


>Join David Brower, Bill Coors, and leaders from Ford, HP, Adobe Systems,
>Mitsubishi, Nike, the Rainforest Action Network, Global Exchange, the
Sierra >Club, and others, as they discuss global sustainability. Haas School of >Business, UC Berkeley, Gayley Rd. and Hearst, Berkeley, See website for cost >and complete schedule, http://www.globalfutures.org.

Now obviously a mere list of speakers at this venue tells one nothing about what sort of tensions and accomodations will take place there, but something is rotten in Denmark when organizations whose free-floating leaders are major endorsees of Ralph Nader (who lauded that god-awful "peoplist capitalism" folderol lampooned by Mike Davis) are breaking bread with bigshots from the Fortune 500 in some eco-cyber-groovy setting. I had to double-check the above just to make sure it wasn't some kind of hoax. Sometimes the level of confusion and betrayl reaches such a peak that one wonders if the chimera of the U.S. "left" (or what passes for it) isn't just a cruel joke perpetrated by some Cartesian evil genius. Anyway, not that electoral politics is simply about whose phalanx of endorsees is less repulsive, but it ain't just Korten and Mander -- all the foundation-driven sustainable capitalist hucksters are lining up in Nader's camp, as that previously circulating post showed. What with dot-com accumulation staggering and Gore poised to assume office as the shit hits the fan, I'm more poised than ever to pull the lever for the Dem, and watch the Jesse Jackson Jr. wing of the party divorce the DLC & Blue Dog camp (not that Jesse Jr.'s politics are mine, but then again nor are Paul Hawken's, and at least as Nathan would point out Jesse Jackson Jr. represents a potentially radicalizable constituency).

John Gulick



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