Mark, thank you for taking on this issue.

Social Media and Mainstream television is a very costly resource to waste on protest, debate and blame. It wastes time and takes away resources that can counteract harm.

I have made my position clear on this and offered my call for action in all my media


http://aboutworkecology.typepad.com and in my facebook profile.

here are specific posts and links


Benzene - The New Chemical Agenda - Empathy after the Spill #safechem

http://bit.ly/bjBosk


After BP - Will the Global Economy Embed the Precautionary Principle?

http://bit.ly/cHGPTH


I am now convening a Safe Chemical project and just left a meeting this afternoon reaching out to a national group of accupuncturists who did the voluntary outreach in Louisiana post Katrina.

This group can be instrumental in reducing risk of cancer (lymphoma and leukemia) from benzene exposure.

I have also convened a private group by invitation only to build relationship of trust that can lead to examining chemical risks and embedding precaution as an triple bottom line activity.

A new trend emerged out of my activity in my email, letters from people associating my work with citizen advocacy and someone sent me an email asking me to expose someone in health care doing things illegal.

I took the time to respond to people and define who I am and what I do and why.

To me at this time, Social Media and the CSR network need to get honest, conscious and act on strategies that can embed precaution. This means a lot of hard work, not a lot of yacking, accusation and chat.

Cordially,
Lavinia Weissman
http://www.laviniaweissman.com

Cheers Marc.

I agree with your assessment that pointing fingers at each other only puts us in the same light as the BP executives at the Congressional Hearing. In spite of my belief that there is an important role for activist groups like Greenpeace to play in our transition to a sustainable world (if nothing but helping the rest of us "revolutionaries" appear more moderate and approachable by mainstream society), I still believe that we have little time to waste in taking action aimed at positive and innovative solutions. Promoting anger and hatred are counterintuitive to what we are trying to achieve.

We must remain focused on the end-game and that is going to involve a lot more common sense, responsibility, teamwork, understanding, and sacrifice. We must rise above the Mutually Assured Destruction mentality and begin to live under a new doctrine of Mutually Assured Progress.

Brad Peirce
Naturalinks Communications

I admire your activism and pursuit of all that is good and true in the world, Lavinia. I look forward to reading your book. I agree that our world needs a lot more precaution and accountability. My fear in focusing on precaution with regard to sustainability, however, is that it implies a focus on risk aversion which is an area in which much of the environmental movement has been stuck for decades.

While I completely agree that our businesses need to embed sensibility at the core, I am a staunch supporter of accelerated growth and innovation in the CSR and Sustainability movements which would imply taking great risks rather than avoiding them. In our pursuit of a sustainable world, which we need now at an increasingly scientifically evident rate, we will need take bold risks which will inevitably result in failure and in some rare cases disaster. However, we must move aggressively toward a sustainable world with the same courage, determination, and zeal as our ancestors did during the time of Manifest Destiny.

In spite of how much I theoretically support the idea of Embedded Precaution, I fear that a focus on that might bury our mission under certain bureaucracies that come with precautionary measures where other businesses continue to operate free of those constraints. I would add that I don't completely agree with the use of BP as an example of the antithesis of precaution. From all that I have read and heard, BP took many precautions to ensure the safety of its operations (as most oil companies do). I believe the central problem that existed in the BP disaster was an issue of priorities. In this case, decisions were made that prioritized the bottom line (profit) and excluded the other two key ingredients of sustainability (people and planet). The decision to expedite the capping of the well and to use a somewhat less safe measure clearly showed that they cared more about the money they were losing than the potential loss of local ecosystems and livelihoods. Had the BP Executives prioritized a balanced approach to their decision (people, planet, profit) then they would have worked aggressively to consider all three in their decision.

Finally, I believe that we must follow natural laws as much as possible in order to be truly and successfully sustainable. I don't see a lot of examples in nature of precaution, except perhaps with regard to some of the more advanced species. Most of nature exists in a perpetual state of aggressive competition and survival at all costs. But, the key difference between how we live and how the rest of nature exists is that everything in nature considers its own local ecosystem (resources, living organisms, elements) in every "decision" that it makes. Somehow our business decisions have become far removed from the local ecosystems within which we operate. Thankfully, that is changing.

Without having read your future book, perhaps this is what you are arguing as well. If it isn't, I look forward to understanding your case in more detail. Keep up the good work.

Brad Peirce
Naturalinks Communications

First of all, congrats for a spot-on comment, Marc! Nice to see you in motion for once.

"This is crap" indeed. And all Greenpeace is doing at the moment is making people commit their time and effort into producing even more crap, while their determination could be used so much more productively.

I'm probably not contributing much by criticizing Greenpeace (again), but I can't help noticing analogies to other issues taken on by this organization - once again, it mobilizes people more to get angry rather than think rationally about what happened and what lessons should be drawn (those who did think for themselves took action, for example by cleaning the water with stockings filled with hair), AND once again it is focusing on action far away from the center of events (don't tell me there's no GP in the US, and don't tell me it is not the US where help is needed at the moment?).

I believe that the innovation in CSR and Sustainability movements mentioned by Brad above will have to consist of shifting public attention from well-established "Green" NGO names (or at least questioning the authority and actions of those) and bringing in a new look on Civil Society - one which would clearly state that it is not a disgrace to cooperate with companies in order to achieve sustainability, and that mere condemnation campaigns AFTER something happens are counterproductive. It will require some educational effort, and most probably won't happen overnight, as the stigma of more conciliatory NGO "selling out" to Corporations keeps radicals' donations flowing in, but I believe it is worth the effort. For nature's sake.

Greetings Maciek Kokot

Maciek,

I wrote a recent editorial questioning what Kumi Naido, the new international leader of Greenpeac meant when he said at the #griconference, "It is not business as usual." and what the BP Oil Spill implied.

#griconference It's not Business as Usual #ceres10 #unglobalcompact
May 30, 2010 by Lavinia Weissman
http://bit.ly/b1GWgk

Marc, again thank you for stepping up with your voice.

Brad, what you talk about here in terms of acceleration and insuring that "embedded precaution," does not imply "risk aversion" is right on. There is a new method of risk assessment in use in EU that is not widely adopted in the United States. it is called "possibilistic risk assessment." It is a term coined by Frank Furendi in the UK.

What this form of risk assessment implies is that R&D and innovation practice will adopt use of forecasting the worst case future scenarios from which to develop innovative practices. I will say more about that in my next blog post.

I have been research "exercising precaution" and its implications since 2001. I have a natural ability and do it well to facilitate inquiry of relevance for focus on metrics that have ESG and Health impact. Very few companies understand the advantage of that and why the hard work up front can same millions in mistakes and harm, while increasing market share and securing a sustainable balance sheet that keeps good people employed. This is the whole focus of my work, consulting, writing and change leadership practice.

In fact, I am going to talk about this in my next blog post, that I hope you will read relative to the research, science and need for innovation re: electromagnetic radiation and non-ionizing radition - which circles the discussions re: use of cell phones, antennae and more.

Lavinia