I regularly receive information from people about business opportunities and other money-making propositions. I’m sure you do to. Usually these propositions are characterised by claims of high incomes or enormous potential profits.
I received another such call last week which prompted me to write this article. The caller was very excited because he said he had just earnt (and apparently been paid) around $40,000 with his new business. I congratulated him and enquired about the nature of the product range or service involved.
Sadly, once this had been described I lost interest. It was not that the product range was not good; I’m sure it was. It was not that the products were overpriced. It was not that the products were not consumable. It was simply that I could not picture this business being sustainable in the longer term.
While the term sustainability may be popular amongst environmentalists, enlightened farmers and some academics, it is not so widely used in business circles. Business often works to a much shorter time frame. In the case of large corporations, it’s only the next quarter’s profit results that matter because “that’s when we report to the shareholders next” or “that’s when we report to head office.” Politicians seem to focus only upon the next election. Small business people seem to spend most of their time fighting their way through the day-to-day challenges that they spend very little time on strategic planning and long-term plans.
In business circles it is often said that the Japanese adopt a much longer term view with respect to their investments and business operations while the Americans are always focussed on receiving financial returns in the very short term.
It is precisely this short-term thinking that is propelling our world into massive crisis. On an environmental level we are cutting down 200,000 acres of rainforest every twenty- four hours, releasing 13 million tons of toxic chemicals into our environment per day, allowing 45,000 people to die of starvation daily while our population is expanding exponentially. Over 300 tons of topsoil are lost worldwide every minute while governments and large corporations look the other way. In fact, 1,500 acres of land are becoming desert worldwide every hour largely because rainforests are being cut down to create pasture land to grow beef for export to the “developed world”!
While the discovery of oil in the 1850’s brought about massive increases in agricultural and industrial production, it also created a massive dependency on this fuel source. By the year 2000 we had consumed more than half the world’s oil supplies and the most optimistic predictions are that we have just over 40 years worth of oil left at our current rate of consumption.
In 1997, Associated Press reported that “Global energy demand is forecast to double by the year 2020, largely because of the rapid growth of the industrialising nations of Asia, particularly China. It is therefore unlikely that current oil supplies will last even 30 years.
Such is the short-term thinking in our culture that even oil industry executives admit that they do not have alternative solutions for when oil supplies run out. In an upbeat and optimistic speech presented to the Economic Club of Columbus, Ohio, in 1996, an Ashland Chemical Company executive pointed out that alternatives to oil as an energy source are “simply not cost-effective”and that “it will probably be several decades before the wolf is at the door.”
To those of us who hope to live another few decades, or who have high hopes for our children’s and grandchildren’s futures such an unsustainable approach to business and the environment sounds grim.
Since it’s often easier to see the challenges in someone else’s backyard before we are willing to examine our own positions, I simply ask you to consider how sustainable your business or income producing activities are. Are you involved in business activities that will last the distance? Will your business be relevant as we progress through the twenty first century? Are you adding value through your business activities or are you simply making money in the short-term? How will your business survive if the price of oil increases dramatically and if supplies are in short supply? How will you cope with significantly higher electricity prices?
In my view, the nature of business will change dramatically as we move into through the 21st Century. Many of the old rules we played by will become obsolete. Our way of thinking will need to change from one of endless growth and economic rationalism to one of sustainability and self sufficiency.
In the book Health,
Wealth and Wisdom in the New Millennium I expand upon these issues more fully. The book takes a wider look at what we are doing to our world and what we could do better. It takes a broader look at business than just making a profit in the short term.
About Hans Jakobi
Hans Jakobi is an educator, author and investor. He is the author of six best-selling books including,
How To Be Rich & Happy On Your Income which is available at:
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