A short conversation with a CEO about sustainable transportation

This morning I accompanied an friend of mine on a visit to meet with a former CEO of a major corporation in the town where I live. The company shall remain nameless, because my arrival in his office was a surprise and I respect this CEO as an individual. My friend is the director of an environmental resource center in a beautiful and ecologically diverse rural area. He is seeking funds for improvements to the center, designed to make it self-sufficient in energy terms, and neutral in terms of carbon footprint. These improvements include installation of a geothermal heating system, a solar energy demonstration project, and a biomass electrical generation project. He was seeking financial support from the CEO.

The two of us had been participants in a day and a half long program on scenario planning, that asked participants to consider the natural, social, political, economic, cultural and technological future of southeastern Minnesota. The effect of all this long-term thinking was to make me see more clearly the how much hard work there is to do if we are to get off our currently destructive course.

Anyway, I went along on this friend's visit to the CEO to listen, and to make a short pitch for this man to play more of a leadership role in persuading businesses to consider more sustainable transportation for their employees. "What is sustainable transportation?" the CEO asked. We get so caught up in our own jargon that we forget how to communicate with people who work in wholly different realms of work. I explained that sustainable transportation was transportation that conserved the resource (gas, and energy), such as walking, bicycling, carpooling, and taking the bus. It could also include trains and other transit forms, and it could include employee benefits like a guaranteed ride home for the carpooling employee who has an emergency. I didn't want the CEO's money, I wanted his leadership in our community.

This man has the reputation as an ethical and visionary leader, but he admitted that he had never thought about taking any special steps to encourage employees to travel more sustainably, even though there are demonstrable bottom line benefits both for the business and the employee. For the business, the benefits are improved health (oh yeah, we have an obesity crisis!), improved employee retention (employees like to work at places that demonstrate transportation flexibility), relief of parking problems, and access to a more diverse labor force. For the employee, the benefits are saving money, building community within the company, improving health, and oh yeah, saving the environment.

Last fall when I organized a sustainable transportation campaign in our town, I called the executive director of the local Chamber of Commerce, to see if I could secure business participation in the campaign, for example through bike to work programs and so on. She stated that the Chamber was a membership organization, and its members weren't asking for this kind of program. As a community organizer, I guess I need to be willing to cold call one business at a time, and start to educate them about these transportation issues.

I don't know why I should be distressed or surprised by this reality: those of us who are outraged, inspired, or energized by the global warming situation, who feel moved to action by peak oil, the loss of migratory songbirds, the relentless march of invasive species, the loss of agricultural topsoil--operate from a different set of basic assumptions from the CEO and the great mainstream. Perhaps most people have never become intimate enough with a woods to recognize that they are changing and are under threat. Too many people are living in a state of distraction, whether it comes from video games, television, the everyday demands of family and work, the seductive cascade of music emanating from their Ipods, or the exciting sale on now at Target. They can't see the woods or the trees.

So yes, I am disappointed that the CEO was didn't share my engagement with these issues, didn't seem persuaded that promoting sustainable transportation had a monetary and moral value. Maybe it's better to assume that we won't be bailed out of the coming crisis by big government, big business, the media or elected officials. Perhaps if I had received a glib or insincere response to my request, I'd go back to my comfortable little cocoon. The leader that is most needed at the present moment is the one I see in my own mirror, and I guess I should come to terms with that.