A Quote by Ben Clarke
Sustainability is about profit...it is the opportunity of the century
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We need to reverse three centuries of walling the for-profit and non-profit sectors off from one another. When you think for-profit and non-profit, you most often think of entities with either zero social return or zero return on capital and zero social return. Clearly, there's some opportunity in the spectrum between those extremes. What's missing is the for-profit finance industry coming in to that area. Look at the enormous diversity of the for-profit financial industry as opposed to monolithic nature of the non-profit world; it's quite astonishing.
The plundering for profit of the world's natural resources has threatened the very sustainability of the planet.
But now sustainability is such a political category that it's getting more and more difficult to think about it in a serious way. Sustainability has become an ornament.
Sustainability has become a religion in architecture - not that there's anything wrong with it - but I think it has to work both ways. Everyone thinks architecture has to be subservient to sustainability, but what if we thought in the other direction, like, what can sustainability do to make architecture more exciting?
I dismiss personal profit and focus exclusively on people and planet. That's what I call social business: a nondividend company dedicated to solving human problems. You can go all the way, forgetting about personal profit, being single-minded about solving problems. The company makes profit, but profit stays with the company.
Sustainability is not just about adopting the latest energy-efficient technologies or turning to renewable sources of power. Sustainability is the responsibility of every individual every day. It is about changing our behaviour and mindset to reduce power and water consumption, thereby helping to control emissions and pollution levels.
Business is about profit, yes, and it is about more than profit. At its best, it is about expanding the possibilities of humanity.
Countries were told they had no incentives because of social ownership. The solution was privatization and profit, profit, profit. Privatization would replace inefficient state ownership, and the profit system plus the huge defense cutbacks would let them take existing resources and an increase in consumption. Worries about distribution and competition or even concerns about democratic processes being undermined by excessive concentration of wealth could be addressed later.
The 19th century was a century of empires, the 20th century was a century of nation states. The 21st century will be a century of cities.
I never understood how, when if so many businesses can make a profit delivering services and products to state education, you could not take it further and allow for-profit operators to run some schools. Most people care about good outcomes, not whether something is for-profit or not.
It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzz word. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.
Agricultural sustainability doesn't depend on agritechnology. To believe it does is to put the emphasis on the wrong bit of 'agriculture.' What sustainability depends on isn't agri- so much as culture.
In the 21st century, I think the heroes will be the people who will improve the quality of life, fight poverty and introduce more sustainability.
Often, sustainability is discussed only in the context of energy. Energy sustainability is essential - but the word has a much broader meaning. It means long-term thinking about how we manage our businesses, invest in social spending, and plan for the future. This requires vision and leadership, and it requires citizen engagement.
COP 21 provides a unique opportunity for the political leaders of this generation to provide lasting foundations for the preservation and sustainability of generations of the future.
The things I learned from my parents, what was deeply ingrained in their generation, is this idea of opportunity and the freedom to have an opportunity. The way the United States was thought of is as a place you can have this chance to do anything, to say, 'This is my idea, and I get to offer it to you, and if you like it, I can profit from it.'
