Page 59 - The Green Building Bottom Line The Real Cost of Sustainable Building

38 CHAPTER 1

Green, Inc. The question regarding a values-oriented company is not does it pay, but
rather, does it pay to proceed any other way?

Concluding Remarks

I’d like to conclude this chapter where I began, with my father’s story of the busi-
nessman and the fisherman. The story asks us to consider what is truly important to us
and if we are doing the important things now or deferring them indefinitely. For me,
it is important to recognize that we, as a company, have a hand in determining what
type of story we wish to embrace about the role of capitalism and its consequences,
not only in terms of financial well-being, but also of the well-being of our land and
our community. We can blithely accept a narrative of indifferent capitalism, keep mak-
ing money, and tell ourselves that someday we’ll change if government regulations
and market forces force us to. Or we can embrace the notion of capitalism with a dif-
ference and take it upon ourselves to change now. In so doing, we have the capacity
to envision a more just business, linking work and meaning and purpose. And we have
the chance to reflect upon and respond to the crises of the present time, sidestep the
dangers of old narratives that have run their courses, and avail ourselves of the oppor-
tunities offered by a story of a different hue and stripe.

NOTES

1 Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975).
2 Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases,”
Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky (eds.), Judgment Under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Kahneman won the
Nobel Prize in economics for his work, the only psychologist to do so. (Tversky had since died
and so did not share in the award.)
3 Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing
the American Dream (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004), p. 236.
4 The narrative of indifferent capitalism has been synthesized from the following sources:
Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream: How Europe’s Vision of the Future Is Quietly Eclipsing
the American Dream (New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2004); Robert B. Reich, Super-
capitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 2007); Eric T. Freyfogle, The Land We Share: Private Property and the Common
Good (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2003); Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim At the Brand
Bullies (New York: Picador, 1999); David C. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World
(Bloomfield, Conn. and San Francisco: Kumarian Press & Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995);
Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New
York: Henry Holt & Co., 2007); Thomas Friedman, The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Under-
standing Globalization (New York: First Anchor Books, 2002).
5 Robert B. Reich, Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and
Everyday Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007), p. 126.