Finding Purpose : Environmental Stewardship as a Personal Calling

175 Pages·2017·6.6 MB·English

by  Andrew J. Hoffman

Finding Purpose
Environmental Stewardship
as a Personal Calling
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&? Taylor & Francis
~ Taylor & Francis Group
http:// taylora ndfra ncis.com
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Finding
Purpose
Environmental Stewardship as a Personal Calling
Andrew J. Hoffman
Foreword by J.B. MacKinnon
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First published 2016 by Greenleaf Publishing Limited
Published 2017 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © 2016 Taylor & Francis
Cover by Sadie Gornall-Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
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and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to
infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-78353-354-1 [hbk]
ISBN-13: 978-1-78353-372-5 [pbk]
It is true, I fear that others may have fallen
into it, and so helped to keep it open. The sur-
face of the earth is soft and impressible by the
feet of men; and so with the paths which the
mind travels. How worn and dusty, then, must
be the highways of the world, how deep the ruts
of tradition and conformity! I did not wish to
take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the
mast and on the deck of the world, for there I
could best see the moonlight amid the moun-
tains. I do not wish to go before now.
I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that
if one advances confidently in the direction of
his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which
he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours. He will put some
things behind, will pass an invisible boundary;
new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin
to establish themselves around and within him;
or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in
his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live
with the license of a higher order of beings.
1
Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
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&? Taylor & Francis
~ Taylor & Francis Group
http:// taylora ndfra ncis.com
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Contents
Foreword by J.B. MacKinnon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
1. Introduction: Finding purpose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
I. Life’s Work as a Personal Vocation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2. Building hope. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
3. Your theory of change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4. Your model of leadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
5. What do you believe? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
6. Why do you care? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
II. Green Business as a Calling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
7. Why green business? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
8. Green in the corner office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
9. Business (almost) as usual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
1 0. Capitalism and markets must evolve. . . . . . . . 59
1 1. Dark green or light green?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
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viii finding purpose
III. Reclaiming the Role of Academia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
1 2. Making bricks versus making change . . . . . . . 75
1 3. Public engagement as a balancing act . . . . . . . 81
1 4. The new environmental scholarship . . . . . . . . 89
IV. Changing Culture and Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
1 5. Culture and carbon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
1 6. Culture and climate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
1 7. Detoxifying the climate change debate . . . . . 111
V. A Call to a Calling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
1 8. Pope Francis as messenger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
1 9. To till and keep the garden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
2 0. The Anthropocene spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
2 1. Conclusion: The Great Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Acknowledgements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Endnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
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Foreword
It is currently the fashion in business culture to speak of “dis-
ruption.” Start-ups pushing the next generation of social media
platforms, not much different from the last generation of social
media platforms, describe themselves as a disruptive force. Gad-
gets with nothing more than raw consumeristic appeal are sold
as disruptive technologies. Some firms even make oxymoronic
claims of disruptive customer service.
This is all in the grand tradition of business and management
books, which have long pickpocketed the language of rebellion
and enlightenment. As a reader, you have surely been called
upon again and again to “follow your dreams,” “find your pas-
sion,” and “go your own way,” usually in defiance of some
straw-man set of gray and tired mainstream norms. Most of
these messengers, meanwhile, sell the same old dream of finan-
cial wealth, the same old passion for status, the same old long-
ing for personal power. The language of environmental
stewardship has been similarly abused. We hear tell of sustain-
able profits. Of green growth. Our homes—and our landfills—
are increasingly awash with eco-friendly products.
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