 noon tide. Howard Wiig, cold greens, think te kawaii, and a joyous, I think joyous 2022 to everyone. Let's all do what we can to make it a better optimistic 2022. One way we can do that is by learning how to live sustainably. And that is the subject of our conversation today with Mr. Sustainability himself and a long time friend, Rob Hinslow. And he will be giving us a whole lot of details on this. So sustainability to me, I give my own take first, is putting in onto the planet as much good stuff as you're taking out of the planet. A good example is when you're dealing with food, all the food waste is composted. And that large part of that is reducing your carbon footprint in the first place. And hopefully just within a few years we'll all be driving EVs or taking mass transit or having other means of extremely efficient transportation. Those are just a few examples of what sustainability might look like, but I am not the expert. Rob Hinslow is the expert. So Rob, would you like to put sustainability into a framework if you would engineer would bring up the first slide. Yeah. Hi, Howard. Good morning and happy new year to you. It's nice to be here on your show talking about sustainability, my favorite subject, of course. Yeah, the frame for sustainability going forward would have to be much broader than just efficiency, although efficiency is a key part of sustainability. There's multiple pathways to get there to where we want to be and that is to live simply and easily on the planet. And actually sustainability includes not just a break-even proposition, but it also includes a restorative proposition. And that means that we are restoring the Earth's systems and its processes back to those before humans came along. And of course that's a longer-term vision. But I do think we have to frame the idea of sustainability as something much broader than just efficiency, although that's where we are today. And an example of this is that there are basically two different types of sustainability. There's weak sustainability and there's strong sustainability. And weak sustainability, of course, says it's what we're practicing today. And it also says that we will just try to keep the occupants of the Earth today in a way that doesn't harm the Earth and leaves it enhanced and not degraded in value. And strong sustainability says that we look at the needs of the future and we have an intergenerational type of viewpoint and perspective and we consider their needs in the ways we behave today. So we're just practicing weak sustainability today. And we do need to get to a much stronger type of sustainability very soon. I hope that helped. Rob, that brings to mind the fact that I was fortunate enough to be able to spend quite a bit of time in the poorer, some of the poorer nations on the face of this Earth and actually stay with them in villages. And it was absolutely amazing to me to see how little a human being needs to remain happy. These people lived in homes made out of local materials, thatched together and so forth. They had their own agriculture and what they didn't grow, they traded with nearby villages, which had slightly different ecosystems, which had different types of food. For instance, if they were by the sea, they would catch fish and they'd trade the fish for great big yams and so forth. And their carbon footprint was just a teeny, teeny fraction of ours. And these were happy people. Well, and Howard, as you just noted very eloquently, the happiness is not dependent upon material acquisition and our lifestyle of luxury living is really the culprit that's causing. We need to decarbonize as well as rescale our activities. But let's put up the next slide and let me talk about that a little bit because you've said the magic word, which is footprint. And this is really a footprint equation that illustrates, it's not, it's very simple multiplication and equals. The letter on the left, the I is impact. That's our total impact, our total footprint. And it's equal to population or people times our affluence, which we were just talking about our lives, our luxury living, and times technology, which is like the enhancing effect of our affluence and our population because face it, technology will either save us or kill us based on how we use it. And some would say that equation should also include another factor, which is empathy. And for example, for example, there is an internal aspect to sustainability that it's not just an external application of our technology and our activities, there's an internal part of this that I say sustainability begins within. And back in 2009, when I gave my first talk on sustainability begins within at UH Minoa, but there was not much agreement with that in the room. But I believe that everything out there, that everything behind you, everything in front of us are buildings, the whole entire built environment began within human mind or in the human heart. And so therefore, why are we starting out there to do sustainability when we should be working with the internal part of humans to prepare them to create sustainability in their lives? We don't ask people to go out and create peace in the external world without knowing what peace is on the internal. And so this impact equation is missing a term, and that's the term of empathy, where we actually care about the world and the future. And so I propose that we modify that equation to include empathy. Totally, totally agreed. Something that really, really gets to me emotionally is when I see the Amazon burning, I just have this visceral, visceral reaction. Or if I see an instance of cruelty to animals or the poaching and so forth, I have really deeply emotional reactions to that. And I think that's, and those are examples of caring for the whole planet in addition just to caring for our fellow man. I agree with you. Can we see the next slide? So this is an example. And so my focus is business and faith groups. And so I believe and know from research that business and faith groups are the two biggest networks on the planet. In other words, most people identify with those two groups than any other type of group or status in the world. So this is an example of a businessman caring. And he wrote a book Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, and you can see his name there and who he is. And he asked this one question, which I always ask of my business colleagues and the organizations I'm working with, and is what's your business case for ending life on earth? If you're going to continue extracting things from the earth without replacing them or restoring them, eventually your business is going to die because the earth is dying or is dead or not functioning the way it should be. So what's the use of a business if you don't have a viable planet upon which to operate the business? So I really think this is an example of business with purpose where business has to kind of step up to its shared responsibility for creating an earth that works for all of us, creating a society that works for all of us, creating prosperity for all as opposed to just for the shareholders of the business. And so that's why I talk about sustainable business leadership and talk about business with purpose. But that takes a little bit of vision. I mean, business has to, is going to have to change its ways and how it operates. But it's very simple. If you just put purpose at the center instead of just profit, I believe you'll end up with a business that enhances the value of the planet and our society. Yeah, there are some businesses that I have that model, and I think they're still growing towards it, Ikea, and who's the, what's the outdoor, outfitting company, Patagonia. Oh, Patagonia. Oh, I'm Patagonia. You're in ill-opening models like that. And when I read the Wall Street Journal, the underlying message I get, article after article, is that growth is good. We must grow in sales. We must grow at the number of items sold and so forth. Then I ask myself, wait a minute, isn't there an affliction to organisms which just grow and grow beyond any reasonable measure? Yes, that's called cancer. Yeah, and the growth metaphor is, and the growth, the reality of growth is very key here in sustainability. Actually, sustainability is a subset of a broader framework called sustainable development. And sustainable development, you don't see the word growth in that phrase. You hear the word development. By development, we are not talking about growth like a snowball or growth like cancer. We're talking about development as in an embryo. For example, you and I both were once just thoughts in our parents' eyes and our parents' minds and glints in and in their eyes. But now we're like, we know change. We went from a little embryo and we developed to this place where we're talking about sustainable development on, you know, your think tech show. So that's development. If you want to think about it, and that's why I say growth is, we can't continue to grow like a cancer on the earth. We have to figure out how we're going to develop. The humans have an infinite potential develop, but we do not have an infinite potential for growth. And that's why our economic system and our business has to change their focus from profit and growth to scale and development. And they have to make a profit. We know that. But how do you do that and achieve sustainability? Well, it's through purpose. And you have to, what is the purpose of this business? Is it to combat climate change? Is it to make life better for people? Is it to enhance the value of stakeholders versus shareholders? Who are the stakeholders in your business? Are they people who care? Are they just the people who own the business? And so when you have ownership type of business, you end up with just a profit motive. But when you have a stakeholder business, you end up with a purpose organization. And so that is, for me, that is the main fundamental structural difference that will bring about change in this business sphere. And it's already happening. Millennials and Gen Z's and Gen Y's are already creating businesses that are combating, as you said, like Patagonia has a purpose. And it's got stakeholders. And yes, it's organized around a profit motive. But it also has this, like a B Corp, which is another type of business that's not that popular yet, but is coming into popularity. It has a purpose. It has an alternative raison d'entrer for being and living. And that's a purpose as opposed to just a profit. Yeah. Just as I think every person should have, in the same light, a purpose. And the overriding purpose is to leave the earth in better shape than what you came into. And it goes back to the Boy Scout creed of when you're camping, leaves the campsite cleaner than when you left it. Yeah. Yeah, leave only footprints, not trash, restore the campsite. Yeah, exactly. And so that's why I say sustainability begins within. Because if you don't have that purpose inside of you, if you don't care about the future. So let me tell you a story just to illustrate this. A number of years ago when I was in Los Angeles, helping to protect and restore the Biona wetlands there in Marina del Rey, Steven Spielberg was trying to build his Streamwork studio on the wetlands there. And so we were trying to get some media. We thought he could do the right thing. We thought he had a good heart and he would do the right thing if he only knew what was going on. They were building the Native American graves. There was aerospace fluids on the aquifers below and that they were going to destroy and kill endangered species. And so we went to his Independence Day movie, the premiere, and we were standing there were signs and Malcolm McDowell walked up to me. Malcolm McDowell was in the movie, I guess, and he walked, but he was attending. He walked up to me and said, what's all this about? And I said, well, wouldn't you want to have a beautiful wetlands nature reserve at Biona that your grandchildren could go to and enjoy endangered species and trees and plants? And I waited for his answer and he looked at me and he said, no. And my jaw dropped to the floor and my heart started pounding. I was like, well, after a while after I recovered, I was like, why would you not want that? And he said, because I'll be dead. And what that means to me is that very often very wealthy people and people of means and they don't care about what happens after their life. And so it's our purpose, it's my purpose to imbue people with to help them understand that they should care. And that they can care. And so in business, I think in particular, which has a soul focus on profit, it's very difficult. And you have to appeal to the emotions and you have to appeal to the person, not the business model, at least at first. You use the word affluence a while ago. And that brings to mind the fact that time after time, I read about people who are interviewed on their deathbed and asked, what would you have done differently in your life? And it's never I wish I'd made more money. I wish I'd spent more time in the office. I wish I had a fancier car. It's always I wish I'd spent more time with my family, tell them how much I love them. And with good friends just having a convivial time with good friends. And when you're under deathbed, that is the definition of affluence. Yeah. And in fact, there's a good case for asking that question of yourselves when you're trying to figure out what your purpose is. What does my death tell me? In other words, the reality that Charles Bukowski said in the poet, the beat poet, he said, you know, the fact that we're going to all die should make us love one another. But sadly, it does not. And he was a bit of a cynocyst in that regard. But the fact is that our death can be a hugely informative thing to contemplate with respect to our purpose. What are we here to do from now till the end of our life? We have limited amount of time. We're all going to die. None of us are going to make out of our lives. So what's our purpose? What's your purpose in the audience? I would ask you, what's your purpose? What's your vision for the future? And you know, this gets back to this time that we're living in of COVID and invisible enemies such as COVID and climate change. These are, you know, humans are not, we're not prepared for invisible enemies. We're only prepared for the, the, you know, biologically prepared to respond to the, the, the saber-tooth tiger, you know, I'm just kind of making history up now. But, you know, the enemy that's visible and right in front of us. And so we have to have vision. And if we would put up the next slide, that would maybe help us focus this conversation. And so it's not only that COVID and climate change are invisible and that there are threats to us, but if we don't have vision of being able to see invisible things, and I don't mean just physical vision. I mean strategic vision. I mean foresight. I mean insight. I mean, these skills are not, they're longer-term skills that aren't incorporated into business strategy. And yet there's a growing body of evidence that it's needed in both policy and in business. And so, you know, vision is the art of seeing things that are invisible. Both of these, in order to respond to these things that are invisible, we need to have vision is the, is the corollary of that. And so I would ask everybody, if you could put up the next slide, you know, what's your vision? You know, start asking yourself this question. What's your vision for the future? What's your purpose? And how do you express that? How do you want to express your remaining value into the, into this time space continuum? And these are heavy, these are heavy questions that, that are not, they don't easily, you know, kind of the answers may not easily come. But, you know, with a little bit of coaching and a little bit of, you know, one-on-one or group type of discussion, organizations and businesses can, can have these types of discussions and find out what their longer-term strategies and visions are and purposes for being in society and expressing their remaining value. Yeah, maybe the two most powerful people in the history of mankind were Jesus Christ and the Buddha. And they probably had a clearer vision of reality than any other human beings have ever walked the face of the earth. And they did a whole lot to, to shape humanity. Yeah. And if we just had, if Christians would just be Christians and Buddhists would just be Buddhists and Muslims would just adhere to the principles that these teachers, if we just listened to the voices of the voiceless and of, of the earth and of our teachers, then we would be in a much different place. But instead we're, we're scrambling, we're, we're, we're fighting for survival. And there's 7.9 billion of us now on the planet headed towards 8 billion. And, you know, inequality is so rampant. You know, the top 1% in America own 50% of the wealth. And that means that the rest of us have to scramble and for survival. And so we can't even deal with sustainability. And, you know, so it's really hard. And that's why the role of government and business and faith leaders of these big networks and these big organizations is so important to help us move forward, you know, in a good way. Otherwise, you know, some of us may survive, but certainly a lot of us will not survive. And so I care about the children of the future and I care about this planet. And so that's my life's purpose is to bring this awareness to others. Some of the projects I've worked on, if you bring up the next slide, I've done a lot of work with different organizations in Hawaii and around the world. And so these are all my website and my website, you can see there on the bottom. And I would welcome, you know, any engagement, you know, that I can with your organization as well. And I think it's so important for organizations and businesses to adopt a longer term strategy. And that takes real insight, you know, what separates us from the other species is our frontal lobe, our enlarged frontal lobe here. And that gives us the ability to see into the future, literally, but we can learn from the past and do trends and distinguish what is good for us, what's good for mankind, what's good for the earth. But that actually runs counter to maybe basic human nature. You alluded to it earlier, the caveman and the saber-toothed tiger. We evolved to just be concerned with the short term, because literally think of the caveman, and he's got his family inside the cave. And he's got to go out and get some food. And it's in a hostile environment. And the people in the next cave might not like you so much. It involves a lot of, in some cases, violence and really, really being alert all around you. What is that movement in the bush there? Is it something I can eat? Or is it something that wants to eat me? And that's, you know, we are about 200,000 years old, we homosabians. And that's how we evolved until just a couple, a few thousand years ago. Well, and you started off by talking about the forebrain. And then you ended up talking about the cerebellum and the subbrain of survival and survival of the fittest. And I would say both of those things exist in us. And so we've taken a road in the recent past to just short term satisfaction. And we've forgotten that we have this ability to be hostile and violent, but we also have this ability to be generous and collaborative and look ahead and see what's coming at us in a way that we can then respond to in a resilient way. And bringing those two things together into a purposeful action based today, because we're creating the future every day, humans are collaborative much more than we are competitive, but we have a business and society that encourages competition, not collaboration. And so I would say that we're in a place where we have to decide what's our future. Like the Earth Charter says way back in 1996, I believe it was the Earth Charter, the number one question is humans are at a place where we have to decide, we have to make a choice about what is our future going to be. And that's where we are in 2022. And we do need to go, but I would add to that the fact that we live in a democracy and we were the founders of democracy, the modern founders. And many, many countries followed us in creating democracy. And that is based on collaboration and mutual aid and caring about one another. That's how we've come so far. Well, I agree. And we can continue this conversation for a long time. If you would put up the last slide, you know, I invite everybody to continue the conversation with me, reach out on my website or on LinkedIn and or and connect with me and invite me into your conversation. And I will help facilitate sustainability and sustainable development in your organization. By all means, I encourage everybody out there to contact Rob and continue this conversation. And on that very cherry note, I again wish everybody a hopeful 2022. This is Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii. See you next time. And Rob, thank you so very, very much. Terrific conversation. Thank you, Howard. Much appreciated.