Monday, June 8, 2009

A Republican Idea: Sustainable Consumption

The most significant change suggested in the Republican budget plan appears to be cutting income taxes on those in the top bracket from 35% to 25%. To many this seems like the same approach to the economy used during the Bush administration and it is in part responsible for the present economic recession. The absence of any new ideas in the republican party is captured by a joke traveling around Washington D.C. these days that was shared on Meet the Press by NBC business reporter Steve Leasman. “The Republicans have found a cure for cancer.” “What is it?” “Tax cuts.”

In this vacuum there is for many a sense of denial on the right: there is no recognition that the policies they have been advocating have led to this dire economic situation; no recognition their policies led to their own administration giving the financial sector hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to bail them out. Since no one acknowledges a problem with their underlying philosophy, they do not feel the need to come up with any new ideas. While everyone else is thinking about “resetting” our economy on a more sustainable path, many republicans believe they just need to criticize the attempts others make to improve our present situation.

There are exceptions to this rule. There are republicans like David Frum who are gently seeking to bring new ideas to the party. George Will is always reading new material. He recently wrote an article on the work of Michael Pollan that is of particular interest here because it suggests a new approach to working our way out of this economic recession. This approach acknowledges that our behavior up to this point has not been sustainable—we need to change. And it describes a uniquely conservative idea for addressing our problems that focuses on individual initiative rather than government intervention.

Many of you are already familiar with the work of Michael Pollan. He is one of the bestselling writers in the world today. He tells an amazing story about food. Most of the food we eat is actually made out of oil, given all the fertilizers, insecticides and pesticides used to produce it. By moving from multi-culture organic farming to mono-culture industrialized farming, our food production became dependent on foreign oil and it began to dramatically undermine our health, contributing to a striking growth in obesity and diabetes.

Micheal Pollan, like Alice Walker and many others, encourages people to eat locally grown organic food from multi-culture farms that do not use chemical insecticides, pesticides or fertilizers. This food is, first of all, much healthier for us to eat. Second, it tastes much better than the food “by products” to which we have grown accustom. Third, it will help our country bring the food production process back to the use of solar energy enabling us to become more energy independent and reducing our carbon footprint. Fourth, it will support the local organic farmers that are the engines of this economic growth.

This trend toward locally grown organic food was brought into sharp relief recently by the first lady Michelle Obama. She recently led the way for the creation of a garden on the lawn of the White House that presently produces vegetables that are eaten at the White House and shared with local food banks.

George Will discusses Pollan’s work approvingly in his article Where the Obesity Grows. He describes how Pollan has characterized our existing diet as having made “many Americans both overfed and undernourished.” Will closes quoting Hippocrates who he says not only “enjoined doctors: ‘Do no harm’” but also said “something germane to a nation that is harming itself with its knives and forks: ‘Let food be thy medicine.’”

Here Will advocates a classic conservative answer to a problem: a reliance on individual initiative, education and innovation rather than a government controlled intervention. He is not pressing for new regulations on industrialized farming; he is encouraging individuals to be smart about what they eat. If they are, the government will not need to “regulate” industrialized farming, consumers will. They will purchase products that are produced in ways that enhance their health rather than harm it. They will also purchase products that enhance the health of the environment and the strength of our economy by using renewable energy. When they do this, the fate of industrialized farming is determined by the market, they way political conservatives generally prefer, instead of being regulated by the government.

When the government attempts to regulate the economy to serve social ends like protecting the environment, Will and other conservatives believe it can actually make things worse. He makes this point in a recent article discussing the government’s support for compact fluorescent light bulbs. We would be much better off if the government would not try to regulate the economy: we should let educated consumers purchase the products they prefer.

Here we have the kernel of a republican idea for getting out of the present economic recession and for preventing the recurrence of another in ten or fifteen years, as is predicted by the boom and bust cycles that have plagued capitalism since its inception. We could call this idea sustainable consumption: educated consumers support sustainable businesses and the market forces other businesses in a more sustainable direction. Consumers do this when they take Will’s advice and purchase locally grown organic food.

When consumers become more educated about the environmental consequences of modes of production and this is reflected in their consumer decisions it enables the price mechanism in a capitalist economy to take into account the environmental consequences of business processes. If the consumer does not think about these environmental consequences, they can be ignored or “externalized” by a business. This will often lead the same consumers who ignore these consequences in their purchases to vote for representatives that will support government regulation of businesses. These businesses will need to be regulated because economists like Paul Krugman will argue, as he did recently in response to Will on ABC's This Week, that market capitalism has failed to adequately take into account the damage done to the environment. A less educated consumer leaves more responsibility for regulation on the government; a more educated consumer, on the other hand, can cultivate more sustainable economic development with less government intervention.

In another article on the strength of capitalism, Will suggests "would-be price gougers are at the mercy of a public armed with information, which is what markets generate and communicate." Information, he argues, can be used by the public to create disinsentives for overly greedy merchants. Similarly, information can be used by the public to create disinsentives for business that damage the environment.

The contemporary concept of sustainable development suggests that past capitalist approaches can not only ignore the environmental costs of development, but they can also ignore the social costs of development: where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer until the poor do not have enough money to buy what is produced and the economy sinks into a recession in a boom and bust pattern. Contemporary concepts of sustainable development will therefore include a focus on economic justice, which insures workers are paid and treated in a just manner. A value is placed on companies that increase profit through innovation and increases in efficiency rather than simply finding more inconspicuous ways to cut the pay for their employees. These companies enable a society to create sustainable development that is not subject to the cycle of boom and bust.

When we follow Will’s advice and buy locally grown organic food, we also support the local farmers that grow this food. They profit from their own work. This, of course, is often not the case for those who work on the industrialized farms owned or controlled by multi-national corporations. These corporations have fiduciary responsibilities to maximize profit for shareholders. One of the ideas behind the contemporary concept of sustainable development is that if we support business models that share more profit with employees, it will enhance the sustainability of economic growth by increasing the long term demand that drives growth.

The sustainable consumer would then be one who supports businesses that are sustainable in the sense that, relative to other businesses, they treat the environment and their workers well. This consumer views purchases as votes that change the society on a daily basis. This is something we are already beginning to do now that we have not been doing in the past. 54% of shoppers now consider sustainability characteristics in their buying decisions according to a study recently released by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and Deloitte. In the past, most consumers purchased products based simply on the perceived quality of the product. As a result, many businesses were able to harm the environment and undermine the economic resources of their workers without impacting the price of their product. We can now see that this approach has led us back into another recession and a global climate crisis.

Of course, our initial efforts to become more sustainable consumers will be inefficient and inevitably fail to address the serious problems that confront us in the best possible way. This will provide us even more reason to take these steps now so that we can learn from them and improve the steps we take in the future.

What we do know now is that our past approach to consumption created conditions that led some Americans to be “overfed” while the environment and the rest of us were “undernourished.” Just as we have been hurting our selves with our knives and forks, we have also been hurting our selves with our purchases by supporting unsustainable businesses. Will’s focus on individual initiative and his suggestion that we become more educated consumers is well taken. This is something we can agree on: Let’s let our purchases be thy medicine.

Monday, March 30, 2009

Bring Back the Rocky

by Timothy McWhirter

“Goodbye, Colorado,” read the headline of the final edition of the Rocky Mountain News on Friday February 27th. Colorado’s oldest newspaper was forced to close down just two months short of its 150th anniversary.

The E.W. Scripps Co., which owns the Rocky, said the newspaper lost $16 million last year and the company was unable to find a viable buyer since announcing a sale Dec. 4th. The Rocky is the largest newspaper to fail in the present recession. The newspaper industry was already suffering from falling ad revenue.

The problem is widespread. 33 U.S. daily newspapers have owners that have sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the past 2 ½ months. Several newspapers are also up for sale.

The staff of the Rocky knows what is at stake first hand. Like good reporters, they gave us the story. You can see it presented in a moving video on the newspaper’s website entitled “Final Edition.” The Rocky is a Pulitzer Prize winning paper. The motto in the news room is, “if your mother tells you she loves you, check it out.” They do and they take pride in it.

You can hear a reporter in the video point out that bloggers do not necessarily have the same journalistic ethic. They are aware that most of us are now getting our news from the internet. Most of us know that the best bloggers get there information from newspapers like the Rocky. Local newspapers attempt to keep our government officials and businesses honest. We cannot afford to lose them; we need more of them.

John Temple, the editor and publisher of the Rocky, gives us an idea of the changes in the newspaper industry that challenge the Rocky and other newspapers. When the paper started in 1859, they pulled in the printing presses using oxen. “Today,” Temple says, “we are sending content over cell phones, reporters are filing photographs from their assignments and they instantly appear on our website.”

Today businesses throughout the world dramatically cut their costs by using the technology available to move to more efficient paperless processes. When the faculty senate used to meet at one college where I taught, they used to print over 50 copies of every document for all in attendance. By the time I left the college six years later, all documents discussed in these meetings were posted on a website available to everyone on their laptop and on the huge screen that was now in the room for every meeting. The technology available now enables us to share information much more efficiently and less expensively.

Doctors are beginning to use video conferencing to interact with patients at a distance. Administrators and executives are beginning to use it for meetings and interviews. It is rarely used to the extent that it could be.

We can find a model for the kind of innovation the Rocky and other local papers are forced to consider from the Waterfront Community Church, which was recently discussed on NBC news. This church gives 100% of the donations it receives each Sunday to those who are in need. It can do this because it is a church without a physical location. It rents out the local high school gym on Sunday for services. The pastor does his work on his laptop at home or in a coffee shop. When you focus on your core service and you use technology to help you provide that service as efficiently as possible, many businesses are finding that you simply do not need many of the things that contributed to the businesses' overhead in the past.

When you have these innovative business models and paperless processes in mind, the challenges for the Rocky become clearer. While Temple says at the Rocky there has always been an attitude of, “let’s embrace opportunity, let’s embrace change,” you can see the obstacles in the way.

As you view the video of the Rocky’s “Final Edition,” you are first moved by the heart wrenching plight of the family that was the Rocky. The Rocky was produced primarily in a central office building where the newspaper was housed and it was printed on paper as well as being found online. In the video you see paper all over the place and people working on computers in cubicles in a big office building. Most of the things you see in this video are not actually needed to make a paper today.

Today you do not need paper to make a newspaper: most people read them online and the number is increasing every day. According to the Newspaper Association of America, online readership went up 7% in 2007. The New Media Update reports that those age 18-24 are 38% more likely than average to not read any print newspaper during a typical week. They also report that those that get their news online tend to be heavy consumers "based on their heavier than average visitation across most key news sites."

So you do not need paper and all the printing presses to make a paper. You also do not need a large office building. With laptops and the various forms of video conferencing available, most of the staff can work from home more efficiently. For reporters this convenience should be an added benefit: they can do more in the field while on assignment. The only thing you really need to make a great newspaper these days are talented people and the money to pay them.

The major problem facing the online business model for newspapers is funding. Most newspapers already give away content for free online, so the primary way for them to generate revenue is through advertising. Without selling subscriptions, many papers would have to dramatically cut their staffs to survive online.

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is the first major paper to decide to go completely online. This move could take place as soon as March 18th. It appears as if they plan to continue to give away their content for free online and generate revenue through advertising. In order to cut the costs necessary to make such a business model work, they plan to cut their staff from 150 to 20.

Bruce Watson at the Daily Finance reports that "the employees being let go seem to include all copy editors, editorial writers, designers, sports writers, and features writers."

It appears that they will only be keeping:

Two or three senior-level editors or producers.
Five frontline online producers.
Two frontline editors.
A Web developer.
A general-interest blogger/reporter.
A breaking-news reporter.
Two business reporters.
A political columnist/blogger.
A photographer.

Watson reports that one of the reporters who was fortunate enough to receive an offer for one of these positions revealed that the new deal would "have increased his insurance cost, cut his salary, forced him to forego his severance, erased his vacation accrual, and canceled his overtime." The reporter declined the offer.

Legitimate concerns are being raised about the product such a small staff could actually produce and what, if any, relation it would have to the quality work the Post-Intelligencer did before. No one is suggesting the Post-Intelligencer will ever be the same.

The implications are extremely serious. Many questions have already been raised about the press not providing a critical voice during the lead up to the Iraq war. If we begin to undervalue the profession of reporting in our society, it will only make the problem worse.

There is no silver lining to this situation. But there are ways to make the best of it. First, this small staff that will remain at the Post-Intelligencer does not need the large building presently used, pictured above. This staff can work from home or the road using video conferencing tools. The revenue that used to go to rent for that luxurious building can now be used to support the staff that make the paper.

Second, online advertising is improving; its value is increasing and it will continue to do so. There are forms of advertising available online that are simply not available on paper. Online ads can play music and videos: they can speak to customers directly and they can be used in conjunction with business websites to create unique experiences.

I clicked on one ad and I was taken to a website for the business and an instant messenger came up with someone asking if I needed help. I typed in a question and was given an immediate answer by a human being. I found this to be an extremely effective tool for getting my business.

Google recently announced they will be implementing a program that enables them to use the past online behavior of the person visiting a site to select the ads that will be placed on the site. If a person happens to be a musician and visits many music websites, ads relating to music will be selected. This will obviously increase the effectiveness of the ads. Things like this are not available to businesses when they advertise on paper. As these advantages are made clear and explored to a greater degree, the value of online advertising will increase and generate more revenue for online newspapers. This will allow them to increase the revenue used to support staff.

Third, today their are inexpensive online platforms that can be used, with the help of a talented professional, to produce a quality online newspaper. Reporters, photographers and editors can take their work directly to the web without taking on the large debt needed for printing presses, delivery trucks, and big buildings. Bloggers do this all the time. This could enable newspapers to cut out the companies, like E.W. Scripps, which are necessary for standard papers to function. More of the ad revenue generated by the paper could go directly to the people who make the paper.

This approach would reduce the extent to which corporate interests and wealthy tycoons, like Rupert Murdoch, have an influence over what is reported. The 33 local newspapers mentioned earlier that are endanger of going bankrupt are owned by just four individuals. A democracy is undermined when it is informed by newspapers owned by a few very wealthy individuals.

Fourth, moving our newspapers online will dramatically reduce their carbon footprint. Think about how much energy it takes to make the Sunday edition of your favorite paper on paper: the trees cut down, the ink, printing presses, delivery trucks, paper routes, newspaper machines, the paper moved into the landfill. I respect the President, my girlfriend, and all those out there who love to read newspapers on paper; but we need to get over it. We need to learn to appreciate the unique luxury of reading a great paper on a widescreen laptop with an excellent picture, which allows you to adjust the font, play music and videos and link to an unlimited data base of additional information.

We need the Rocky and all the other local newspapers that attempt to keep us informed. Moving to the online business model has obvious challenges. There are, however, some obvious changes newspapers can make to become more efficient, like all the other businesses in our economy.

I would love to see the staff of the Rocky and the citizens of Denver explore the possibility of the Rocky continuing in an online form: without the office building, the printing presses, the cubicles, and E.W. Scripps.

Scripps owns the newspaper's name, masthead, archives and Web site. It says it will continue to offer those "assets" for sale. Let Scripps keep them. Let the real "assets" of the Rocky--the people--start their own paper.

They can put it up on their own website. They can work from home and interact through video conferencing. They can meet in living rooms and coffee shops when necessary. The online ad revenue generated by the Rocky could go directly to the people who actually make the Rocky.

Bringing back the Rocky online could mean a lot to many different people. A long with providing an important voice, it could provide an important model for the kind of innovative thinking we need throughout the country in the present economic recession. Other local papers and businesses are facing financial challenges. And more and more individuals are finding themselves facing these challenges. Many of us are being forced to reinvent ourselves in a manner that can better serve in the changing economy. These days many of us walk with the Rocky.

So with all the bad news we read, it was nice to see that the staff of the Rocky is going to make a go of it: they are starting their own online newspaper. It will be called the INDenver Times. The video below is an introduction for the project. Its nature and success will depend on the amount of support they receive. The only thing we know for sure at this point is that we will have a chance to bring back a version of the Rocky.