Barbara Hirsch, recording engineer for the UCSB Music Library, sustainability change agent, and author of Ecofacts.

Could it be that world happenings are conspiring to require business to evolve? If the corporate world can accept an equitable interest in social and environmental responsibility as well as in profit, it will serve us all better.

We know of the happenings. It has become clear that our natural resources – fossil fuels, minerals, forests, water – are truly limited, that we need to radically change our use of them, that our flagrant use of these resources and our generally polluting ways are harming all of us. Climate change threatens, population growth compounds the dangers.

The current fallout from the bomb of the subprime mortgage crisis and the absurdity of the soaring CEO salaries, sometimes unrelated to company performance, are some of the grist for the business mills to filter and churn out more social responsiblity, honesty, and transparency.

Thanks to our wealth and technology (especially the internet), the exponentially rising level of awareness and understanding of these crises has given us the power needed to foster change. Granted, much of that same wealth and technology were products of our wasteful ways, but they have equipped us with the tools we need to ease the world’s “blessed unrest.”*

*”Blessed Unrest” by Paul Hawken, c2007 Viking Press

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