Why Business As Usual is NOT an option
Posted By: Gaelan Brown
Date: December 18th, 2009
Category: Climate Change, General Interest
By Jeff Wolfe, from COP15 in Denmark:
Business As Usual – an archaic illusion. Business As Sustainable (BAS) is our only path forward.
Background: Business as usual (BAU) is the term used to describe how companies and people have conducted business over the past 100 years. It’s the set of actions which has resulted in the climate change we see today. But the assumptions underlying all models of BAU have fundamentally changed due to the effects of climate change, making BAU an archaic illusion.
Commentary: Whenever climate change mitigation is discussed, it is typically discussed against a BAU scenario, as in: ‘Versus BAU, implementing renewable energy for electric generation would cost us $XXX more.’
What is never discussed is that the BAU scenario no longer exists; we are not living in the time referred to by the BAU scenario. We’ve spent the past 150 years using limited resources wantonly, impacting the Earth in ways we only truly started to understand 20 – 30 years ago, and now find that we cannot continue that way of life. Like a childhood lost, we are seeking to hang onto that way of life, to insist that our current options continue to include wanton resource use and disposal, to continue acting like a child where actions do not have consequences.
If we could continue a BAU-like set of actions, we would find that the costs associated with them are far higher than previously thought. These costs include weather disasters, crop failures, water shortages, electrical disruptions, low-area flooding, and more. These costs change the calculation of the historic BAU analyses, making a BAU-like path far more expensive than a path that transitions to Business As Sustainable (BAS).
And perhaps most child-like, we act as if we do not understand that a BAS path can result in a better life, that adulthood can be fun, rewarding, and fulfilling.
In the face of the truth of science and the availability of technology, and the belief in a greater being, it has become an illusion to speak of any business as ‘usual’, when all business must now change to meet the present reality. To cling to a false belief that BAU still exists, to compare possible future options for climate action and BAS against a now mythical BAU, is irresponsible and negligent. It is time we grew up and accepted both the pleasures and responsibilities of adulthood, and accelerate ourselves toward BAS.
