Things that piss me off

So I'm working on something having to do with what they're now calling "sustainability". A fine word, really. But when you're talking about large corporations finally getting on the bandwagon of becoming "environmentally correct", my blood just starts to boil.

Where the fuck were these people 30, 35 years ago, when environmental concerns first came into public consciousness? Okay, really, it started a decade before that, with Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, but things really got into full swing with Earth Day and things like that. And all the large corporations did back then was scream bloody murder if anyone so much as suggested that they try recycling. Or that they should consider reducing their waste. And this always struck me as the height of stupidity. Reusing, recycling, reducing waste--these are all things that would have SAVED THEM MONEY!!! Not only that, but there was an unbelievable amount of bellyaching about how much it would cost them to refit their machinery, their factories, etc. Meanwhile, all the time and money they spent lobbying Congress to keep our laws off their non-corporeal bodies could have been spent on making these changes and saving money for decades. Millions of dollars could have been saved in all this time, maybe even billions. Not to mention the amount of pollution that could have been avoided all these years, so that the climate changes we're seeing today could, in fact, have been at least pushed back another decade or more--precious time. Maybe we could have even figured out, in all those decades, how to avoid it altogether.

And I could never understand, still can't, why no one thought that designing and creating the tools we needed in order to improve the environment or at least damage it considerably less was a good business idea. That there was money to be made in the innovations such an industry today is engendering.

So, excuse me, please, if Iwant to barf when I hear about companies finally find religi--excuse me, sustainability. None of the things I hear about how sustainability makes sense is any more true today than it would have been in 1970. None of it.

At the same time, it also pisses me off that, when BP announced several years ago that its initials weren't going to stand for British Petroleum anymore, they would instead stand for Beyond Petroleum, the investment analysts promptly downgraded BP's stock--seriously impacting its ability to raise the funds needed in order to pursue such a farsighted goal. Not that I'm crying for BP at this point. But may every single oil analyst never get another night's rest--insomnia for all of them!

These days, I hear that bankers are asking companies to whom they lend if they have sustainability plans or programs. Ha! That's what's really going to drive this--if the money guys are concerned about this and think it's important, then it'll happen.

But, damn, I hope I don't catch any of these people crowing about how wonderful they are to do all this work. Because they could-a, would-a, should-a done it a very, very, very long time ago. And, today, they should be ashamed of themselves, not patting themselves on the back.