The Bookworm: Ecological Intelligence

Ecological Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. 287 pages. Broadway Books. 2009.

Activists decry the threats of global warming, the pollution of our bodies, sweatshops, and the like, while many businesspeople have argued for greening and social responsibility as good for the corporation. Yet the fundamental tenets of capitalism have put those two camps at odds: executives are paid to maximize company shareholder value and quarterly earnings, not to support the common good. This antagonism between corporate goals and those of the public interest creates a quandary for those many executives who seek both to please their shareholders and to pursue the best interests of the public. But radical transparency unites what had seemed polarities: the self-interest of a company aligns with the best interests and values of the consumer.

An added incentive to hurry — though contemplatively — through my current reading queue is an interesting book I found today at Prairie Lights. After reading the back cover synopsis and first few pages, I put it back on the shelf and walked away; I couldn’t let it tempt me any more. It will be mine, but only after I polish off the remaining seven books patiently awaiting my attention.

Daniel Goleman’s Ecological Intelligence was the latest obstacle I needed to hurtle. I bought it along with Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 at Skylight way back in April.

Ecological Intelligence piqued my interest as an environmentalist. The subtitle of this paperback version is “The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy,” and the back cover says “…Goldman explains why we as shoppers are in the dark over the hidden impacts of the goods and services we make and consume, victims of a blind spot about the detrimental effects of producing, shipping, packaging, distributing, and discarding the goods we buy.”

Though I have always known our affluent western lifestyles are not as environmentally and socially innocuous as we want to believe, my time in California, especially Orange County, made me acutely aware that almost everything we do has hidden consequences. Even as I sit here in the Blue Baller, writing this on my MacBook with a lamp behind me for light, I am supporting and contributing to environmental and social degradation. The energy I am using was likely generated by a belching coal plant or the nuclear reactor in Palo; my MacBook was made in China, though probably by technicians paid more than a pack of Ramen a day, and was shipped to the US for sale on a giant container ship running on what Goleman refers to as “the most heavily polluting fuel, ‘black yogurt,’ the otherwise unusable sludge left from processing petroleum into oil.” Goleman, I thought, would shed light on even more consequences of the things we do. He did, but it just wasn’t in the way I expected.

I assumed EI was an in-depth outline of the hidden impacts of everyday products. Plastic bags, computers, clothing, and even books. Though Goleman did mention a few shameful secrets of those very things (did you know plastic bags take an estimated 500-1000 years to biodegrade, or that it takes 2,700 liters of water to grow the cotton used in just one t-shirt?), his main agenda instead focused on ways consumers can learn how goods and services are harmful to themselves, others, and the environment, and how we can vote with our dollars to impel industry to become ecologically sustainable.

EI is Goleman’s case for what he calls “radical transparency,” an information system that gives consumers unprecedented and uncensored knowledge about production. With radical transparency, buyers will know whether or not their clothes were made in sweatshops, if their child’s toys contain hazardous amounts of lead, or if companies like Proctor & Gamble or Coca-Cola are using ecologically and socially sustainable practices. Radical transparency relies heavily on Life Cycle Assessments, “a method that allows us to systematically tear apart any manufactured item into its components and their subsidiary industrial processes, and measure with near-surgical precision their impacts on nature from the beginning of their production through their final disposal.” Goleman argues that if consumers can easily identify environmentally, personally, and socially deleterious products, they will shift to buying sustainable and eco-friendly alternatives, using the free market to coerce industry into reforming its ways.

Radical transparency, I think, is not a bad theory. Goleman spends much of EI detailing the minutiae of how radical transparency will work best, why it is needed, and the ways it will compel consumers to vote with their money. Beta versions of the system are currently available; Goleman points readers to a website called GoodGuide, which he feels is a good example of how radical transparency works. GoodGuide assesses product impacts and assigns grades. While reading EI, I couldn’t help visiting GoodGuide to find the impacts of my favorite soap, deodorant, and toothpaste, and I suggest everyone do the same.

Though the subject was interesting to me, Goleman’s writing was unimpressionable. While reading, I could never stay focused; I would reread paragraphs two or three times because I could never recall what was said. This cliché doesn’t work as well with writing, but it fits Goleman’s writing style: everything went in one ear and out the other.

Despite that, the first 30 or 40 pages were agonizingly repetitious. At a certain point I wondered if Gertrude Stein edited the final draft. Each paragraph, it seemed, was another way of writing what directly preceded it. Goleman became less monotonous after making his initial case for radical transparency (about 500 times), but I couldn’t help feeling a sense of literary déjà vu at later stages: “I have a feeling I read this before. Probably on page twenty six.”

Many parts of the book evoked a “duh” reaction from me. In the beginning, during one of the repetitious parts, Goleman goes to great lengths to make readers understand environmental interconnectivity: everything we do has impacts on everything else. No shit. I learned that in like third grade. Goleman seems to think radical transparency is a new concept, one we should adopt to reverse the negative impacts we have made. However, the Amerindians and native peoples across the world have been using their own systems of radical transparency for thousands of years. They are ecologically intelligent in that they realize and account for their impacts on their habitat, which enables them to live sustainably. Goleman only mentions this briefly, citing a Himalayan village and the way the people live there as an example of ecological intelligence. His naïveté disturbed me.

EI was in interesting read, and it will no doubt make you stop and consider the consequences of your lifestyle and buying choices.

New words I learned: All definitions courtesy of my Mac Book dictionary. Vanguard: “a group of people leading the way in new developments or ideas.” Asymptote: “a line that continually approaches a given curve but does not meet it at any finite distance.” Parquet: “a toxic, fast-acting herbicide that becomes deactivated in the soil.” Myopia: “nearsightedness.” (That has to be the first time I have ever seen one word entirely described by another single word.) Buffalo (as a verb): “overawe or intimidate (someone).” Valence: “the combining power of an element, esp. as measured by the number of hydrogen atoms it can displace or combine with.” Wonk: “a person who takes an excessive interest in minor details of political policy.” Vet (as a verb): “make a careful and critical examination of (something).” Ameliorate: “make (something bad or unsatisfactory) better.” Fugue: “a state or period of loss of awareness of one's identity, often coupled with flight from one's usual environment, associated with certain forms of hysteria and epilepsy.” Coterie: “a small group of people with shared interests or tastes, esp. one that is exclusive of other people.” Amygdala: “a roughly almond-shaped mass of gray matter deep inside each cerebral hemisphere, associated with the sense of smell.”