Summary (Version #5)

Every business needs to decide what to communicate, who to communicate it to, how to communicate and when to communicate it.

The following are potential consumers of your communications:

• Employees
• Customers
• Suppliers/ Partners
• Peers
• Investors
  

As Lester Brown finishes his book Plan B 2.0 with the following:

One question that I am frequently asked when I am speaking in various countries is, Given the environmental problems that the world is facing, can we make it? That is, can we avoid economic decline and civilization collapse? My answer is always the same: it depends on you and me, on what you and I do to reverse these trends. It means becoming politically active. Saving our civilization is not a spectator sport.

We have moved into this new world so rapidly that we have not yet fully grasped the meaning of what is happening. Traditionally, concern for our children has translated into ensuring their health care and getting them the best education possible. But if we do not act quickly to reverse the deterioration of the earth's environmental systems, eradicate poverty, and stabilize population, their world will be declining economically and disintegrating politically.  Today, securing our children's future means not only investing in their education and health care, but also investing in a program to reverse the trends undermining their future.

As individuals, we should continue our memberships in environmental and population organizations. We need to improve local recycling programs. We need to vote with our pocket books. For example, buying Green Power certificates helps drive investment in renewable energy. We need to do all of the things we are doing now to protect the environment. But they are not enough. We have been doing these things for the last 35 years. We have won a lot of local battle, but we are losing the war.

He goes on to say...

Educate yourself on environmental issues and on what happened to earlier civilizations that also found themselves in environmental trouble-- and help your friends to become better informed. On this subject I recommend Collapse by Jared Diamond and A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright. To understand the case of eradicating poverty, read "Can Extreme Poverty Be Eliminated?" by Jeffrey Sachs in September 2005 issue of Scientific American. To gain a sense of the enormous potential for boosting energy efficiency, read "More Profit with Less Carbon" by Amory Lovins in the same issue? 

Remember, challenging though the situation may be, there are signs of the new economy emerging all over the world. We see them in the wind farms of Europe, the fast-growing U.S. fleet of gas-electric hybrid cars, the reforested hills of South Korea, the family planning in Iran, the massive eradication in China, and the solar rooftops of Japan.

What we need to do is doable. Sit down and map out own personal plan and timetable for what you want to do to move the world from a path headed towards economic decline to one of sustained economic progress. Sketch out a plan for the next year of the things you want to do, how you hope to do them, and whom you can work with to achieve the only goal that really counts - the preservation of civilization. What could be more rewarding? 

What does your communication plan look like?