[Privacy Statement] [Support EarthRescue] EarthRescue was founded in early 1999 by two very strong environmental activists who just didn't feel that adequate emphasis was being placed on the power of consumers to use the power of marketplace demand – as opposed to political demands – to stimulate ecologically and socially responsible behavior. People are ready now, for what we at EarthRescue call the Sustainable Marketplace (tm).
Our strategic sense has been developed through education, business experience, environmental activist experience, and journalism experience. We are initiated activists in that we have paid our dues in the environmental arena - having worked many years in the environmental community - but found it necessary to step back due to the reliance on antagonistic tactics. The movement into journalism reflects our recognition of the critical nature of communications, deeply and pragmatically seeking the messages and mediums which actually reach people and motivate them, honing the sensibility necessary to read, and skills to write to, an audience.Our strategic sense is the outcome of the path we began many years ago in college:
We had trouble finding ways to apply our strategic insight due to
We drew the conclusion that confrontational activism had on the whole had it’s day and is now a weak strategic tool at best. We believe that these activist strategies deserve to be honored, however, for their crucial place in history, and that they must also be pragmatically set aside for more effective tools for the sake of success and future progress.
This raised an additional, tangential but not insignificant, problem. Environmentalists must completely transcend being branded, by our own identity politics choices and/or by society’s, as radical fringe, be it hippies, punks, ravers, or whatever the latest rebel fashion is. We have been to too many marches, demos, et cetera, that everyone “who breathes or needs to drink clean water” should care about, in which it looked like the environment was a special interest issue of people who somehow find the freedom to demonstrate during business hours and look unemployable by conservative standards. Setting aside the fact that these prejudices are unevolved and should change, the fact remains that saving the environment is too important to sacrifice on the alter of counter-cultural axes to grind.
Environmentalism needs to be, and thank goodness is becoming, normalized.
We have also had the important and exciting experience of recognizing a Cee-change in the business world, in which our length of run-of-the-mill administrative and business management education and experiences turns out to be of benefit. We can remember trying to get co-workers excited about recycling and being treated like we were “weird,” and are pleased to have survived such stigma to witness office recycling becoming conventional, and a stirring of the urge to be environmental at work.
More than this, Ms. Nicole Kehoe, one of our Founding Directors, attended a forum called “Environmental Management Systems and Financial Incentives: A Roundtable Discussion” - sponsored by The Merit Partnership for Pollution Prevention and The President’s Council on Sustainable Development - at which she thrilled to the manifestation of serious discussions among business people in business suits about voluntary compliance, environmental competitiveness, et cetera.
The time is ripe for the Sustainable Marketplace (tm) - the marketplace in which environmental and social values add value to consumer products, and where goods without these added values are second-rate.
EarthRescue is spreading an understanding of consumer power to address the impact of consumption, and, not least, to organize consumer behavior into a concerted movement to lead corporations into sustainable practices by rewarding all real movement in this direction.
Contrast this with the legislative approach, which attempts to shape business behavior through legislation. We believe the legislative approach is vital, necessary and, unfortunately, doomed to limited success because of the power corporations themselves exercise over enforcement and the legislative politics. It can be hamstrung. But now that business sees a valid ROI in being “green” they are not fighting all environmental legislation as vehemently as they used to! And now, with business starting to be “pro-actively green” they are circumventing the need for some legislation saving millions of your tax dollars!
We seek nothing less than a significant, perhaps historic, impact on the success of the environmental movement through the sharing of an extremely positive and hopeful strategic vision in which the focus is on what people are doing right. EarthRescue is not obstructed by the strategies and leadership of others pursuing different visions.
We continue, however, to strive to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth's environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations.
We believe that change in human behavior is urgently needed to halt the accelerating threat to biological security of our planet, and address the false-confidence that our planet will continue to support life on an adequate scale despite its current rate of deterioration.
We seek the greatest impact by responding swiftly, decisively, and strategically to opportunities and challenges. We work on issues that matter where we believe we can make a unique difference.
Our effectiveness depends on work that is uncompromised by partisan politics, institutional or personal allegiances, or sources of financial support. We take pride in the independence of our ideas and work.
Your participation in this process is vital to Earth's survival! When you spend your hard-earned dollars at businesses who continue to pollute the planet without remorse, you are, in fact, telling them that they have your approval to continue these destructive practices.
You can change the definition of "Business as Usual" by taking your money away from bad businesses anddiverting your money to businesses who demonstrate their earthfriendlyness through their human rights policies, their manufacturing practices, and the products they create and sell. It is logical to assume that businesses who care about the environment will spend their profits at other businesses care about the environment.
There are an increasing number of businesses working to create a Sustainable Marketplace (tm). Join them! Send the message that how they conduct their business is important not only to you, but the survival of the planet. And send the message to those who don't care that they are going to have to make some changes if they want your money!
"A peaceful, just, and joyful society will be built by people who have traded consumerism for connection with themselves, with other people, and with their world." --Tom Atlee
