Regular readers are aware of my habit of collecting interesting conversations – usually on airplanes – and using these to draw out observations and occasionally conclusions about the state of the creation care effort as it relates to ordinary people.

Keeping in mind that we’re dealing with anecdotes, not data, there are still useful things that can be learned from talking with ordinary people. This month’s candidates are a business college Dean and an automotive company executive, and I want to say at the start that I plunged in hoping to learn from them. As far as I was concerned, they were experts.Our business colleges ought to be as forward looking as anyone, I thought. And here is the Dean of one of the finest (sorry, I’m keeping his affiliation anonymous for both of our sakes!) and I have an hour to learn everything I can from him. It’s his job to see the future. He has to prepare students to be successful over the next 30 or 40 years of their careers – surely he’s given some thought to things like sustainability, alternative energy, accounting systems like the ‘triple bottom line’ that measure more than money.

The auto guy had worked much of his career in Europe, and his task is even more specific – he is responsible for helping his company (yes, one of the world’s largest) to plan for and design future products (cars) that people will buy. A golden opportunity for a guy like me with not much more than a seminary degree to learn what a somewhat progressive car company is doing to prepare themselves and by extension the rest of us for the future.

So those were my hopes.

Didn’t happen.

Oh, they were both willing to talk – that wasn’t the problem. But I felt more like the teacher than the student I had hoped to be. My friend the Dean wasn’t sure at first what I mean by ‘sustainability’, and then thought for a bit and finally concluded that ‘our students can sort of get that here and there in the curriculum’ but that they have no kind of degree or certificate that would allow a student to specialize in sustainability. My impression was that graduates of this particular business school would come out into the real world with the idea that alternative energy or sustainability or the triple bottom line were as relevant to business as faith-healing or herbal medicine would be to a new doctor.

My car friend was little better. He was knowledgeable about hybrids, and I learned much about why, for example, European diesel engine vehicles don’t get imported or sold much in the US in spite of high fuel mileage and long-life engines. (Technical – has to do with how they need to treat the exhaust, expensively…) What shouldn’t have surprised me, but did, was his view of the future – again, something he’s being paid a lot more than me to think about. Gas will never be more than $3 per gallon. I think it will be $10 in 10 years, and would have made a bet except that I don’t think I’ll ever see him again.

He hopes to position his company to sell hundreds of thousands of new vehicles each year indefinitely into the future, but he has no idea of where those cars will drive. “We’ll have a new smart grid”. What does that mean? “Cars will talk to each other, anticipating traffic jams, rerouting themselves around the bottlenecks.” But what happens when – as any commuter in Chicago knows – all of the routes out of a city are clogged? When there are no alternate routes? What about rail? “It will never happen. Americans won’t ride trains.” Any thoughts about running out of oil? “We’ll always find more…”

And so on and on and on. We actually talked all the way from take off to landing on a 90 minute flight.

My take on this?

Great disappointment. I have talked with lots of people in business and have had many encouraging discussions. (Here and here).There are companies – lots of them – and leaders in those companies who are trying to be successful by understanding the present and by trying to anticipate the challenges of the future before it gets here. I’ve written about some of these before. But there seem to be far too many like these two who are stuck in the present, convinced that the future isn’t going to be much different than what we have now. “If we just keep on doing what we’ve been doing but more of it we can’t help but be successful.” Sorry, guys. That is one path that is guaranteed not to succeed.

If you’re in business – or planning to go into business, you have a challenging task. You need to figure out how to make money in a world where material and energy resources are going to be more and more scarce. But the best path to success is to get out in front of everyone else – be more environmental, more sustainable, more green than anyone around you. If you’re a student, become an expert in sustainability – management, manufacturing processes, whatever. If you’re a manager now, don’t fight regulations! Get in front of them – become your sector’s leader. Based on these two conversations, it won’t be difficult. Your customers and shareholders will thank you, all the way to the bank.

Oh, but this column is “God-centered and Green”. Ed, you’ve wandered so far you’ve almost fallen off the platform this time. What’s this lecture about business got to do with godliness?

Just this: If you, like me, are a disciple, someone who seeks to follow God’s will in your life, and if you agree that this means we have to learn to apply creation-care principles to how we live… doesn’t that apply to how we do business, how we work as well?

[Further reading, I highly recommend Paul Hawken, Natural Capitalism.]

[Cross-posted at Sustain Lane]