Who wrote the book on sustainability?

The following was written by April, an MBA candidate at the GreenMBA Program (class of December 2006)

There is an article in this month’s Plenty magazine, not about global warming, but about global worrying, the “eco-anxiety” brought on by the overwhelming task of undoing the damage we’ve done to the environment (http://www.plentymag.com/article/11feature). When you are the only person on your block who fills their recycling bin to the brim, you may start to think, “Am I it? Does all this fall on my shoulders? Doesn’t anyone care what’s going on besides Marvin Gaye and me?!”

I’m here to tell you that yes, there are other people who care what’s going on.

John Stayton, one of the founders of the GreenMBA Program, holds a Spring semester event called “Two Fish Café” – an open mike night to re-charge our batteries and reconnect with alumni. At our Cohort’s first Two Fish, one performer was a soft-spoken young farmer who’d joined the program with the intent of developing his farm into a retreat center. He’d lost a close friend recently, he said, and wanted to sing a song for him. In a shaky voice, he began Paul Simon’s “The Boxer.” By the time he was halfway through the song, the entire room was singing along. When he finished, there wasn’t a dry eye (or an empty arm) in the house. It was in that moment, group-hugging a fellow student, that I realized I had become a part of a community I would always feel safe in, would always have a friend in.

Some people say that at the end of Simon’s song, the boy, like the boxer, is hurt, but not beaten. In the road ahead of us, we will have struggles, and disappointments, and hurts too numerous to count, but we will always, always have each other.

And that, my friends, is the only way we can evolve and survive.

For more information about the GreenMBA Program, check them out at: www.greenmba.com.

To join in the discussion or fire questions to Green MBA, April or Ideal Bite, feel free to comment.