Interview with Gus Speth, by Jeff Goodell

From the current issue of Orion.

Change Everything Now
One of the nation's most mainstream environmentalists says it's time to get a lot more radical
Interview with Gus Speth, by Jeff Goodell

JG: In your view, what’s the alternative to pro-growth capitalism? Should we rethink communism?

GS: No, it’s not that at all. But I do believe we should be looking for a nonsocialist alternative to today’s capitalism. I think we do want to make changes that are sufficiently profound that when you look back on them, you will see that it’s no longer the capitalism of the early twenty-first century.

JG: What would a revised capitalist system look like?

GS: Well, let’s take the core of it—the corporation. Corporations right now are mandated to serve and promote the best interest of stockholders, by law. And anything it [a corporation] justifies in the nature of doing well in communities or doing well by society, that’s also got to be justified that it’s in the best interest of the shareholders. And maximizing shareholder wealth is a very fundamental part of the motivational structure of the corporate sector.

I think that needs to change fundamentally, so that corporations really are in the business of serving all of the factors that help generate wealth—all of the stakeholders, in effect. One way to describe what has to happen, and the way that the situation in the future would be different, would be to describe it as a series of transformations. The first would be a transformation in the market. There would be a real revolution in pricing. Things that are environmentally destructive would be—if they were really destructive—almost out of reach, prohibitively expensive.

A second would be a transformation to a postgrowth society where what you really want is to grow very specific things that are desperately needed in a very targeted way—you know, care for the mentally ill, health-care accessibility, high-tech green-collar industries.

A third would be a move to a wider variety of ownership patterns in the private sector. More co-ops, more employee ownership plans, and less rigid lines between the profit and the not-for-profit sectors. I mean, Google is an example of that now, they are moving in that direction, although I think it’s small compared with what they’ve really got going.

JG: Do you think that this kind of change can be had with anything short of a real revolution in America?

GS: Well, I don’t think it can be had without a real citizens’ movement—a grassroots citizens’ movement that shakes up people’s consciousness and forces us to rethink what’s really important, and what our role in the world and in nature really is. I think there is a growing sense that something is out of whack in the country, and that we’re on the verge of losing something very important, not only spiritually but also environmentally. And if we don’t change, we really could pass into some situation where it would be irretrievably lost.

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