Clean and Green Business

Anyone whose information source was once a newspaper delivered to their door no longer needs to bother putting their slippers on or face a chilly draft when they can reach over from the comfort of their adjustable bed and grab their handheld phaser.  As they peruse international headlines there will be hard evidence that environmental sensitivities are escalating faster than technology and space travel. While the analogy of a rocket leaving earth spewing a vapor cloud behind may not be the best framework for a green conversation, space travel is a cool industry and everyone knows rockets outrun dragsters on any given day at the track. Fastest speed wins, right?

One crowd wants to save the Earth and the other wants to get the heck out of here.  If you saw the recent pictures of Mars, there wasn't one speck of litter.  Nice and clean, but no green.  It is red.  The moon? Well, we all knew it as "green cheese" until we got there and found out the truth. Nonetheless, most everyone concludes clean and green is good. So where is the green and just who cornered the market on it?  What about clean?  Kind of elusive, huh?

So what if we did travel into space and view the world from a totally different perspective, say...30,000 ft.?  While we probably couldn't make out the details we would still see something very familiar where any civilization exists-trade. Exchange of goods and services for money which is often green, but not necessarily clean. Business ventures, monopolies, private enterprise, cottage industry, international finance, brokerage, agency, and the list goes on.  Like a trail of ants to their mound, millions upon millions making their way to market to earn, invest, swap, spend, pursue, and who knows what all for green.  

Not very environmentally friendly and not very clean either.  What if it was?  Would the earth be fresher?  If the instructors who taught ethics classes lived by their creed, if public servants lived by the rules they imposed, if people fulfilled their contracts and stuck to their word, would there be more green? As a result, could there be a cleaner environment, cleaner business, greener pastures, and new opportunities for emerging technologies? New business development ventures could create platforms for high tech environmental remediation, sustainable farming, and even faster space travel. Maybe we really could have it all.

Perhaps the green earth so many clamor for is wrapped in opportunity for progress, growth, and potential for advancement of civilization at large. Could the key to clean and green be straight up dealings in the market place where an honest day's work was expected and delivered like clockwork? Could conversation be cleaned up to simply mean what is said?  Could invoices be paid on such equal terms as advance value delivery in order to keep financial passages flowing without logjams of debris?  

Clean and green is a compelling concept that beckons to us all and in the business context, the two words should be synonymous. Individual meaning is up to each worker and the various colonies on the ant farm.  For those who just want to escape, those of us who don't have enough green to go wonder how will Mars look 3,000 years from today.