From Birkenstocks to the Board Room

At this morning’s GreenXchange plenary session on the connection between public pension funds and green investment, Glen Blacet of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CALSTRS) made a remarkable connection between the origin of the environmental movement and the remarkable groundswell that has now inundated the mainstream.

In many ways, the discussion underway at the GreenXchange conference is the very same one that has gone on around campfires and drum circles and peace rallies. The same conversation has taken place in suits and in sundresses, loafers and Birkenstocks. Indeed, the Birkenstock, serving somewhere between metonymy and stereotype to represent the traditional left-wing environmental movement: peaceniks, hippies, and granola crunchers. All of them might scoff at the notion that anyone would, at this late date, just be waking up to climate change and environmental issues. Yet, such are the culture gaps that persist in a society as diverse as America.

The very acknowledgment – the utterance of “Birkenstock” in a staid conference hall – is redolent with significance. Blacet invoked the humor of the everlasting battle between hip and square, but his overt message was much more clear: the hippies were right. The suits, for so long, have been ignorant. The only problem is that, as he aptly noted, “he who has the gold makes the rules.” The hippest were not in it for profit; indeed, they reject capitalism outright. The suits were in it for profit, and for so long – thanks, in part, to hostile regulations and public ignorance – had no incentive to tap into the wisdom of the unwashed.

But this conference indicates that things have changed, indeed. Environmentalism is not an esoteric, selfish cause. Profit is no longer a function of waste and disregard. The hippies now need to figure out how to communicate with entrepreneurs. More importantly, the entrepreneurs now have incentive to think, if not act, like hippies.

It is unlikely that the hippies – and their intellectual progenitors: Rachel Carson, Ed Abby, Bill McKibben, E.O. Wilson and the rest – will get their due credit, but credit was never their aim. If the entrepreneurs, policymakers, public officials, and transnational corporations can spin their message into profit, then so much the better. Capitalism, and the audience today, doesn’t care where the ideas come from, only that they are economically viable. Today’s acknowledgement—by a financier versed in the world of pension funds and rates of return—was but a small tip of the hat, but a profound one nonetheless.