Sourced from Stuart McMillen

We sell resources at their extraction cost rather than their replacement value

We have seen leading businesses spectacularly reinvent their practices, but are told to give concessions to the laggards that resist change.

We maintain perverse government subsidies that contradict and counteract government policy.

We are no longer living off of nature’s interest, we are liquidating its capital.

We must rewrite the values of our economy and incorporate the full cost of decisions.

We must eliminate industrial toxins by design so that containment and disposal are no longer necessary.

The quotations above are a partial transcript of the comic “Part of Nature” by Stuart McMillen. The full comic strip explores the relationship between our physical environment and capitalism and I found some of the claims to be unusual.

Sourced from www.chess-llc.com

The comic focuses on anthropogenic impacts on the environment and the corporate role in environmental degradation. I find it interesting that the artist did not condemn capitalism, or corporations specifically, for creating the problem. Rather, he acknowledges businesses as innovators. In one of the tutorials, a classmate mentioned that businesses are essential in creating sustainability because they have an incredible amount of power and capital to create change. I agree that businesses are much more finely attuned to what consumers prioritize, more so than governments that react to social change very slowly through policies. I think that if businesses can reform operations to eliminate waste every step of the way, it would also create economic and social benefits. Businesses in the long-term would reduce cost and improve living conditions for people who are most directly impacted by pollution and climate change. The idea of the triple bottom line is that we do not have to compromise any of the environmental, social or economical profits for the others. Sustainability is possible and immediately necessary.