2Sustain

Managing Director of Azul Partners and Editor of Spend Matters

Note from Tim:  Jason is guest blogging yesterday and today on 2Sustain, and offers his own viewpoint on the intersection of sustainability and politics.  Welcome, Jason!

Where did I leave off yesterday?  Oh yeah…I was about to define what Social Conservatism means to me:

Sustainable Conservatism – like all conservatism – is rooted in the behavior of the individual over the mandate of the state. For me, this means practicing what I preach – or at least would like to preach more of if anyone would listen. As an example, my wife and I own only one car as a family (despite the fact that both of us have very demanding jobs). We sacrifice time to take public transportation whenever possible – and have a Zip Car as a last-ditch back-up – even though both of us are busy entrepreneurs who value our time in the upper three digits per hour. In other words, we’re not just community organizers waiting for the bus and the next election cycle with nothing better to do until then. We have clients who pay us a lot of money to do what we do well. And our time truly is money.

Sure, you could say, for people like us – “non-working Americans” in current Washington speak – having one car makes no economic sense. But our view is that unless business leaders and entrepreneurs like us set an example for making the time to take public transportation or ride a bike, why should anyone? Of course many of our Obama supporting friends who pride themselves on their green credentials make due with multiple cars and don’t even consider the green implications of owning two, three or even four vehicles. Incidentally, the combination of an Audi, a Prius and a Porsche seems a familiar one among the lefties in our congressional district (which used to be represented by Rahm Emmanuel). Brands aside, sustainable Conservatives also typically favor used cars over new – both because they have a lower carbon footprint and because we’re cheap (why not let some other sucker take the first year depreciation, I say). When it comes to mobility, to each his own, I suppose.

Our perspective on food and what we put in our bodies is simple – the closer to home and the greater utility it provides, the better. Living in an urban apartment setting, I personally find it difficult to grow food for my family – or shoot enough pigeons to keep enough protein on the table. But we make it a point to support local farmers whenever possible, going out of our way to shop at farmer’s markets and identify products that have a lower carbon footprint because they’re made closer to where they’ll be consumed. We’re also not completely nuts over this whole organic thing though our view is one that lesser chemical intervention is better than more (especially given the fact that organic certification is essentially a government creation – and you know how much stock we put in government to get things right). When it comes to drinking, we shun any beer that suggests it is “Union-made” not on the basis that we do not believe in the rights of workers, but because we know that the brewer who made such labor agreements in the first place can no longer afford to buy quality ingredients (e.g., real hops) while still delivering a product at a fair price point given their labor costs. It’s just not possible, even if it is less filling. We are also afraid of labor action resulting in, well, yellow beer (which such beer tends to be already, giving us little form of visual warning when such action occurs).

In short, Sustainable Conservatives follow a movement that practices what it preaches. It has a sense of humor and can laugh at itself as much as the complete idiocies that our comrades are proposing in Washington at the moment. It also enjoys poking fun at liberal green hypocrisy. But perhaps most important, Sustainable Conservatives do not have a holier-than-thou chip on the shoulder when it comes to knowing what is right for others. At its essence, we believe that individuals can – and will – make better decisions than the government when they’re fully informed about the consequences of their actions. After a few sips of a fairly priced, good non-Union made microbrew, I know there are many in this country that would share this opinion (if only they knew what they were missing …). I have no doubt that I am part of a growing minority that in due course could very well take Washington by storm. When we make it, we’ll give this country a kick in the green derriere to get our economy growing again – versus forcing organic manure (paid for by progressive taxes on “non-working” Americans”) down the throats of hard working citizens and telling them this is how green should taste and that they should learn to like it. Our time is coming: it will only take a few more years and another round or two of tax increases used to pay for more green (non-grass fed) pork to truly mobilize us into gear.

Jason Busch is Editor of Spend Matters (www.spendmatters.com) and Managing Director of Azul Partners, an Advisory Firm. In his spare time, he is pioneering a PB-free bullet that promises to biodegrade without damaging the environment — while maintaining enough stopping power to get the job done.