My first day of the MBA portion of my joint Environmental Policy and Business Administration degree, our Business Sustainability and Society professor asked students for word associations with ‘Corporate America.’ Here is a wordle of the class crowdsource.

Corporate America: A Culture of Psychopaths? 

I contributed the world psychopath, because what else do you call a ‘person’ who lacks a conscience? Through Citizens United we have declared corporations to be people, but they have no moral compass, no Jiminy Cricket. People need to sleep at night with the choices they’ve made, but corporations rest easy after serving their shareholders and executives. To complicate matters further, it seems that the personality types that excel in financial and corporate leadership exhibit abnormally high psychopathic tendencies (up to 10 times societal averages). By allowing psychopaths to run our businesses and government, the American people have lost control of our country, and humanity may lose control over the anthropocentric climate change we’re causing through our shortsighted economic policies.

Systems Collapse?

The world is facing an environmental and economic double-whammy, with more than 60% of ecosystems degraded, and anemic growth predicted for the foreseeable future. We’re polluting like nobody’s business (even though most of America is out of business) with annual green house gas emissions surpassing climate scientists’ worst-case scenarios. Those Pollyanna’s can’t believe that humanity would continue on the disastrous course we’ve set, given the available information.

Facing a future average temperature increase of more than 4 degrees Celsius by 2100 (that’s more than 8 degrees Fahrenheit) means more floods, droughts, fires, haboobs (dust storms), derechos (like a tornado thunderstorm), and other extreme weather events we’ll have to learn the names of as they become common-place. This is a world where if it rains it pours, many peoples’ countries are under water literally, not just financially, agriculture is precarious, and constant natural disasters undermine the very infrastructure of our globalized society.

Corporate Responsibility?

My professor discussed the power of business to build a sustainable future using new paradigms. It would be great to think that voluntary measures from the private sector can save our butts. But the problem with Free Markets is that the invisible hand is unfettered by empathy or rational thought. Individual actors working for their own self-betterment results in The Tragedy of the Commons, or the Race to the Bottom. We lack any global management of ecosystem services – rather the system we have in place encourages companies and countries to plunder our rapidly dwindling natural resources. Yet it seems insane to expect corporations to act against their own interests, saving something for later when the Financial Statements are due to shareholders for the next Fiscal Quarter. Asking the fox to rebuild the henhouse is nonsensical, even if it would ensure his future meals.

Regulatory Capture?

Government regulation also seems incapable of delivering us from Evil, with regulatory capture the norm in America, and European efforts to model sustainable solutions dwarfed by the gangbusters growth occurring in the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China). How can we expect elected officials to defend the public interest, when there are professional lobbyists at their door all hours of the day, promising campaign funding carrots or Swiftboat ad-campaign sticks?

Is lobbying bribery or extortion? And how can we free our civil servants from the rat race of fundraising and favors? Unfortunately people have vain and petty souls, and our public officials aren’t any different. It seems they treat the public good as a chit to be bartered for favors, and usually they give away our collective assets at fire sale prices. One case that particularly struck me was the indictment of Chicago Alderman Ike Carothers, for accepting $40,000 worth of home renovations in exchange for rezoning a property that netted the developer $3 million. That means the developer gained 75 times more than the bribe cost. And Ike got central air – maybe he’ll get visitation rights? Oh no, never mind, we don’t send people to jail for cronyism and corruption, that would be so extreme! Just for drug possession, and for trying to stop illegal federal giveaways of public lands. I learned a great saying in France this summer, “les loups ne se mangent pas entre eux,” meaning the wolves don’t eat each other. They just go after smaller less vicious animals down the food chain.

It’s a feeding frenzy for the wolves in America today. Citizens United has put a (final) nail in the coffin of democratic participation, results of which are already pouring in. Monsanto and the biotech agribusinesses have already dropped $25 million to defeat a Genetically Modified Food Labeling Act in California, and that’s with three months left until the vote. I can’t bear to watch the federal election coverage, since it’s hard to want to save a country where half of us might vote for Mitt Money and Paul ‘Protect Life (unless it’s the mother’s)’ Ryan. At this point I’m about ready to pray for the Second Coming, so we might have a chance to start over before it’s back to the Sticks and Stones stage of homo sapien.