Inspiring Change

We started this blog to share good news. We do talk about scary things from time to time – we look for reliable answers and options, and present them. Today, we're talking about sad news, but with a real sense of hope for the future.

When we started green|spaces in 2007, we were selling a vision of what Chattanooga could be. We talked candidly about Chattanooga's industrial past, and pinpointed the current problems that keep us from being a cleaner city. We're still working for Chattanooga to become a true environmental city.

This idea of vision (not yet) and reality (already) was influenced by many voices, one of which was Ray Anderson, the founder of Interface, Inc. and author of two books on sustainability. He passed away earlier this month.

I first heard him speak in 2005, and – like many people – was inspired. He believed that sustainability as a movement, at its core, was about doing just that. Inspiring people to change.

Martin Melaver recently wrote this about Ray:

“Ray was one of those rare individuals who somehow touched the core of what human-ness is all about – a blend of ambition and selflessness. He would begin most every talk he gave with the statement that he was as driven and as competitive as any businessman you would ever meet. And yet somehow, he would “flip” this all-so-common human trait, one most of his audience identified with, into something filled with a higher purpose: stewardship of planet earth. He was a self-proclaimed plunderer of natural capital, a sinner – but then by implication so weren’t we all? And his hope and undiminished optimism gave us all a clear path toward redemption.”

“A sustainable society into the indefinite future...depends totally and absolutely on a vast re-design triggered by an equally vast mind-shift - one mind as a time, one organization at a time, one technology at a time, one building, one company, one university curriculum, one community, one region, one industry at a time, until the entire systems of which we are each a part has been transformed into a sustainable system, existing ethically in balance with Earth’s natural systems, upon which every living thing utterly depends - even civilization itself.”

We are inspired by change. We are inspiring change.

Click here to hear a two-minute video where Ray talks about what was most important to him.