Many indicators point to a shift in EHS drivers and thinking. Redinger EHS outlines a few below.
End of the Oil Economy
At the American Industrial Hygiene Conference and Exposition (AIHCE) in Minneapolis, economist and futurist Jeremy Rifkin explained that we are in the twilight of the oil economy, yet have not fully grasped its ramifications, or how it will affect communities and organizations. He spoke about a “third revolution”: radical, new ways of thinking about energy are needed, he argued, based on four pillars—generation, distribution, storage, and communication. He challenged EHS professionals to develop skills to succeed in this new era, skills that are above and beyond core technical skills.
New EHS Drivers
At the NAEM EHS Management Forum in Memphis, “Managing the Green,” keynote speaker Ron Hart, formally with the EPA, suggested that EHS professionals are “asleep at the wheel,” unaware of the fact that a new era of EHS is here. “We are now in an era where EHS has real stakeholder value,” he said. A whole new set of drivers (e.g., climate, population, interconnectivity, emerging economic powers, etc.) is transforming the EHS role in organizations.
The Emerging Ecological Era
Peter Senge and Betty Sue Flowers presented a joint keynote talk at the 18th Annual Pegasus Conference, entitled “Connecting with Meaning to Fuel Our Highest Performance.”
They outlined four “mythological eras” that have formed humanity:
- Hero
- Religious
- Democratic-scientific
- Economic
They asserted that much of the turmoil observed today is a reflection of the end of the democratic-scientific and economic eras, and the emergence of a new era: the ecological era.
In this era, health and wholeness are the primary ideals. The communication mode is expressive—people have a voice (as opposed to the economic era, in which the primary means of communication are numbers and images; the democratic-scientific era, in which mathematics and logical arguments dominate; the religious era, in which scripture and prayer dominate; and the hero era, in which stories dominate). Understanding the mythological era in which we currently operate will help “unstick” us, altering our view of the future as a fixed entity.
© Redinger EHS, Inc. (2010)