I have learned my most important lessons about business in the forest.

My first lesson came 37 years ago, days after I graduated from the University of British Columbia. I was asleep. This was unfortunate, because I was driving through the Canadian Rockies at the time, headed toward a cliff. After waking up two days later in the hospital, with my jaws wired shut, I had plenty of time to reflect upon this incident.

Since then, I have come to believe that the global business community is driving quickly toward a cliff, with its eyes closed, and will soon suffer a similar fate. If we opened our eyes, we would see that 600 million of the earth's inhabitants in Europe, Japan, and the United States enjoy the material benefits of industrialism and that 2.5 billion more from China, India, and the former Soviet republics will join us. After them, the final 3 billion deserve the same. Yet to accomplish that goal today, we would need the resources of three planets. But we have only one. Thus our businesses need to begin creating affluence without effluence.