Tony's Summer Reading List

(To the people of the Gulf, please forgive this attempt at levity. I do not mean to make light of this tragedy, actually, quite the opposite.There is absolutely nothing funny about the death of eleven men and the destruction of an entire ecosystem.)

I'm compiling a reading list for Tony Hayward. I welcome any suggestions, by the way. It would be great to send this list off to him soon so he can enjoy some summertime reading at the beach. I guess that would be the beach in Brighton, though, right? Or somewhere in the UK. Well, I guess it comes down to whatever beach his company hasn't yet polluted or destroyed.

Anyway, I thought I would start off by suggesting Thinking Like a Mountain, that wonderful book from a group of deep ecologists whom I admire. This slim volume might actually go a long way to helping Tony with his sensitivity training, because clearly the man is suffering a real disconnect with the natural world. He doesn't realize that he is human, and of course we all know that humans are really just animals after all. Gosh, Darwin has been telling us that for years. One of his own countrymen! Imagine that!

But I'm really convinced that once Tony starts reading some of the great poetic verses penned by Joanna Macy in which she slides under the skin of the beasts and the birds to speak to us through them, he will be moved. He might even learn to emote. Hell, he might even cry. I know I do every time I read the lines of the Audoiun's seagull:

"I cannot spread my wings glued with tar. Fly me from what we have done, fly me far."

My second choice is definitely Paul Hawken's The Ecology of Commerce. This is essential reading for all business leaders. Hawken posits that the environmental perspective is the only way business will prosper, and for a company like BP that is clearly only concerned about profits, this ecological analysis of business might actually be of great interest to Tony and the rest of his management team.

Finally, I really thing he ought to read The Upside of Down. Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization by the Canadian intellectual, Thomas Homer-Dixon.

I am pretty certain that Tony is not familiar with our Canadian professor, respected and renowned though he is. Tony seems to have little interest in and even less regard for colonials—gosh, American culture and way of life are of so little value to him that I'm sure Canadians don’t even register as a blip on his radar.

That was unfair. He is familiar with a couple of Canadian words. (Can you say Arctic and Tar Sands?)

Anyway, this book would be very instructive, possibly life changing. I hope that he doesn't skim over the section entitled "Stages of Denial": "Not everyone considers environmental stresses to be particularly serious or recognizes how dangerous they can be."

He really needs to read this. Oh—and that concept of the world being prepared for "worst case scenarios" by engaging in contingency planning before a disaster strikes and we're plunged into global chaos would be particularly helpful to him as the CEO of a major oil polluter—er—company. Sorry. My bad. Just a little Freudian slick, I mean, slip…(whew, there's a lot of that going around lately.)

Anywho, that's my two cents' worth. Hey, it’s a start! Three books, I know, but maybe he's a slow reader. He's certainly a slow responder.

So let me know ASAP. As I said, I'd like to get this list to him before he starts his summer vacation. Because as we all know, that poor man needs to relax and get his life back.