I run a small Business. There, I said it. I am a capitalist – a boss! My own Boss. I am my only employee. It is for this reason that I simply cannot blame Corporations and their Shareholders for the ills of the world when I run an Incorporated Company and receive dividends from it. The problem, as I have perceived it, has always been one of scale. Small is beautiful. And local. So I have been a member of the Federation of Small Business for many years.

That is not to say an enthusiastic member. I have, rather, watched from the sidelines as the FSB has adopted the mannerisms of BIG Business. They all meet up for a bit of networking and Golf. Their talk rarely drifts into the real world. None of them are feeling the pain of peak oil or climate change. However, there are always tiny little signs that there is a slow drift towards the coming new reality.

As a member I get regular bulletins via their “First Voice” magazine. On the cover of the April/May 2008 edition there are photo’s of their lead story – a new campaign to “Keep Trade Local”. Wow. Fully commendable if it had anything to do with “relocalisation”. However, as with so much else they do, it had more to do with drumming up profits for small Business. However, it was not so much the cover story that held my attention. It was what was on the inside that made me stop. There was an article entitled “Fuel Fury” (see attachment) which talked about the impacts of rising fuel costs on small business. No surprise. The article covered two pages and there was not one single word about Peak Oil, Iraq or Climate Change. No acceptance of the inevitability of what was happening. Indeed the implication of the article was that it was vaguely the Government’s fault for over-taxing fuel and Small Businesses would go out of business if this situation prevailed.

So the FSB whinged and moaned but never once dug its head out of the sand. Where was the advice to each Business about accepting this is the coming reality? It is rather sad that anyone should pretend any more that Governments are just going to bend over backwards to pander to the flat-earth economics of the Business Lobby. However, even more scary is the idea that the Business Lobby might actually be successful in this approach – as they are so obviously so in Washington.

The killer irony was what was on the facing page to this article. A quarter page advert for “World Environment Day – 5^th June 2008”. The tag line of the ad was “Climate Change - Time for a New Routine”. I chuckled at the perfect irony. Maybe somebody who puts the magazine together had joined up the dots and placed the advert there deliberately as if to say “Hello! Real World calling!”

Just a few days later I explicitly created a page on my Company web site to say what the FSB feels so unable to say: The world is changing and Business must change too. I feel like Winston Churchill in 1939 saying “War is coming!”… The FSB’s attitude is “War, what war? And why the hell is Polish Sausage suddenly so expensive?”

Dear FSB, Get a New Routine.