For the past few years, the business world has been swept up in a green wave -- a rising tide of interest and concern about environmental issues. The Great Recession has not stopped the pressure pushing this wave. Environmental crises such as climate change and water shortages continue to evolve....

It's been a strange week or so for Jon Stewart (who I should admit up front I admire and think of as one of our finest investigative journalists).

First, Stewart interviewed Steven Levitt, co-author of SuperFreakonomics, the book that takes all the old climate skeptic arguments and trots them...

Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt's SuperFreakonomics has certainly gotten a lot of people worked up in short order. The point of contention is a chapter about global warming which makes the case that Al Gore and others are too worried about the climate problem because the only way to solve...

Excuse a brief rant about what seems to be a rise in ridiculous cover stories and op-eds. Apparently, the only way to get printed these days is to say something that makes 'counterintuitive' seem quaint. No, you have to go all the way to crazy-town.

This kind of nonsense is...

Last week in Sao Paolo, Brazil, I heard the distinct sound of "taps" being played for the simple plastic shopping bag. Wal-Mart Brazil had invited all its suppliers to come and discuss its sustainability goals -- and sign a public agreement to match them. The pact dealt with everything from...

In a remarkably bold regulatory move, the Obama administration is setting new, aggressive fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. The new goal will be 39 miles per gallon by a 2016 (which is around the corner in car model development time). This is big environmental news this week and...

This weekend, the New York Times gave Bjorn Lomborg -- the self-proclaimed "skeptical environmentalist" -- more air time. Lomborg wrote an op-ed that railed against those who want to cut greenhouse gas emissions dramatically. He offered his opinion on a better solution: "make low-carbon alternatives like solar and wind...

Last week, Hernando de Soto (the insightful Peruvian economist and author of The Mystery of Capital) wrote one of better pieces I've seen about the financial meltdown and all these "toxic assets." In the Wall Street Journal, De Soto made the compelling case that "the real problem is...

It's always fun to predict what's going to happen. The risk of being spectacularly wrong is very high, but that's what makes the exercise so entertaining. 'Tis the season for dwelling, quickly, on what we learned last year -- de-leveraging is really painful and when gas prices are high, people...

I never thought I'd say it, but I agree with Exxon on an environmental issue. The CEO, Rex Tillerson, called for a carbon tax yesterday. As the Wall Street Journal reported:

Rex Tillerson said that a tax was a "more direct, a more transparent and a more effective approach"...

Sometimes I think the Wall Street Journal editors are phoning it in. In a piece titled, "The Environmental Motor Company: Making Detroit a subsidiary of the Sierra Club," the Journal complained about those horrible Democrats in Congress that want to tie the $25 billion in loans to Detroit to...

At the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), Wal-Mart announced its latest environmental goal: a one-third reduction in plastic bag waste by 2013. The company estimates that it will keep 9.5 billion plastic shopping bags out of the waste stream. As with all things Wal-Mart, the scale is impressive.

I was...

You might think that the powerful green wave changing business will subside in a recession. True, some investments might wait a bit, but most companies I talk to are pushing ahead with the sustainability agenda. One important example is Wal-Mart, which doesn't seem to be slowing down.

I recently attended...

Everybody wants to reduce their carbon footprint these days. But many companies have looked to the quick fix of buying carbon offsets. While this practice may slow down as the recession continues, the debate will continue to rage about what makes a quality offset, and there's the rub.

Ideally,...

Everybody in the world should read a new Fortune article about Matt Simmons, the oil analyst turned peak-oil prophet. As a lifelong Republican, Bush campaign and energy policy contributor, and Houston-based oil guy, he's an unusual leader of the peak oil theorists. Simmons has become convinced that Saudi Arabia and...

As we all know, energy prices have skyrocketed. Organizations of all kinds are trying new ways of doing business to cut costs. Some ideas, like Wal-Mart putting doors on refrigerated cases and cutting energy use 70% in that aisle, are head-slappingly obvious. Even seemingly wacky ideas can seem downright wise...

For many years, environmental strategy - if you could even call it that - was about complying with environmental regulations. All you had to do was make sure your facilities didn't spew too much pollution into the air or water, or your products didn't contain any banned substances, and you...

Recently I wrote about the rise of "conflicted consumers" who want greener options but don't want to go too far out of their way to get it. Is this fairly passive commitment to greener buying going to drive enough change to tackle problems as large as climate change? Some...

I don't mean to pile onto a disaster in the making, but the demise of the "Big Three" automakers is hard to turn away from (like, yes, a car wreck). It also perfectly demonstrates the dangers, and opportunities, stemming from the green wave sweeping the business world. While Japanese companies...

This post first appeared at Harvard Business Online.

Home Depot announced last week that it will collect and recycle compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in nearly 2,000 of its stores. This is great news since it eases the transition to low-energy bulbs by solving a big customer problem: what...