Another Earth Day is here. It's probably trite to say, "Hey, every day is Earth Day", but I'll give it a go. Yes, we need to worry about Earth stuff every day, but not just because the planet is in peril - which is a pretty good reason. Think of it this way: the Earth is often metaphorically compared to our home and, as a fairly recent homeowner, I can tell you that your home needs care and feeding much, much more than once a year (my small lawn of non-pesticide laden, eco-cared-for grass and natural weeds grows really fast). It's a constant battle to keep a house running smoothly and providing for you and your family.
But let's take a business perspective. Minding your costs, taking care of your assets, figuring out and fulfilling customer needs - all part of green value creation - are best done consistently and aggressively, not just in big flashy moments of marketing excitement. The days of "plant a tree" Earth Day celebrations being the only thing companies do are over. But many execs still see green as a checkbox exercise, not a corporate mandate and core strategy - do a few things such as retrofitting a facility or putting together a CSR report and move on.
But the environmental work we have ahead of us will be hard and ongoing. Luckily, it should get easier over time. Like the "flywheel" analogy from the bestseller Good to Great, you keep pushing away, and you start to get some real momentum.
All this relates to a question I've been struggling with lately: Does it matter if a company or its execs believe in climate change and other environmental imperatives? What got me started on this weeks ago was GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz' comment that "global warming is a crock of s***." And at nearly every talk I give on green business, people at all levels in companies from CEOs down inform me that climate change is not real.
My approach in these moments has generally been to stay quiet or point out that it doesn't really matter whether you believe it or not, as long as you buy that going green is good for business. If you're still pursuing green value through, say, eco-efficiency or product innovation, then who cares what you believe. This is basically what Lutz went on to say after his more colorful remarks ("My thoughts on what has or hasn't been the cause of climate change have nothing to do with the decisions I make to advance the cause of General Motors"). This general idea that you don't really need the first half of the Green Wave (made up of natural forces/pressures and stakeholders), is a key point my co-author and I make in our book Green to Gold.
But I'm beginning to wonder.
Yes, in the short run, you can go down a profitable green path with the conviction that if enough of your stakeholders care, it's good for business. But what about in the longer-run, as the excitement that's swept the business world quiets down and we have to make this new green way of doing business work?
Innovation is hard. Creating new products and services and finding new markets for them is hard. Handling what may be a permanent rise in the cost of all commodities and thus the cost of doing business is extremely hard. Won't all these pursuits go a lot easier if there's a bit more on the line than "well, we just have to do this because our competitors are doing it and customers are asking for it"? Won't employees drive harder if they and their bosses believe the underpinnings of why it's good for business? When Shell CEO Jeroen van der Veer said recently that dealing with climate change "will be hard work and there is little time," I believe his employees appreciated the blunt honesty and could set their nose to the flywheel/grindstone.
So does belief matter? I don't have the answer, but I have my suspicions. The now oft-told green business success story of the Toyota Prius still speaks volumes - the company set out to make an environmental car. It wasn't just an efficiency pursuit, but a real belief that the 21st century needed a form of transportation that reduced environmental burden. Going forward, GM may have trouble matching Toyota's innovations if attitudes remain so different.
In the end, doesn't it hurt morale, creativity, and productivity to hear your boss say one of the biggest drivers for action is a crock?
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The things in a company that lower morale, creativity and productivity are workers losing health benefits because the company is trying to save money or not having prescriptions covered anymore or the company changing their insurance to a plan that is cheaper so they get lower rates, job insecurity, not knowing if there will be more layoffs, not having child care facilities so that a substantial portion of their check has to pay for it, not having your work valued, being treated like garbage by CEOs who only care about raising the price of their stocks, experiencing racism when you try to be promoted while incompetant people get the jobs.
I really doubt people are the concerned with how their CEO feels about global warming but the fanatics who tell us the world is ending and being "green" is the most important thing is the world don't live in reality. The fact is that companies being "green" or people driving hybrid cars won't change much of anything. We should be spending all our money on finding alternative sources of energy and paying scientists to research that instead of telling people that if their company isn't "green" the world is going to end.
Your "corporate reality" will cease to exist without a sound environment to uphold its existence; if corporations [mostly the larger, public, multi-national corporations] do not begin down the road to sustainability, the world that encapsulates your "reality" will fail, and all else we know goes with it.
While it is true that nothing about global warming is so concrete that it cannot be disputed, the consensus is real among those we pay to study and understand the environment and what lies ahead of us. And it is this FACT that puzzles me about so called "conservatives," as the belligerent denial of the best information we have flies in the face of true conservatism. The idea that acting on the recommendations is somehow more harmful than a "wait and see" attitude, and that the majority of concerned people are merely liberals with a political agenda, is impossible to fathom, if indeed these are true "conservatives" espousing such opinions of resistance.
And it's not just picking on companies or corporations--but such are huge players in all of this, and they cannot be exempted from necessary change due to faux-conservative greed and selfishness.
Scientists have measured the melting of the ice mass on the poles. They have identified another process called solar dimming whereby particles in the air lessen the intensity of the sun, which would otherwise mean that global warming would be affecting us even faster. We can work with scientists to discuss policy ramifications of their work and our consequent need for fossil fuels. It is the only responsible alternative. We do bear some responsibility for our stewardship of the planet and the climatic conditions we hand down to our children, where we can affect it.
Is global warming real? Well, if you look at this study and ignore that report, then everything is fine. No, we're killing the planet.
You want to debate about euthanasia, social welfare, universal healthcare, or corporate taxes, go for it. Those are matters of opinions. Science is not opinion. Just because you disagree with someone on an issue of opinion, why does that have to carry over and force you to disagree about an issue of fact?
Would it shock you to believe that the North America as far down as the American Plains was encapsulated in an ICE sheet 1 mile thick as recent as 10,000-12,000 yrs ago? One mile thick!! Can you fathom that? It has since retreated well before the advent of the industrial revolution.
Would it shock you to believe that sea levels several thousand years ago were 500 FT lower than then present? This was an enabling circumstance fro the original Americans to walk the land bridge across the Bering strait – sea levels had obviously started to rise due to the Hunter Gatherers gas powered Mastodons.
So please produce the data, not some IPCC mouthpiece talking point, but data that invalidates the natural cycles of earth as a cause of climate change. Then start debating the salient points which have led to the rather mild IPCC conclusions on sea levels and temp rises
But let me ask you, Sparky...
Have you done the math and physics to understand special relativity (SR)? Or general relativity (GR)? Or quantum mechanics? Probably not. Yet I suspect you "believe" your GPS (which depends on both SR and GR), and every little solid-state device you buy, which depend on quantum mechanics.
The more relevant question is: Do you believe in science?
The consensus of the literature is VERY clear. I don't expect you to understand the literature, but trust the scientific process -- or at least give it the benefit of the doubt. I believe this is one process that's earned it.
Since you don't like the IPCC, I refer you to the websites of the following professional scientific societies, all of which have convened their own panels, drawing on the expertise of their membership, and published statements concurring with the conclusions of the IPCC:
American Geophysical Union (largest organization of geoscientists, at around 50,000 members)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (world's most prestigious)
American Meteorological Society
National Academy of Science (and the national academies of two dozen other countries)
American Chemical Society (largest scientific organization on the planet)
Geological Society of America
American Physical Union
Royal Society
National Association of State Climatologists
etc.
In fact, you'll not find a single scientific society that disagrees. So, as a matter of risk management, perhaps we can just get on with mitigation...
You comments on the IPCC is typical conservative propaganda, Whenever conservatives do not like the findings of any body, scientific or otherwie, they attack it as having an agenda. The conservatives themselves are usually the ones with the most rigid agenda.
The believers have their hearts in the right place but many still don't act.
The apathetic may be blissfully unaware or consciously unwilling to put energy into it.
The Amish, now those folks get it! Hope the rising temps don't screw them too.
But I disagree completely that the fact that we have been incorrect before and are almost certainly incorrect to some degree now means that we shouldn't reduce the amount of carbon we are putting in the atmosphere. The risk we run by not reducing it seems greater than the risk we run by reducing it -- even taking into account the fact that there will be some dislocation to the world economy (as well as the creation of many economic opportunites).
US dependence on foreign oil is bad for our economy and for politics; this will only get worse as oil becomes increasingly scarce. Efforts to move away from a carbon-based economy may be necessary from an economic, political and envioronmental point of view.
If business people view "green" activities as good for business, it may not matter whether they "believe" that human activity causes climate change. Yet the market may reward actions that don't get us the most bang for our green buck.
The extent to which human conduct has contributed to global warming is interesting but not the right question, which is whether global warming is happening, represents a danger, and can be reduced by human conduct.
The ones who don't, the market (as conservatives always say) will get rid of.
Seems quite simple to me.
What do you want, lots of money in the short term, or a successful, ongoing business?
Of course, conservatives will choose the quick money.
i have been wondering the same thing myself, mrjoyboy.
And drop the anthropogenic global warming stuff.
And question whether your embrace of AGW is in itself an embrace of a big business public relations agenda -- cap and trade.
Embrace of AGW is not healthy for the environmental agenda. It is a parasite.
The financial markets will go by the wayside as the uncertainty of a future without cheap and abundant energy sucks the profit out of any kind of real growth.