Tuesday, August 24, 2004

Financial Downside of Underreporting Environmental Risks [Origo Fourth Sector News]: GAO Identifies Financial Downside of Underreporting Environmental Risks While companies are required to disclose all information considered important or "material" to investors in their annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), there is currently no standard for reporting environmental risks. [Read more...] I'm seeing a growing amount of information and analysis coming across my screen on the business implications of environmental risks -- and more recently on the business implications of environmental benefits as well. By the way, Natural Logic will be presenting a seminar on the subject for investment analysts this fall (details to come), and I'll be keynoting the Socially Responsible Investment in the Rockies conference in October -- 'the annual gathering of the socially responsible investment' apparently -- on Sustainability, Risk Management and Fiduciary Responsibility: Why 'Less Bad' Isn't Good Enough, and What We Can Do About It. (A rare joint appearance with regenerative design guru Bill Reed.) (Here's the rest of my current speaking schedule. I'm open for more invitations. :-) 11:57:33 AM    comment []  trackback []

China As Solar Tech Resource for Developing World Speaking of China, this post today from [WorldChanging]: This could be big news. SciDev.Net reports that China plans to train 10,000 technicians from the developing world on the deployment and use of solar power technologies over the next five years....Remember the observation in last week's post about BusinessWeek: Someone is going to make a lot of money off of the response to global warming and the shift away from fossil fuels. China is positioning itself to be that someone not by trying to skim the cream of American, Japanese, and European markets, but by becoming the business partner of choice for the myriad nations that will need power to support development but don't have an existing fossil fuel-based power infrastructure already deeply entrenched. And, as I learned recently, China is building a 375,000 square foot factory to build batteries for hybrid vehicles. I'd say someone over there is definitely paying attention. 12:38:45 AM    comment []  trackback []