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Wednesday, February 16, 2005 |
Tilting at Windmills. Local environmentalism is undermining one of our best options for slowing global warming. By Bill McKibben. [NYT > Opinion]
In the best of all possible worlds, we'd do without them. But
it's not the best of all possible worlds. Right now, the choice is
between burning fossil fuels and making the transition, as quickly as
possible, to renewable power.
9:52:23 PM 
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[Booz Allen Hamilton]: A new study -- Deriving Value from Corporate Values -- by the Aspen Institute and management consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton found
that companies routinely identify values as a top agenda issue, and
public companies that report superior financial results also report
greater success in linking values to operations in areas that foster
growth, such as initiative and innovativeness. However, most corporate
executives do not see a direct link to growth, and the joint study also
revealed that most companies are not effectively measuring their
'Return on Values' in areas important to their business strategy.
Not hard facts, perhaps. (And as Gifford Pinchot reminds us, 'There are no facts about the future.') But the mass of evidence, for those who need that, continues to grow.
(See also these links.)
11:05:58 AM
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The Kyoto Protocol takes effect, with 141 countries signed on. (Joel Makower
has an excellent Kyoto primer this week.) Some are more consequential
than others. Some, under the terms of the treaty, won't have to do much
of anything. (China and India, for example -- a situation that won't
last forever.) Others -- like the EU -- are On The Move. The US
government may sit this out (for now), but smart US companies -- at
least those that want to trade in Europe, be competitive against
European companies, and respond to customer expectations (that will
only become more insistent as consequences of global warming become
more evident) -- will ignore their own government and get with the
program.
The Bush Admministration is stuck in the old, and demonstrably false,
assumption that environmental quality costs money. Tell that to BP, which met its Kyoto goals nine years ahead of schedule, and at a profit.
8:19:36 AM
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© Copyright 2006 Gil Friend.
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