First scene: In a car to the airport with a senior exec from IBM who basically leads the company’s very successful “Smarter Planet” projects with customers (helping companies and cities with traffic flow, water management, carbon reduction, etc, etc).

The car service had provided us Ford Excursion -- from a sustainability event -- so that should’ve been my first tip on something being awry in the universe. Anyway, my colleague and I are talking about green, climate, the inexplicable vitriol and anger of climate deniers, Al Gore, etc. And the driver looks in the rear-view mirror and intiaties this conversation.

Driver: (Laughing): You guys don’t believe this climate hoax do you?
Me: (Also laughing) Are you kidding? You’re kidding right?
Driver: No, you know, it's a hoax
Me: (Not laughing) Why do you think that?
Driver: There’s no evidence.
Me: Actually there’s massive evidence, decades of it in fact [see a cool video on the basics of the incontrovertible science and physics of it all here...]
Driver: (Arrogantly) What about those climate emails? Those didn’t happen?
Me: Yes, they happened, but they didn’t disprove the decades of science.
Driver: They falsified records
Me: Actually they didn’t. You should read some of the emails – they didn’t falsify records at all.

End scene.

I really had to wonder what kind of small, tiny bubble of friends and media consumption you have to live in to find it astonishing to meet people who believe the 95% of scientists that see climate change as a real problem. Disagreeing with that view is one thing, but laughing at people like they’re aliens is another and shows me just how divided we've become where we can surround ourselves with echo chambers...

On to conversation #2…

I’m minding my own business on my flight home and right when we’re getting ready to land (I almost made it), my seat-mate decides to strike up a conversation (it’s always dangerous when they make you turn off electronics – so much silence to fill). Here’s conversation #2.

Guy on Plane (I’ll shorten that to GOP): What do you do?
Me: Work with companies on environmental issues, speak, write, consult, helping them with green business strategy (ya da ya da)
GOP: You mean recycling? (my first clue this was not going to go well most likely)
Me: No, a whole range of things from product development and innovation to c-level strategy to executive education and training…what do you do?
GOP: I’m in the energy business. Private equity investments.
Me: Oh, what kind?
GOP: Oil, gas, coal – really diversified
Me: No renewables investments?
GOP: No, we don’t invest in things that need government subsidies. Wind and solar and such are so uneconomic. [here’s where I want to point to an article I just saw today about governments spending $500 billion on fossil fuel subsidies]
Me: Huh.
GOP: We do some work educating. We have a site, plantsneedCO2. We educate government people on what CO2 is. [It’s here where I discovered that at 10pm after a long day I didn’t even have the energy to ask, “oh, what does CO2 do?” – but check out the site. It’s real and informs us that we need MORE CO2 not less.]

The conversation went on, but that’s about all I can stomach to convey. I seem to have run out of steam to have a discussion with people who are this far gone. Bring on legitimate debate about what to do about the challenges we all face, or about the right policies and government action (or whether government or markets alone should do it). But people like this cannot have a real conversation. I just wonder what I did to deserve running into two in short order.

Thanks for listening. Deep breaths.
Onward...

This is what smaller government looks like on the ground. You can't fund anything that people have come to expect with no tax revenue. The Tea Party movement doesn't seem to understand this basic fact.

But my favorite part of this story is the woman who thinks there's something sinister going on.

Betty L. Roberts, who lives in Sun City, west of Phoenix, said the topic was a hot one among her friends. "I honestly think they are setting us up because they want to do a tax increase," Ms. Roberts said. "I think by shutting down things people want, they will give us one."

So that sneaky government is showing that it's out of money by, you know, not doing things that people need or want. So clever.

The Tea Party doesn't seem to get that "government" actually covers an amazing range of things that you want -- roads, police, firemen, hospitals, schools, consumer protections, environmental protection, and on and on. Oh, and libraries.

My favorite story in the last week or two was Glenn Beck at the CPAC conference talking about the evils of progressivism and how he educated himself at public libraries for free. He didn't seem to research the fact that public libraries were one of the main successes of the Progressive Movement over a hundred years ago. A great op-ed on this in my local paper here.

Nobody can say for sure what the right size of government is. Should government lead the charge on issues like health care and obesity, or is it just an issue of personal responsibility? Should government put a price on carbon to tackle pollution and climate change, or let the (somewhat) free market decide on its own? These are truly legitimate debates.

But it would help if we had a true understanding of what government actually does before we start screaming about shrinking it.

In addition to the event committees themselves, what I find fascinating is how big, corporate-level sponsors are increasingly bringing their own sustainability agendas to the table as well.

It's smart, because if you're a sponsor, helping to green big events serves a number of purposes.

First, and most obviously, it's a great way to demonstrate your green bona fides, build your brand, and sell new products. There's no bigger or more passionate audience than live and TV-viewing sports fans. For a World Cup, for example, U.S. Soccer expects roughly five million fans through the gates, another ten million at fan "fests" nearby, and a cumulative audience of nearly 26 billion (multiple views for each of billions of fans, obviously) watching around the world. So of course companies fight to get these coveted spots and use them. For example, in 2008, GE leveraged the Beijing Olympics as a way to demonstrate its ecomagination portfolio.

But second, and perhaps more importantly, these events serve as a testing ground for new products, processes, and ways of doing business. Right before the games, Coke announced its aggressive targets for Vancouver — zero-waste and carbon-neutrality. The tactics behind these goals include employing new refrigerants to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, deploying hybrid delivery fleets, the use of Coke's new "PlantBottle," and the purchase of carbon offsets as a matter of course.

It's not just the Olympics. At the PGA Phoenix Open (which also just ended), sponsor Waste Management is using the opportunity to try some new waste reduction and management techniques, including moving toward a zero-waste goal, introducing Solar Compactors, and installing "reverse" vending machines that collect recyclables. (Full disclosure: Waste Management hired me to speak at a dinner at this event -- more on that trip later.)

While cynics will say it's just grandstanding by these big brands, I actually do see real action and serious learning going on. Only with live tests like these can Coke learn, for example, how consumers react to a new bottle or whether low-GHG refrigerants perform as expected in the field. These events are pilot projects — they're circumscribed in time and space and allow new thinking and action on a controllable scale.

These efforts offer a great lesson for all companies. Any organization can try green initiatives out in a single office building or at a single corporate event (Earth Day events are the most obvious, but anything will do: a "fun run", fundraiser, etc.). Not all new ideas will work, so look for project opportunities of moderate scale — and sponsoring an external or internal event is a good place to start — and build from there.

(This post originally appeared in an earlier form on Harvard Business Online)

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Reality 2: During the same period, a number of Toyota models developed (or exposed) a serious quality problem that has caused deaths and led to one of the largest recalls in product history. In its delayed response, Toyota has not won any prizes for openness and customer care. Furthermore its line of trucks took a huge hit when the auto industry collapsed. Toyota is clearly the worst, most slow-moving auto company.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that it takes "a first-rate intelligence...to hold two opposing ideas in the mind...and still retain the ability to function." But how can Toyota still be one of the best companies in the world and still make horrendous life-threatening mistakes?

In the green/sustainable business realm, this dichotomy is actually not so unusual. Wal-Mart is arguably the most important company in the greening realm, with its aggressive actions to reduce its own — and all its suppliers' — environmental impacts. But, according to a large segment of the population, it's also a force for thoughtless consumption and low-price-above-all. A consumer survey last year proved the point: Wal-Mart topped the list of most sustainable companies, and sat atop the list of the least sustainable as well.

Toyota itself has for years been prompting head-scratching about how green it really is. At the same time that the Prius was rising in popularity and winning the company accolades for a good chunk of the 2000s, Toyota was also embracing a big vehicle strategy and focusing sales efforts on its giant Tundra truck. Most pundits agree that Toyota's quality and revenue problems stem from trying to grow too fast — partially by putting a big push behind the Tundra. By pursuing truck sales, Toyota grew, but it also found itself in the same whirlpool of anti-big vehicle sentiment when oil prices peaked in 2008.

But it's not just that Toyota grew too fast. Comparing figures from the first eight months of 2008 vs. the previous year, it's clear that Detroit was already hemorrhaging sales before the economic collapse because they had missed the green wave. Meanwhile, Detroit's Japanese competitors, with their more energy-efficient, greener product portfolios, were selling more vehicles year over year. Toyota's results were right in the middle because it was trying to be all things. It was trying to be smart — to maintain two opposing strategies at once.

This kind of integrative thinking is a skill all modern leaders will need (see an interesting piece on this opposing-views idea and President Obama). Holding opposing views can lead to innovative ideas, and we desperately need radical innovation, or what I call "heretical" innovation, to solve our environmental ills.

For example, we can't forget that when Toyota asked why cars couldn't have solid power, good midsize interior space, nice design, and get better gas mileage, it was on to one of the most important innovations of our time — even if today the Prius is getting caught up in the quality concerns as well. As has been already argued, we shouldn't use the Toyota saga as a warning against innovative thinking. Instead we should look more closely at where their strategy worked, and where it failed.

What matters is holding the right kind of opposing views, because not all of them are safe or sustainable. As the wise Mr. Miyagi once told Daniel-san, "Walk on road, hm? Walk left side, safe. Walk right side, safe. Walk middle, sooner or later get squish just like grape." Pursuing leadership in lean manufacturing and design while at the same time trying to grow at all costs has badly damaged Toyota.

Sustainable growth, the kind that isn't going to get squished, is found by using the kind of integrative thinking that allows us to provide goods and services that are the same or better and also to use drastically less stuff: that's heretical, and involves the right kind of opposing views to try and hold in your mind. But where Toyota got in trouble with integrative thinking was when it combined sustainable growth in one part of its portfolio with uncontrolled, unsustainable growth in another, exposing it to the very risk its Prius strategy sought to mitigate.

No matter how green your company is elsewhere, that kind of unthinking growth is not a worthy or, it turns out, a profitable pursuit.

[This post appeared first on HBR]

The absurdity of pointing out that there's snow in the winter -- in one part of the world mind you -- and using that to say that climate change is a hoax is breathtaking.

Especially when, at the same time, Vancouver is shipping in snow for the Olympics...you see, some places get more snow, some get less. That's weather, not climate.

Anyway, if you don't laugh, you cry. Only comedy can do justice to this insane line of logic.

The Daily Show points out that it's hot in Australia...

...and Colbert make the logical extension that when it's dark, the sun must have been destroyed.

If you didn't see it, it depicts a new police force arresting people for choosing plastic bags at the supermarket or setting their jacuzzis at too high a temperature. Then a driver of an Audi "clean diesel" is waved right through an eco road block.

Was it funny? Yes (it's hard not to laugh when the eco-police, on their Segway's, ask a real policeman to "step out of the car" for drinking out of a styrofoam cup).

But was it also cringe-worthy? Yes. The ad really plays on all the worst stereotypes about how going green is hard and how you'll be judged. The redeeming quality is that the person doing the 'right' thing, the driver, gets a free pass.

But in terms of promoting green consumer choices, does Audi help the movement (and its own product) or hurt it?

What do you think?

The climate negotiations brought together committed activists and world leaders, but led almost nowhere; instead, the gathering only highlighted and revealed some major structural hurdles getting in the way of a multinational agreement.

So it might seem that near-term regulatory or policy pressure on companies is unlikely. But actually there are some significant sub-national initiatives affecting business as usual that every company should know about. The pressure to measure, be transparent about, and reduce carbon is still on.

First, even without a global carbon trading system, other major multinational cap-and-trade systems are in place or in the works, including the EU's trading program, which has already been running for a few years. In North America, three separate carbon trading programs are in the process of setting regional caps covering states that include half the U.S. population (and provinces with three-quarters of Canada's). And city-level initiatives like the Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement are driving new local rules and fomenting competition among municipalities to cut emissions.

Second, within the U.S., the Environmental Protection Agency is not sitting idly by either. The series of climate-related rules that the powerful EPA has announced in the last year began with the National Climate Reporting Plan, which forces the largest 10,000 facilities in the country to measure and report their carbon emissions. This new system has much in common with the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), a very public, and mandatory, database of toxic pollution by facility mandated by the federal government in the 1980s. TRI raised awareness within companies about their own footprints and drove aggressive efforts to reduce toxic pollution (along with cost and risk) that continue to this day. The same awakening about the carbon pollution companies cause -- and the financial costs of this form of waste -- even without an agreement from Copenhagen..

Going well beyond the regulated transparency of the reporting plan, the EPA recently declared greenhouse gases a public health threat. After a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that basically said CO2 could be regulated, the EPA's "endangerment finding" was no surprise. What's still unknown is what it will mean for business.

So far, virtually all the action -- from the regional trading schemes to new EPA rules -- has been aimed mainly at utilities and the biggest factories. What does all this activity mean for the average company?

The caps and efforts to reduce utility emissions could result in higher energy prices. Any business that, well, uses electricity will be affected. And the EPA's intentions for the longer term, while up in the air, are getting clearer. There is almost no chance that forced transparency for the big guys is the end of what the EPA will do. One glimmer of what will come: rules newly proposed in 2009 (in conjunction with the Department of Transportation) to reduce emissions from light-duty vehicles.

The bottom line is that business must still plan for rising restrictions on greenhouse gases by legislative means or by regulation. Despite the confounded state of international climate policy negotiations, companies will continue to face new mandates to measure, report, and reduce their carbon emissions.

[This post originally appeared on Harvard Business Review]

No matter what happens in Copenhagen, or in the follow up meetings in Mexico and elsewhere, the world is warming. It's happening today, and even the majority of skeptics seem to agree on that point (often the debate is whether humans are behind it and how much money we should invest in "fixing" the problem). But the very real changes we're already seeing are prompting many in the climate-watching world to talk about not just reductions in emissions but "adaptation."

What used to be seen as a dirty and defeatist word is now a central discussion point, even in Copenhagen. The G77 (the developing world) is demanding significant aid from the rich countries not to help them combat climate change, but to help them adapt to it. Just a couple weeks ago, President Obama said he sensed some consensus around mobilizing "$10 billion a year by 2012 to support adaptation and mitigation in developing countries."

Given the cold reality of a warming planet, adaptation is now a strategic issue for countries and companies alike (whether or not they realize it). The changing climate can mean many things, but includes, according to an important report from the state of California, threats to ocean and coastal resources and land, water management challenges, major changes to agriculture, and stress on transportation and energy infrastructure. In California alone, $2.5 trillion of assets will be exposed to extreme weather and wildfires, costing many billions a year.

For companies the same basic issues apply. Specific industries, such as agriculture, face massive change. But all companies will find impacts up and down their value chains from weather, changing water availability, and temperature shifts. But just laying out doom scenarios and risks doesn't help much. So let's look at a couple of excellent (and short) reports on adaptation and business.

Some big institutional investors, with the guidance of the consultant Acclimatise, recently released "Managing the Unavoidable" (register for free to download it here or get the similar 2008 report on similar topic here). A few key findings struck me as dead on and important:

1. Climate change adaptation is starting to receive more management attention but management systems and processes are much less developed than those for climate change mitigation. Basically, most companies are not thinking about this, with a few exceptions — Coke comes to mind since it's been mapping water availability for years. But they are in the minority.

2. There appear to be significant weaknesses in companies' risk assessment processes. They say that "incremental changes are being under-emphasized" (we all focus on extreme weather events rather than 'creeping' changes) and "indirect impacts on business models are being neglected" (we focus on risks to our own fixed assets and haven't looked at supply chain disruptions). Meaning, even if you don't think you rely on water in an arid region, someone in your supply chain might.

3. Companies are more concerned about risks than opportunities. While it may seem cold to talk about how to profit from a warming planet, it's a reality that there will be winners in this. More importantly, we actually need companies to pursue solutions to greatly reduce human misery. And, yes, there will be profits.

And this brings me to the second report that's worth a look. "The New Adaptation Marketplace" from global NGO Oxfam lays out some helpful categories and sample companies that stand to profit from the changes to come. These include, water management (Pentair, Siemens), energy supply (GE), insurance (Swiss Re), climate change information and consulting services (ICF International), and of course agriculture projects (CH2M Hill).

On the last one, consider one of my clients, Bayer, which has a sizable crop sciences business. In its last annual report, Bayer identified drought-tolerant plants as a major investment opportunity. Clearly, the world needs to keep food volumes growing, even on a dryer, warmer planet. The companies that can solve this kind of problem will grow and win share.

Or think of the more extreme needs that might arise and the entrepreneurial opportunities. As some smart people have pointed out, cutting carbon won't be enough — we'll need to drag it out of the sky. Imagine what new technologies we'll need to do that.

From my conversations with Oxfam, clients, and other corporations, I can tell you that most organizations — including ones that already have products that will help with adaptation — are not yet thinking clearly about the risks and opportunities from climate change. Are you?

Anyway, I took a bit of time at the end of 2009 and early 2010, with a couple weeks' perspective, to think about the stories that really grabbed me in 2009. The top 10 is below, but see my brief write-ups and logic on each at my e-letter site here.

1) Copenhagen fails…or does it?
2) The debate over climate science rages on (in the U.S. at least)
3) The EPA steps in
4) Wal-Mart keeps the pressure up (and saves the rainforest?)
5) Domino's employees deliver a new kind of openness.
6) IBM starts building a "smarter planet"
7) GM goes bankrupt
8) Some of our biggest capitalists get serious about carbon
9) China emerges as a green tech leader…and the world's biggest emitter
10) The bottom of the pyramid becomes a source of innovation

And the bonus, theater of the absurd, wacky story...
10 1/2) Forbes names Exxon green company of the year

But first, let's get out of the way the "scandal" about hacked emails from climate scientists, a story which threatens to overshadow the conference in the media.

I'll be clear and say that many of the most respected scientific communities in the world have come out with strong statements that say the following: nothing in the emails truly undermines the vast, overwhelming evidence from a huge range of sources that the Earth is warming and humans are causing it. See the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Meteorological Society, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, NASA, and Nature magazine.

But for business, the science of climate change doesn't matter as much as many want you to believe. Because while climate change and the outcome of Copenhagen are vitally important to society and may change business as usual dramatically, there are actually many non-climate-change reasons why your company should seek to reduce carbon emissions. In other words, you should be doing this stuff already — Copenhagen treaty, email scandals, or no. Because by reducing carbon emissions, you can:

1. Save money now. Energy costs money. Leaner, more efficient companies and countries are more profitable. Companies are finding amazing, head-slappingly easy ways to cut back in areas like facilities (heating/cooling, lighting), fleet, and IT...all with paybacks in terms of months not years (there's more on this in my book Green Recovery).

2. Save money later. One of the beefs with "going green" is that some of the high profile actions, particularly using renewable energy, cost more money (not the initiatives I mentioned above — those save money fast). But on the macro level, consider this...renewable energy is a business model with effectively zero variable cost — your feedstock is free. While the payback periods in some regions seem long, they do pay back, and then your operating costs are permanently lower.

3. Reduce risk. The availability of resources such as water and oil is a serious concern. As demand grows in the developing world, supply will not easily keep pace. Expect expensive, unpredictable, oil prices in particular. So why have your value chain depend on volatilely-priced resources?

4. Answer pressing customer questions. If anyone thinks the "greening of the supply chain" movement is slowing down, they're kidding themselves. Wal-Mart is the lead dog, but many other big companies in other value chains are asking tough questions as well, in particular about carbon. And the best answer wins — more shelf space, more mind space, more money.

5. Attract and retain the best people. Even though unemployment is high right now, over the long term, the battle for good talent is still waging and will get worse. The next generation of workers cares about green and sees no trade-off between financial success and corporate social responsibility.

6. Drive innovation. Constraints are the mother of invention. Need to deliver your product or service with drastically less energy, toxicity, water, and other resource use? Then you better get thinking.

In addition, at the macro level, decoupling our economy and growth from carbon, and particularly oil, will...

7. Keep us safe. The U.S. sends over half a trillion dollars annually to parts of the world that fund extremism and terror. We put our troops at risk defending oil, and more will be at risk as climate change destabilizes regions and creates climate refugees. (Okay, so this point does have something to do with climate change.) See the American Security Project reports — from a group of distinguished former admirals and generals — which describe how climate change is a "threat multiplier."

8. Make the U.S. more competitive. We're losing the race to the clean energy future to China, Germany, and others. The pursuit of new technologies, a new grid, massive installations of new energy will create new jobs and invigorate the country.

These reasons have little to do with the science of climate change. Unfortunately, the focus on eliminating CO2 as being solely about battling climate change has been misplaced, both from the environmental community and from the contrarian/skeptical community (such as the authors of Superfreakonomics). The business logic, instead, is compelling and unavoidable: all businesses must get much leaner on energy and carbon — for their own competitive advantage and survival. Get started now to be more profitable no matter what happens in the policy world.

[This appeared first on Harvard Business online]

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http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/files/webform/documents/ecoadvantagestrategies12072009.htm

Also, a note on my last post. I think many of you did not receive it as I changed the name of the RSS feed and didn't realize it would mess up delivery. I've changed it back until I figure out a better way to migrate the name. To sign up for my blog via email, click here.

So here's the link to my last post on some of the absurdity in the climate discussions lately.

NEWS FLASH FROM BJORN LOMBORG AND THE WSJ: WE SHOULD HELP POOR PEOPLE

Here's how each of these weekly missives work. Lomborg picks out one person in a country to talk to and asks them how much they care about climate change. Yesterday, he told us that a very poor person living near Mt. Kilimanjaro doesn't care so much about melting glaciers, but cares more about education about HIV. Last week we learned that a very poor person living near Himalayan glaciers that are melting, which will create vast water and food shortages, also cares more about pressing daily issues of local poverty. Earlier, a very poor person living in Africa told Lomborg we should tackle malaria directly rather than take on climate change. Wow, these are real surprises.

Lomborg's sole purpose in life seems to be creating false arguments that nobody is really making and then knocking them down. In the malaria article, he makes it sound like all the government, NGO, and business work to battle climate change is intended solely to stop the spread of malaria (which may become more prevalent as warmer weather makes things more hospitable to mosquitoes at higher latitudes). So, he says, the potential investment of trillions of dollars to create cleaner, more efficient economies is an expensive solution for malaria. Treated bed-nets are much cheaper.

Well, yeah, no kidding, Bjorn.

As if anyone is saying that reducing carbon is just about malaria, or water supplies in Asia, or only any one of the many specific issues Lomborg splits up into little targets and compares to the whole (inflated) price tag. And, by the way, who said that tackling climate change is separate from helping the poorest among us? The issues are all integrally related and the poorest are being hit hardest by climate changes already. Lomborg always seems to be arguing against some phantom Birkenstock-wearing Greenpeace activist chained to the bulldozer of progress...in the 1970s.

The logic and arguments for decoupling our economies from carbon have evolved tremendously and include national competitiveness and job creation, healthier air, eliminating reliance on fuels from parts of the world that fund terror, and reducing dependence on volatilely-priced, and declining, resources that will raise the cost of doing business over time. This is why many important capitalists such as Jeff Immelt at GE (but not the US Chamber of Commerce of course) are making the business case for climate action.

You'll notice that none of these other reasons actually depend on believing fully in the science. And they make for more prosperous economies, which can help the poor the most. And guess what, we have to walk and chew gum at the same time -- we have to think holistically and tackle issues in a synchronized way.

But overall, what I really love is Bjorn Lomborg taking his argument for helping the poor to the skeptics of the world and going through the Wall Street Journal -- as if this is the crowd lining up to send development money to countries for food, water, and bed nets. Who is he speaking to?

Perhaps the real question here is this: What the heck is wrong with the Wall Street Journal? Today, they pick up Lomborg's arguments hook-line-and-sinker and offer an assemblage of greatest hits on not taking action. But yesterday was really hilarious.

They printed one op-ed -- in a series of daily, relentless lamenting about climate science -- laying out how climate skeptic bloggers (who almost all have no climatology or geology or any -ology background) have dismantled the idea that the actual measured data show an increase in GHG gases (the famous "hockey stick" chart) or any warming at all. Yet, in the same issue of the paper, the WSJ printed a truly helpful, excellent article looking at the main arguments/myths from the skeptics and comparing them to what the scientific community is really saying. The very first comparison is this one...

WHAT THE SKEPTICS SAY: The Earth isn't warming -- at least not to any extent that could actually be called a "crisis." And some data even suggest that the Earth is getting colder. The planet may have grown warmer over the course of the 20th century. But that warming stopped more than 10 years ago, and since 1998 the trend shows less warming or even cooling...

THE RESPONSE: It's true: By most measures, average temperatures this decade seem to have plateaued. But this isn't evidence of a cooling planet. Partly, it's a result of picking an exceptionally hot year -- 1998 -- as a starting point..the long-term trend since the mid-1970s shows warming per decade of about 0.18 degree Celsius (about 0.32 degree Fahrenheit)...The '00s still have been exceptionally warm: The 12 years from 1997 through 2008 were among the 15 warmest on record, and the decade itself was hotter than any previous 10-year period. While 2008 was the coolest year since 2000 -- a result of the cooling counterpart of El Niño -- it was still the 11th-warmest year on record. And 2009 is on track to be among the five warmest.

The Journal is as schizophrenic as the population I suppose, but the op-ed pages are totally out to lunch. We need good reporting now about what we know, and what we don't -- not ideological blustering. And we need to stop creating false tradeoffs between helping the poor and helping the planet, as if the poor -- and all of us -- don't live and breathe on that planet.

This first appeared on Huffington Post.

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But it's a fair question to ask how you might gather this data, especially when budgets remain very tight as the economy gradually recovers. Conducting a full, detailed lifecycle analysis (LCA) is likely to be a time-consuming, resource-draining affair. But luckily there are some shortcuts. Here are a few principles and guidelines for getting smarter about your footprint with the least resources possible:

1. Qualitative analysis is good. In fact, it's better to start with a more strategic view on your products or services than to dive right into detailed numeric analysis. Map out your value chain for a quick view on resource use. Then ask really top level questions that aren't part of the normal day-to-day thinking for most functions in a company, like what comes in the door, and what did it take for suppliers to produce it (are there processes energy or water intensive, for example)? What do we do with our inputs, and how much energy and resources do we use? How much energy and resources do our customers use? What happens to our products after customers are done with them?

You're looking for directionally-correct answers on where the biggest risks and opportunities are...or at the very least, where your data gaps are and how best to fill them.

2. "Back of the envelope" analysis is also okay. Top-line numbers on your own impacts and energy use, from departments like IT, facilities, and distribution, can give you sense of where cuts are most needed or valuable. The data may not be readily available at first, but it certainly isn't capital intensive to find it.

3. Use data that's already out there. A truly detailed LCA is, frankly, a pain. Following a product through every stage of its creation and use is difficult. Luckily, the resources available to help you are multiplying. Industry groups and academics have conducted LCAs on many products. You can extrapolate numbers from similar categories to save time and at least understand where the biggest issues lie. For example, let's say you produce food products, some of which have a big dairy component. The dairy industry has conducted an extensive LCA on a gallon of milk. That study can tell you that the methane produced by livestock may dominate your life-cycle carbon footprint as well.

Another option: public (or quasi-public) databases. See the wonky-sounding Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) data at Carnegie Mellon, or the data collected by AMEE in the UK. Without going into too much detail, the EIO-LCA captures data on flows of goods in and out of all sectors of the U.S. economy, along with data on energy use in each sector, and allows for big picture estimates on impacts. It's a back-of-the-envelope calculation — on a very big envelope. But if you don't want to dig into databases yourself (and who does), then you'll be glad to know that some smart developers have embedded these data sources into handy software products, so...

4. Seek out tools to help you. There is also a wealth of options for software that can help you get a handle on your impacts, including those throughout your supply chain. There are a few now classic providers of product LCA software, such as Ecobilan's TEAM and GaBi Sofware. But new niche players and products that focus on a company's carbon footprint include offerings from both the usual suspects and new entrants: Carbon Impact (formerly Clear Standards, now part of SAP), Planet Metrics, SAS for Sustainability Management, Computer Associates eco-Software, and two open source solutions Carbon Counted and Earthster (in beta).

I've worked with, or been taken through demos of most of these players — all are offering good tools and expertise. But I'm sure I've missed many others so please send me tools you've found useful (andrew@eco-strategies.com).

On top of these carbon modeling tools, companies are offering a range of other green data-tracking services: a sustainability dashboard from Microsoft, Google PowerMeter to measure energy consumption (for homes, but how far off are business-targeted versions), and a cool new product from AngelPoints (working with Saatchi S) that puts the Wal-Mart Personal Sustainability Project program into tracking software so companies can show employees what all their pledges of behavior change add up to.

Beyond these more self-help methods, there is an ever-growing number of consultants that can guide you (including partners of mine such as Domani). You may need to start small with my guidelines above and estimate if resources are too tight, but if you can, working with experts can provide you with a much deeper picture of your company's data-gathering capabilities.

Finally, a larger investment in getting smarter — building that internal capacity to understand footprints on an ongoing basis, and even real-time — will pay back in ways you can barely imagine. Those with the best data win.

This first appeared on Harvard Business online.

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But perhaps no environmental disaster grabbed people's attention quite like the gas leak at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India on December 3, 1984. Estimates vary, but at least half a million people were exposed to toxins and thousands died within a few days. Birth defects and other serious lingering effects still plague the population in the region, affecting hundreds of thousands of people. (See the Bhopal Medical Appeal for more info).

This one event drove awareness and contributed mightily to the momentum building to reduce human exposure to toxicity. It was the beginning of a quarter century of action. One of the first real industry-driven initiatives in any sector, Responsible Care, grew out of the tragedy. A few years later, the U.S. created the Toxics Release Inventory which mandates transparency on a range of industries. The measurement and disclosure of toxic pollution by facility has forced a lot of soul-searching and kicked off long-standing sustainability efforts at companies like DuPont (which discovered it was the #1 polluter in the first TRI reports).

The movement has evolved a great deal in recent years as part of the larger green wave that's swept business, especially the powerful trends of supply chain greening and transparency in all we do. Wal-Mart, never one to pass up a chance to increase pressure on suppliers on sustainability issues, quietly introduced a new tool, GreenWERCS, to assess products on its shelves on chemical composition. Companies like SC Johnson, Nike, and HP have made significant efforts, some for years, to reduce toxicity.

High-profile stories of lead in toys, toxic drywall, and melamine in milk products (all tied to Chinese supply chain practices), as well as concerns about chemicals like BPA leaching from baby bottles here, have also raised awareness dramatically. As the world contemplates vast policy action on climate, it's worth noting that government pressure has continued to rise on toxics, with a large number of powerful laws around the world. Regulations in EU over the last decade, such as RoHS and REACH, have changed the game dramatically (shifting responsibility to prove safety from government to business). The U.S. has gotten into the act in recent years as well, with bans on phthalates in toys, the controversial and stringent Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, which targets toys in particular, and regional actions like California's new regs. Companies cannot avoid questions about what's in everything and how their products might affect human health.

But what's really interesting is how the approaches companies take to handling toxics have been shifting over years from end of pipe solutions to pollution prevention to a new movement under the banner of "green chemistry." Rather than demonizing chemicals and chemistry -- when they continue to play a critical role in meeting human needs -- this new approach seeks a third way.

The leaders are starting to design chemicals and products in new ways to reduce toxicity. Do this right, the thinking goes, and avoid tons of regulation, liability, and health problems altogether. There's enormous upside potential for the companies that can innovate and find ways to create the same material or chemical properties that we need with much lower risk to humans and the environment. So this is not all about regulations and risk-reduction - it's about getting smart about your own products, and it's about profit.

With all the extensive, and justified, coverage of climate change and the Copenhagen Summit, it's easy to forget that there are other serious environmental issues out there. This anniversary today certainly reminded me. From water to biodiversity to waste, a range of other problems continue evolve and create pressing challenges, for society and for business. Of course most of these, especially water, have deep connections to climate change, so it's right that we make that a priority issue.

But the issue of toxicity and chemicals is one that lies somewhat separate from the climate discussion. While it gets lost in the shuffle sometimes, the pressure on companies to deal with it just keeps rising and rising. It's worth, today, remembering why.

[Originally posted on Huffington Post]

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Some are calling this phenomenon the "Prius effect," referring to how people respond when they see real-time fuel-efficiency data while driving the popular Toyota hybrid. As the described it, the Prius effect "can change driving in startling ways, making drivers conscious of their driving habits, then adjusting them to compete for better mileage." Similarly, making footprint data more accessible to those managers that can do something about it can create real value. As they say, you can't manage what you don't measure. It's amazing how often I hear that phrase — and how often people need to hear it. Tech leaders will tell you that one of the best possible solutions to the rapid increase in energy use and cost in data centers is simple: Add the power bill to the CIO's budget!

You can put your green data to use in five ways that will help your bottom line:

1. Saving money — a lot of it. As we've seen, if you give your operational people information on resource use, they will be inspired to find ways to cut back.

2. Driving internal competition. Share footprint data broadly and transparently and you'll see how badly people like to win. When PepsiCo Chicago ran a floor-by-floor energy reduction competition, the results were staggering. In one three-month period, electricity use dropped 17% (and paper use 22%). Energy use on the winning floor plummeted 31%. Factory heads at a number of companies have told me that they'd rather miss their financial targets than their green or energy goals — it's just too embarrassing to be at the bottom of the list.

3. Answering your customers' pressing questions. Wal-Mart, along with many other companies, is asking suppliers and vendors very tough questions about their environmental and social impacts. Those that can gather their data and tell the best story will get the most shelf space and mind space (see my previous post on Wal-Mart's eco-ratings for more on this point).

4. Prioritizing initiatives. Resources remain very tight — you don't want to spend money on the wrong things. With all the pressure to go green, it's easy to get lost in the weeds and pursue avenues that may not yield the most benefit. When companies really look at their full value-chain impacts, they're very often surprised at the results. Green leader Stonyfield Farm discovered that 95% of the ecological damage from its packaging occurred during production and distribution. So the company has made light-weighting (which is what it sounds like) the top priority — use less stuff and the footprint goes down. Stonyfield has made the deliberate choice to not use a recyclable, yet heavier, plastic; this counterintuitive and seemingly non-green choice makes the most environmental and fiscal sense given the real data.

5. Finding new market openings and focusing innovation. Procter & Gamble went through a similar lifecycle exercise and made a similar discovery about its laundry products. The vast majority of energy use was not in sourcing, production, or distribution, but in the use of the detergent in homes. And the majority of that was not the washing machine turning, but heating the water. This insight led to Tide Coldwater, a reformulated product to help customers wash in cool water, using less energy and saving money. Coldwater is one of P&G's seven original "sustainable innovation products" that generated $2 billion in sales in the first year.

Operating your business without environmental and social metrics leaves part of your management "dashboard" blank. How well can you run your company without complete information? But don't worry — you're not that far behind if you don't have a perfect handle on your value-chain footprint, or even your direct impacts. It's getting easier and easier to gather this data, and you can accomplish a great deal with even "back of the envelope" calculations (more on this in my next post).

For a slightly longer take on this topic, see also my recent e-letter, or the full discussion in my new book Green Recovery

[This blog was originally posted on Harvard Business Online]