[originally posted on huffingtonpost here]

Another Earth Day is here (and gone). 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?

[First published on Huffington Post]

The U.S. Senate's latest attempt at tackling climate change, the Warner-Lieberman bill, went down this month...again. The complaints of the opponents ranged from fear of higher energy prices to concerns about how the government will use the money collected when permits to emit carbon are sold. But the biggest concern seemed to be the bill's scale and supposed lack of forethought about how it will affect the economy.

Granted, enacting a giant government initiative with no real planning and no consideration for those hurt by it isn't just for invading countries. But how much of an intrusion on the economy is cap-and-trade? It's a fair question and vital to answer since even most critics admit that we will pass something under the next President (given statements made by both Senators McCain and Obama).

If we don't understand the concerns of the few, strong voices that helped sink the bill, we'll never make 60 Senators happy and get a good piece of legislation passed. The usual suspects - the conservative media (often the Wall Street Journal on this topic) and Republican Senators - have focused on the trauma the bill would cause Americans.

Let's look at their attack points.

First, energy prices will likely rise, a regressive impact. The loony Senator Inhofe - who claims global warming is a "hoax" without explaining why thousands of scientists would be in on the big con - is now lamenting a "tax on the poor" (it's nice to see the Senator worrying about those living paycheck to paycheck). The GAO did estimate that gas prices would rise 52 cents...by 2030. Two cents more per year, compared to the price increases we're already seeing from normal market forces and oil supply constraints, is not very impressive. Of course for many people, even that much is financially challenging, which is why lawmakers wanted billions sent to those hurt the most. Confusingly, the critics decried this plan as well.

So, the second line of attack. Dripping with sarcasm, the conservative press decried the hundreds of billions that will go to relief for the poor, payments to fossil-fuel industries, investments in alternative energy, and international aid. If pricing carbon causes some pain, then getting money into the hands of the people most affected, helping carbon-dependent industries "transition," and investing in alternative energy makes political and economic sense. The last, foreign aid, is about rich countries helping poorer countries adapt to the effects of treating the atmosphere as a dumping ground for carbon for decades. These spending priorities are dead on and actually answer some of criticisms as soon as they're out of skeptics' mouths.

Finally, the third major line of attack: the larger concern about messing with the economy. The whole point of cap-and-trade is to fix the largest market failure the world's ever seen - the current pricing of carbon and its impacts at zero. So of course it's an intrusion, but it uses free market forces to solve the problem. Free markets are wonderful, but there is no such thing as a large-scale market with nobody minding the store. Would the stock market work without the SEC, FASB, and some governing rules? To be fair, there's a better way to deal with the externality of carbon - tax it. But just imagine what conservative critics would say about a new tax. So cap-and-trade is the next best thing. We set the total amount of pollution, step back, and let companies compete to get rid of carbon - the cheapest, most innovative solutions win. Isn't that free enterprise at its best?

The critics are also upset that the government will auction off some of the permits instead of giving them all away. This complaint confuses me: selling the permits is much more hands-off than the government picking segments of the economy that "deserve" to pollute. In fact, not auctioning the permits penalizes the companies that already cut carbon (like DuPont, which has reduced emissions 75%). Punishing the most forward-thinking, innovative, and leanest businesses in our economy is a horrible idea. And it certainly doesn't help our national competitiveness any either.

In total, all of the opposition smacks of being ticked off about losing the "debate" on the science of climate change. Aside from ignoring that we're running out of options, they're suggesting that the shift we need will only cause harm, disregarding the companies that will make billions selling solutions to our problems (like GE or Johnson Controls) and ignoring the strong research and analysis from non-partisan sources like Lord Nicholas Stern from the London School of Economics. The Stern Review concluded that taking action on climate change is much less expensive than the damage to world economies from not taking action.

Cap-and-trade is a great way to start. But it seems that critics don't actually love, or understand, free markets as much as they say they do.

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, you want something that is measurable and legitimately reduces the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere (especially during tough times -- why spend money on something that may not accomplish what you hoped?). A number of problems crop up, though, particularly "additionality," which boils down to whether that project -- saving some land, building a wind farm, capturing methane from a pig farm, and so on -- would have happened anyway. You don't want to pay people for things they're already doing.

A group of NGOs has recently formed the Offset Quality Initiative to tackle this thorny question - that answer is still in the works. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) went a step further and just launched a new resource for companies or individuals looking for high quality projects to invest in today. Their Carbon Offset Project List is fascinating. They've selected only 12 projects, far less than other respectable lists, such as the "Gold Standard Registry," backed by the World Wildlife Fund and the UNDP, which lists 200 projects around the world. So EDF must have narrower criteria.

So what's really interesting is what projects they do have. Except for one project, all are focused on methane capture, and 10 of the 12 are landfill projects (the lone holdout is a truck stop electrification project so truckers don't have to idle - very cool). Many common options are not on the list - wind, solar, retrofit projects (basically changing lightbulbs), planting trees, and so on.

I asked EDF why the methane obsession. In short, they were a) looking at the longest-standing projects with solid track records and and b) focusing on measurable and verifiable proof of reductions. They felt that "grid-connected" projects such as wind power represented a different category of renewable projects, not offsets exactly.

All of this debate demonstrates how hard it is to really define an offset...which makes claiming credit for it and declaring yourself "carbon-neutral" very dicey. Reducing carbon to "zero" is the ultimate goal here, but there are no shortcuts.

Companies can tackle this problem with a basic hierarchy of priorities. Much like the "reduce, reuse, recycle" mantra for waste, we need a simple plan for addressing carbon in business. First, cut emissions directly through efficiency and smart redesign of processes and products (and this will reduce costs directly, a good thing in tight times). Second, buy renewable directly for your facilities, including solar, wind, geothermal and, yes, local landfill gas - whatever works in your region and climate. Then, as a last resort, look for quality offsets.

Some companies are following this prescription already. Dell recently announced that it hit its carbon-neutrality target (for its offices and employee travel). The company reduced emissions, bought direct renewable energy for its headquarters from a Waste Management landfill project, then made some investments in renewables elsewhere to offset the rest.

I'm searching for a catchy three-word slogan for this path. How about Eliminate energy waste, generate your own Electrons from renewables, and Equalize your emissions with offsets? Or Bring down energy use, Build your own, Buy offsets? (Clearly, it's not easy to come up with a Tom Friedman-esque shorthand for something...send me ideas...)

In the meantime, at least the information on what makes for a quality offset is getting better. Very smart people are exploring the problem, which will only get more acute as more carbon markets spring into being. When there's a price on a reduction, you can bet someone will want to define it. Nonetheless, start now by bringing your own emissions down and building your own renewables; these are cleaner options.

Because not creating carbon to begin with is the highest quality "offset" around.

This post first appeared at Harvard Business Online and at Huffington Post.

The beginning of this post is here, the rest is on Huffington Post here...

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 energy competitive with old carbon sources."

As usual, Lomborg sets up a false straw-man to knock down. He says "we are often told that...we must cut emissions immediately and drastically." Then he worries that people just don't get that we actually need to make renewables cheaper. Really? So none of the major environmental NGOs, or country delegations to global climate negotiations, have thought of that? So to tackle obesity we shouldn't just talk about weight, but also about exercising more and eating right? So insightful...

Lomborg has a long habit of tilting at windmills that he mostly imagines. His most famous argument is that we shouldn't prioritize climate change over other pressing social priorities like poverty alleviation -- as if they're all separate. The poorest people in the world are energy poor and don't have access to clean water -- the two biggest environmental challenges of our time. He's always setting up false tradeoffs to establish his more "reaonsable" middleground.

I will say that one overarching aspect of his arguments is important. Of course we should constantly ask ourselves, "What's the cheapest way to solve that problem, and where should we allocate scarce resources?"...

More on HuffPo -- please go there to comment...

[A new post on my Harvard Business column -- some interesting commentary there]

I saw an interesting piece by Michael Graham Richard on treehugger titled, "Let's Put This Meme to Rest: Global Warming ≠ Al Gore" (thanks to Will Sarni for tweeting it to me). It seems like a perfectly obvious point, but one that I agree needs to be repeated. And it's a point that I've been making in subtle, and not-so-subtle ways, everywhere I can in recent months.

I speak to business people from a very wide range of sectors and quite often to groups that are self-identified as conservative. I find myself facing real skepticism on climate change (and real dislike of Mr. Gore). I don't really spend time debating or presenting the science, though. I just try to impress on business people to accept one irrefutable point: climate change is now a political and business reality, regardless of what you think about the scientific merits. (By the way, it is actually a reality reality also — see this unheralded story about some of the first climate refugees — but never mind.)

Unfortunately, in the United States in particular, the discussion on climate change has gotten wrapped up in political affiliation. And that's due in large part to the role Al Gore has played. He's done more than anybody on the planet to raise awareness of this serious issue. But for many Americans who don't like Gore or his political party, his role as the unofficial spokesperson for climate change has tainted the discussion. It's something I understand, but wish people could get past. Why are we unable to separate the medium from the message? After all, Attila the Hun could give the Gore's Inconvenient Truth presentation and the information presented would still be true.

But at any rate, from a strategy perspective, none of this really matters — and that's what I'm consistently trying to convey to business people

See the rest of this column here

[This post originally appeared on Harvard Business Online here]

In recent months, which radical, tree-hugging group has upped the volume on pushing for action on climate change? I bet you wouldn't have guessed American military leaders. Apparently, the people standing on the proverbial (and actual) walls defending our freedoms are very concerned about the dangers our soldiers face in an uncertain, physically changing world. It's something that businesses need to pay attention to, since the military's top strategists are now getting involved in developing solutions that may well be useful to — or even critical to — individual companies' success.

Generals and admirals are now making the case that climate change is a threat to our national security. Changing regional climates, more natural disasters, and displaced peoples will force us to put troops in harm's way more frequently — and the military must be prepared.

For the leading thinking on climate and security, look no further than CNA Corporation, a think tank funded by the Pentagon, which has, in the words of the New York Times, spoken "ominously of climate change as a 'threat multiplier' that could lead to wide conflict over resources."

I recently spoke at an event in DC and sat at lunch with retired Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, the President of both CNA's Institute for Public Research and the American Security Project (ASP). In his powerful keynote address, Vice Admiral Gunn spoke about the risks global climate change presents to America. His view on the science was simple: "Some are still not convinced about the science on human-induced climate change — I am."

The Admiral laid out three large shifts in military practice and strategy that climate change will bring about:

1. Why the U.S. fights, gives aid, and responds to disasters: Natural disasters, water shortages, and the weakening of some states mean "we will deploy more often to more places."

2. How logistics patterns will change: One of our primary military bases in the Middle East, Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, is only a few feet above sea level. The physical shifts and the changes in force structure related to #1 and #2 will all be expensive.

3. What will happen to international relations: The loss of sea ice is changing commercial and military sea patterns. The Arctic represents a new area of resources for countries to potentially compete over (remember Russia planting a flag last year on the North Pole sea bed?).

[Please see the rest of the post here]

What do Exelon, Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources, Apple, and Nike all have in common? In the last month they all dropped out of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the group's stance on climate-change legislation.

Sadly, the Chamber's COO told the Wall Street Journal that these defections will not change the Chamber's misguided positions, including constant carping about the potential costs (almost always overstated) of climate change and calling for a mock "trial" on the science of climate change.

Here's why the Chamber is out to lunch. First, tackling climate change is good for business and improves the competitiveness of our industries and the country as a whole. And, oh, on a related note, the Chamber is increasingly out of step with its own members — because they do see how going green will help their businesses.

As so many companies already know, climate legislation will help our nation's businesses stay competitive on the global stage. But don't listen to me, listen to mega-venture capitalist John Doerr and GE's Jeff Immelt. The two staunch capitalists wrote a powerful op-ed in the Washington Post that laid out the series of crises we face: economic, climate, energy security, and now a "competitiveness crisis." As they put it, "this crisis is particularly evident in America's worldwide standing in the next great global industry, green technology."

Their evidence: One in ten of the world's biggest solar and wind companies are based in the U.S. We're falling behind China, Germany, and others fast. Their solution, in part: "Send a long-term signal that low-carbon energy is valuable. We must put a price on carbon and a cap on carbon emissions." With the right price signals, we invest, innovate, and move off of fossil fuels (and stop sending $700 billion every year in oil payments to countries that don't like us — but that's a separate story).

And with the right policy in place around the world, according to HSBC, climate change-related products and services will be a $2 trillion market by 2020. That's a big pie to compete for. But without the right price signals here in the U.S., we can't compete. It's as simple as that.

[See the rest of this post, and the always interesting comments whenever climate change comes up, here on Harvard Business Online]

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 it is to convince people to "put aside their self interest and do the right thing even if it's personally costly."

The authors go on to explain their solution -- geoengineering -- which purportedly isn't going to require us to cut back on our energy use or rethink the way we do business. But what they have completely failed to address -- and what the (ahem) lively discussions on the topic have missed as well -- is what the benefits of tackling climate change might be, instead of just the costs.

The authors have missed a major economic issue: the process of shifting to a low-carbon economy has enormous upsides completely aside from the benefits to climate balance.

I'm not going to try and take apart their arguments or judge the soundness of their climate science as a whole; there are some others who are already doing a detailed job of that. If you like your climate discussions hot and sarcastic (which can be entertaining), see Joe Romm's posts on his Climate Progress blog. Or if you like the cool, dispassionate analysis, I'd recommend the Union of Concerned Scientists or the well-respected journalist Eric Pooley's take on how the authors -- who he says are friends of his -- "flunk" the science.

There's also been a fascinating back and forth which includes the authors and Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman. In short, Krugman is not pleased and he lays out some devastating concerns about the mental exercise the authors have undertaken ("We're not talking about the ethics of sumo wrestling here; we're talking, quite possibly, about the fate of civilization. It's not a place to play snarky, contrarian games").

The brouhaha is truly unfortunate on many levels. It's not that having a discussion of geo-engineering is a bad thing -- we should explore and assess many options. But the real problem is that the authors of SuperFreakonomics -- and even the big critics who have gotten sucked into it -- seem to have taken too narrow a view of the problem. Although the authors clearly believe that there is too much climate-change hype, they seem to agree that there's a warming problem (or why propose a solution -- the main point of the chapter -- at all?). But the focus of the discussion is entirely on a way to counteract the effects of greenhouse gases, as if there are no other issues related to our reliance on fossil fuels.

Instead, let's just think about the business benefits of changing our products and processes to reduce carbon emissions, regardless of the atmospheric benefits. How will changing to a lower-carbon economy help companies? Well, there's real money involved here -- energy and other resources are getting fundamentally more expensive over time as demand around the world rises and supply gets harder to find. Oddly, the SuperFreakonomics authors acknowledge this Econ 101 supply problem in passing with the statement: "In just a few centuries, we will have burned up most of the fossil fuel that took 300 million years...to make." So why wouldn't we want to move away from a declining resource?

Put really simply, it saves money to reduce greenhouse emissions. It makes businesses more competitive to use less energy and to help customers do the same. It also creates jobs in a wide range of industries that help build a low-carbon economy -- from the obvious solar panel builders and installers to the less sexy home weatherizers, electric vehicle manufacturers and mechanics, and building efficiency consultants and experts.

The countries and companies that decouple themselves from fossil fuels will slash their costs and increase profits mightily. In fact, as Robert Kennedy, Jr. pointed out in a speech recently, the countries that have already reduced their reliance on fossil fuels -- such as Iceland, with its geothermal energy, and Sweden, with a carbon tax driving down energy use as the country grew -- have made their economies richer and more stable. (Yes, Iceland then bet its wealth on bad investments at the heart of the financial crisis in 2008 and bankrupted itself, but that's another story.)

As many have repeatedly argued, we also place ourselves at great risk globally by continuing to pour money into oil markets. We send hundreds of billions of dollars a year to parts of the world that tend to include our enemies (and is a waste of money no matter whom it goes to). And we place ourselves at personal risk -- the National Academy of Sciences just estimated, conservatively, that fossil fuels cost $120 billion per year in health costs and cause 20,000 premature deaths (that's more than six 9/11s if you're counting).

So while we find new ways to pour attention on "contrarians" and have a debate that most of the rest of the world has already stopped having, we risk our health, fall further and further behind the countries we compete with (China and Germany, for example, in renewables), and become more indebted to countries that may not be friends.

Solving climate change is not really about asking people to hold hands and sing "Kumbaya," but about political will and making it easier for business to create the low-carbon solutions we all need. Regardless of the climate science, the benefits of action and the costs of inaction for business are astronomical -- and worth superfreaking out about.

[This post first appeared on Harvard Business Online and on HuffPo -- see the comments...]

The anger and energy of the climate skeptics is at a fever pitch lately. The breaking story that the Wall Street Journal loves so much is about one climate research center in the UK that may have been unwelcoming to contrary opinions. So the conspiracy theorists are all over this and are making the case that there's a global scientific hoax. I can't stomach diving into whether one research center in the entire world acted somewhat inappropriately to shut out opposing, angry views.

But I do always find the "debate" on warming totally surreal since you don't have to buy the complicated climate models to just look out the window (proverbially). Glaciers all over the world are melting, noticeably, and quickly.

See this little video and discussion of the decline in Himalyan ice (a water source supplying over a billion people) on Climate Progress here.

I'm unclear on what people think is going on. If you put a glass of ice water outside and the ice melts, you know it's warm out there. It's really not much more complicated than that.

And yet the anger at people who want to do something about this serious problem, and even (gasp) profit from the shift, continues to rise (I've even received hate mail for fairly innocuous commentary on how good it will be for business and national competitiveness to wean ourselves off of oil and carbon).

I prefer to think that the level of animosity is a sign that the debate really is fundamentally over. This is the death throes of an outdated perspective. Let's hope it dies quickly. Let the angry, bizarre commentary begin...

For some reason I can't understand, Mr. Skeptical Environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg keeps getting space in places like the Wall Street Journal and Time to peddle his drivel. The Journal has given Lomborg a weekly op-ed for about 6 weeks to talk about how we shouldn't really tackle climate change.

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.

[If this was forwarded to you and you'd like to sign up for Andrew's blog via email, click here]

Just a quick link to my monthly e-letter. This one is a bit different. I look at four (of many possible) scenarios for business after the big climate talks in Copenhagen. For each I give a quick rundown of what the world will look like and how business might need to respond.

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

Happy New Year all (ok, I'm a bit delayed, but I entered the new year and promptly got really sick -- lost over a week in there). So let's start fresh now!

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

[A post from December from Harvard Business that i forgot to post here...but it's still timely!]

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?

It's been a couple months since the global climate negotiations in Copenhagen. Whether you're a fan of a global cap on carbon emissions or not, it's important to think about what COP15's failure means (that a global agreement is going to be unlikely in the near term) and what it doesn't mean for business (that companies will be off the hook for tackling carbon emissions).

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]

What do you call a group that uses large snowstorms to deride the scientific evidence for climate change? Fox News I guess.

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.

I must have done something wrong to someone today because I feel like I’m in some kind of surreal dream. The day started well with a great event hosted by Xerox in Dallas, talking sustainability with some leaders in the field. Then I ended up in two bizarre conversations during my travels home. This post is my personal therapy session to work it out.

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...