July 31, 2007
Corporate
scandals – HP’s lesson in values - Hewlett-Packard is starting to
recover from an ethics scandal over its use of private investigators
Corporate scandals, like earthquakes, come with varying degrees of severity.
Some can rock a company to its very foundations. Others barely register.
Ten months and four director resignations on, Hewlett-Packard is emerging from
the wreckage of last year’s “pretexting” fiasco relatively unscathed. (EthicalCorp.com)
July 27, 2007
The
contrarian – Green war over carbon trading - Neo-liberal
environmentalists are selling carbon offsets as a pain-free way to save the
planet from global warming. Jon Entine says it’s not that easy
You gotta love Al Gore. Straight faced, he offers a guilt-free explanation for
operating his energy-gobbling Nashville estate, which consumes 20 times more
energy than a typical American home, roughly the annual carbon emission of 20
belching Hummers.
Gore, a spokeswoman says, buys “offsets” – credits sold by brokers to
carbon belchers that invest in projects that purportedly reduce greenhouse
gases, either by increasing the availability of renewable energy, supporting
energy-efficiency in industry or sequestering emissions.
Green Al would have to plant 40,000 trees a year to suck up the carbon dioxide
contributed by his home.
I’m not a global warming sceptic, but the antennae do quiver when everyone
from the Dixie Chicks to UK ex prime minister Tony Blair insists there is a
simple, pain-free solution that allows anti-global-warming activists to continue
to jet around the world and drive their BMWs while complaining that the rest of
us are not doing our part to save the planet. (EthicalCorp.com)
July 24, 2007
Tilting at
windmills – the rush on renewables - The market’s hidden hand will
be all-important in meeting demands for green energy – no matter what climate
change sceptics or even global warming evangelists would like us to think,
argues Phil Rudolph (EthjicalCorp.com)
July 20, 2007
General
Electric and the Hudson – The dirty legacy of an admired icon - While
GE is feted by the responsible business world for its investments in
environmental technology, the firm has a dark legacy that seems set to dog it
for decades
General Electric consistently ranks among the world’s most admired companies.
Early indications are that the 129-year-old is, in its newest incarnation as a
leading purveyor of environment-friendly technology, set for decades more
corporate glory and, of course, riches. Two years after launching Ecomagination
– which the company describes as “an aggressive, long-term initiative to
bring new technologies to market that help meet the world’s biggest
environmental challenges” – the project’s revenues are ahead of the $20
billion target for 2010.
But there is another equally persistent, far less flattering side to GE, at odds
with this new public relations rebranding. This concerns how the company handles
its long trail of environmental insults, the legacy of a sprawling
heavy-industry giant. Among these are some of the US’s most serious toxic
waste sites, targeted as national priorities for rapid clean-up under the
so-called “Superfund” law of 1984, established to protect people from toxic
waste sites. (EthicalCorp.com)
July 17, 2007
Crisis
management – Damage control in an incendiary world - Many modern
business crises are conflicts driven by fired-up adversaries, says Eric
Dezenhall
Consultant and author Eric Dezenhall is the first to admit his views on crisis
management are a bit off the beaten path and even counterintuitive. But he says
his unconventional approach is what it takes in today’s “always on” news
world to manage a real crisis – whether it is personal, political or
business-related.
Other approaches anchored in public relations, Dezenhall says, simply give the
illusion of control. In his new book, “Damage Control – Why everything you
know about crisis management is wrong”, he argues that traditional PR is
self-serving, self-congratulatory, self-deceiving and flat out wrong.
“The PR industry tends to treat crises as if they are all some sort of
misunderstanding, as opposed to something agenda-driven,” Dezenhall says. (EthicalCorp.com)
July 12, 2007
Nuclear in
my ethical portfolio, please - The role nuclear energy can and will play
in a carbon constrained future is being hotly debated – particularly by
socially responsible investors
Nuclear power is routinely excluded from socially responsible investment fund
portfolios, along with other often-maligned industries including tobacco,
alcohol and mining.
But with demand for energy growing, oil prices climbing and concerns about
climate change on the rise, some argue it is time to include nuclear power in
the responsible energy equation. (EthicalCorp.com)
July 9, 2007
Greener
cities – Urban warriors leading the climate battle - City authorities
are outstripping national governments in responding to climate change
Look out over the semi-urban stretch of land that is the Thames Gateway, and you
can see the hopes and fears that climate change has brought to London.
The area had been largely ignored by developers because of its high flood risk.
But demand for homes in the fast-growing south-east of England has overruled
these concerns, turning it into a major development corridor, just as concerns
mount over rising sea levels. (EthicalCorp.com)
July 5, 2007
Global Compact Expands, Impact Still Hazy - UNITED NATIONS, Jul 3 - The upcoming Global Compact Leaders Summit this Thursday and Friday in Geneva seems to be getting more attention from various stakeholders in the global community than ever before.
But is it because the initiative has proved to be worthwhile, or simply because of the growing number of corporations that have signed on? (IPS)
July 3, 2007
Green trading market could end up with investors seeing red - Carbon emissions trading sounds like the ideal way for savvy investors to make piles of dough in a new, rapidly growing market while doing their part for the environment - a perfect blend of opportunity and conscience.
But if you pull back the curtain a bit, you see a fragmented market distinctly lacking in oversight, credible analysis, safeguards or even a method to resolve disputes. It's a market that has only been existence for a few short years and owes its development largely to the United Nations, which isn't exactly a font of knowledge about how global financial markets work. (Brian Milner, Globe and Mail)
'Big Oil' in the real world - Fellow gas-guzzlers, rejoice.
ExxonMobil -- the world's best-run, most underappreciated and most foolishly hated energy company -- did exactly the right thing last week at its annual shareholders meeting in Dallas.
When climate cranks came to whine about ExxonMobil's alleged corporate irresponsibility and try to get the company to accept the Gospel of Global Climate Change according to Al Gore, the oil behemoth's bosses told them to go fly a kite in a wind farm. (Bill Steigerwald, Tribune-Review)
Most companies have no environment strategy: survey - BEIJING - Most companies in China, the United States, Canada and Britain have not laid out plans to improve their energy efficiency, despite growing concerns about global warming, a survey showed on Tuesday.
Nearly two-thirds of the 420 senior business executives surveyed in these four countries said no one in their organization had been tasked with overseeing the company's energy strategy, according to a report by Hill & Knowlton consultancy.
China led the pack with 82 percent saying there was no one responsible, followed by the U.S. at 70 percent.
But about half of British companies polled said there was someone in charge of environmental issues. (Reuters)
July 2, 2007
Thieves Fall Out - My colleague Marlo Lewis testified at a painfully comic hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee yesterday on “examining global warming issues in the power plant sector”. Marlo’s testimony is well worth reading, as is the testimony of two other witnesses: Bob Murray, chairman and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation, one of the biggest independent coal companies in the country: and Tom Borelli of the Free Enterprise Action Fund. (Myron Ebell, OpenMarket)
Carbon Backlash: Coal Divides Corporations - NEW YORK - US coal mining companies, which for years have been branded the bad guys of global warming, are fighting back. They are questioning not only the science but also the motives of some of the big-name corporations who have made well-publicized commitments to cleaning up their act. (Reuters)
Toward a new environmental movement: Time to kick out the corporate bastards - The environmental movement is on life support. Some would say it is already dead. Even though climate change and Al Gore are fast becoming the conversation du jour around the American dinner table, it also happens to be the rallying cry for do-gooder conservationists and corporations alike.
Call it the eco-economy. Virtually all major corporations now claim they are going “green.” Toyota dealerships cannot keep the hybrid Prius in stock. Apple, after heavy lobbying from Greenpeace and others, declares they are going to make their computers environmentally friendly. Genetically modified corn, which produces ethanol fuel, is being hawked by Monsanto as an alternative to petroleum based gasoline. Ethanol advocates are calling their program “Fuels for Profit,” while they sip McDonald’s organic coffee. The environmental movement has been corporatized.
Big green groups are not helping the situation. Their hands are tied by both the large foundations that pay their rent and the Democratic Party to which they are attached at the hip. They long ago gave up on challenging the system. Most groups today are little more than direct mailing outfits who have embraced a sordid neoliberal approach to saving the natural world. The true causes of planetary destruction are never mentioned. Industrial capitalism is not the problem, individuals are. Not the government’s inability to enforce its weak regulations. Not big oil companies, or coal fired plants. These neoliberal groups argue ordinary people are to blame for the impending environmental catastrophe, not those who profit from the Earth’s destruction. (Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, Online Journal)
