Four Studies that Ponder the Road from Here
Our world these days seems to be a succession of forks in the road, points at which decisions need to be made about which pathway we collectively must take. In nearly every case, there's an unsustainable "business as usual" scenario (often shortened, unappealingly, to BAU) along with one or more alternatives. Each presents any number of quandaries about whether, how, and how aggressively to address the challenges at hand, whether economic revival, health care or electoral reform, social equity — and, of course, the array of environmental and resource challenges that confront us. (Never mind that all of these issues are connected. Much as it would be ideal to address them holistically, that doesn't seem to be in the cards.)
And so it's not surprising, as 2009 sputters to an end — as we anticipate an intensifying global debate on climate, address our growing global need for energy, consider our options for ensuring an adequate water supply, and plot the surest footing possible for commerce and investment — that we would see the unleashing of a mild torrent of studies and findings in recent weeks. Each tackles intriguing and important questions, summarizing the opinions and conclusions of scientists, corporate executives, business leaders, and others. And each offers some roadmap of where to go from here.
I've been perusing a subset of the recent research spanning a range of topics. Herewith is a summary of four reports that offer valuable food for thought.
To begin, there's "Managing the Unavoidable" (PDF - registration required), by Henderson Global Investors, Insight Investment, RAILPEN Investments, and the Universities Superannuation Scheme. The group aimed to better understand the impact of climate change on companies and their investors in four sectors: electric utilities, oil and gas, real estate, and water utilities. The focus was on climate change adaptation, not mitigation — that is, how companies in these sectors will shift their products, processes, and policies to succeed in a world grown warmer, but not necessarily what they'll do to help prevent warming in the first place.
The conclusion: Adaptation is beginning to receive more management attention but, with the exception of the water sector, most companies are focused more on mitigation. That is, "Companies are more concerned about risks than opportunities," such as the potential to profit from higher rates resulting from disruptions to the electricity supply. That may seem a cynical view, but from a business perspective, it's a little like automobile manufacturers seizing the opportunity to build ambulances to respond to an increase in auto accidents: So long as the need exists, why leave money on the table?
Of course, this has implications for investors. "We believe that investors need to examine how the risks and opportunities associated with climate change adaptation affect company-specific business models, value drivers, strategy, governance, cashflows and assets," say the authors. Moreover, investors "should ensure that companies have appropriate governance and management systems in place," such as robust risk identification and assessment processes, clear strategies for managing and responding to climate change, and clear reporting on risk assessment and management processes and on the company's views on the materiality of climate change-related risks for their business.
Takeaway: Climate change adaptation strategy is becoming a boardroom issue. It may no longer be enough to measure and manage one's carbon footprint. Companies that don't have a strategy to adapt to climate change may find themselves reeling from "surprises" they might have otherwise anticipated.
A similar, sector-specific concern was expressed by the insurance giant Allianz and the nonprofit environmental group WWF in a report on "Major Tipping Points in the Earth's Climate System and Consequences for the Insurance Sector" (PDF). It ponders the small changes that, at some point, could cause big changes in weather, sea levels, and other things. It chronicles several potential consequences — sea-level rise along North American coasts, Indian Summer monsoons in Asia, Amazon die-back and drought, desertification of the southwestern U.S. — and the "insurance aspects" for each.
Their conclusion: We're hopelessly in the dark about what these things mean financially.
Despite their potential to affect very significant numbers of people and assets, these tipping points are virtually absent from policy and decision contexts concerning what changes in temperature or other variables constitute "dangerous climate change." Work to provide early warning of such tipping elements could help us adapt to or mitigate them. But getting companies to take action on the basis of such early warnings is, arguably, the greater challenge.
Takeaway: The impacts of climate change on companies may not come through horrific, sudden hurricanes, fires, or other calamities, but through seemingly small changes that rapidly turn into big ones. Once again, the need to anticipate and plan for various climate scenarios is rising in importance in some industries.
"Charting Our Water Future" (PDF), by the Water Resources Group — an ad hoc association that includes the World Bank, the consultancy McKinsey & Co., and companies like Coca-Cola, SABMiller, Nestlé, and Sygenta — set out to "shine a light on water resource economics." The study looks at the water worlds in four countries — India, Chian, Brazil, and South Africa — and examines each region's challenges and solutions, including how to "unlock" the transformation of the water sector.
The report points up how little most of us know about water, let alone about the water realities of these disparate regions. It talks us through such basics as water supply and demand, quantity and quality, as well as the various types of water needed for various purposes, from ultra-pure water to potable water to gray water; four different types of water metrics; and the distinction between "blue water" (that found in rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water) to "green water" (water that naturally infiltrates the soil from precipitation). These are important concepts and distinctions that need to be widely understood if companies, policy makers, public agencies, water utilities, and others are to effectively manage the world's water supply.
One stark reality is the inefficient use of water by agriculture, which accounts for about 80 percent of water use. Roughly 80 percent of that can be used more efficiently through "productivity levers" — that is, measures that increase the yields of individual fields, offsetting the need for additional land and additional irrigation. These include no-till farming, improved drainage, optimized fertilizer use, germplasm or other seed development, and the application of something called "crop stress management."
But it's not just ag. In China, where industrial and urban water use are the fastest growing uses of water, the Water Resources Group identified aggressive, industrial efficiency measures whose cost is negative (including annualized capital and net operating expenditures), producing net annual savings of approximately $21.7 billion. In South Africa, industrial measures such as paste-thickening in mining and pulverized-bed combustion in power production could generate up to $340 million in annual net savings — again, including capital expenditures and operational costs — while dramatically cutting water use.
In each country, the potential for reducing the gap between supply and demand comes from different private-sector initiatives. "The cost curve thus empowers the private sector to engage meaningfully on defining the institutional mechanisms of the future."
Takeaway: Much as with energy, there's a strong understanding that "business as usual" is no longer an option in the water sector. Water will be an important investment theme for companies and governments in the coming decades, providing opportunities for those that can provide cost-effective solutions. And there is significant "low-hanging fruit," in which existing technology and water-management strategies can close the gap between what's available and what's needed.
Finally, there's "Betting on Science" (PDF), a report from Accenture that looks at technologies in transport fuels that have the potential to "disrupt" the current views of supply, demand and greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade. You may have thought that the idea of biofuels from plant matter, microbes, and other material had come and gone. (Remember "Live Green, Go Yellow" and "food versus fuel"?) While the hype may have died, the R&D around them is alive and well — genetically engineered feedstocks that increase the yield density and reduce the intensity of pre-treatment and required enzyme; a "diesel" solution through synthetic biology that allows sugar cane to be converted into a clean diesel; microbes that have been able to overcome the toxicity challenges of converting starches and sugars to butanol; genetically modified algae that have higher yields and can be cultivated and harvested at lower cost; and more.
Accenture examined a range of technologies through the lens of scalability (those offering a greater than 20 percent potential impact on hydrocarbon fuel demand by 2030); greenhouse gases (those affording savings greater than 30 percent relative to the hydrocarbon it is replacing); cost (those competitive at an oil price of $45 to $90 per barrel); and time to market (those that could be commercialized in less than five years). The technologies are also divided among three groups: evolutionary, revolutionary, and "game changers."
The last category, it turns out, weren't biofuels at all, but electricity — that's right, electric vehicles, plug-ins, and all the rest, along with the controlled charging infrastructure and a "smart grid." It was the middle group — "revolutionary" fuels — that were eye-opening: sugar cane-to-diesel technologies are close to commercial viability, says Accenture; so are "bio-crude," a replacement for geologically sourced crude oil, made from biomass; and biofuels for airlines.
Takeaway: Research and development of oil alternatives is robust, with dozens of companies working to bring a wide range of alternatives to market. The question is no longer if or how these technologies will be commercialized, but when and how fast.
This is, I said, only a sampling of recent studies. There will be more, no doubt, as the Copenhagen climate summit nears, the inevitable end-of-year assessments are unveiled, and as just about everyone opines on Barack Obama's first 365 days in office.
Their collective conclusions are important. What we do with them is critical.
November 29, 2009 in Clean Tech, Climate Change, State of the Art, Trendwatching | Permalink | Comments (0)
Searching for Greenwash at Greenbuild
I'll admit to entering the halls of Greenbuild — the mammoth green building conference and expo, held last week in Phoenix — with a cynical theory: Greenbuild would be filled with greenwash. I assumed that with nearly 1,100 exhibitors, up 25% from the previous year amid a horrid economy, the U.S. Green Building Council, the event's organizers, had lowered its standards, accepting anyone that had a green story to tell. It would be, I surmised, a case study in what happens when green goes mainstream: that good intentions and high standards give way to the lowest common denominator of the mass market. We'd seen it before with organic foods, where just about any fat-laden, additive-intensive food could be deemed "organic." I assumed history would repeat itself here.
I'm happy to report that I was wrong.
Greenbuild was by no means a hype-free zone, but as I walked the miles of aisles, looking for examples that would prove my theory, I was profoundly disappointed — and duly impressed. Green building has matured from the exception to the rule, with the market rising to the occasion, producing an increasingly gushing pipeline of products and services that, increasingly, are reducing the environmental toll of the built environment.
As my colleague Rob Watson — executive editor of GreenerBuildings.com and one of the founders of the green building movement, in particular, the LEED green building rating system — found in the recent Green Building Market & Impact Report, the potential to reduce those impacts is enormous. LEED in 2009 is estimated to grow by over 40% compared to 2008, for a cumulative total of over 7 billion square feet worldwide since the standard was launched in 2000. The free report details the energy, water, land, and employee commuting savings of LEED.
Given this success, it's no surprise that everyone is rushing into the green-building market. And with green building's rise has come a new wave of big companies. It's all reminiscent of the world of energy, where, as I noted more than three years ago, just about every big company seems to now be in the energy business.
So, too, with buildings. The expo floor at Greenbuild has become populated with billion-dollar companies. Many of these you'd expect to see — large construction companies (DPR, Turner), building automation and controls manufacturers (Honeywell, Johnson Controls), office furniture makers (Herman Miller, Steelcase), architecture firms (Gensler, HOK), flooring manufacturers (Interface, Shaw), and others. But there were some unexpected ones, too.
Firestone, for example. What was the venerable tire company (since 1988 owned by the Japanese conglomerate Bridgestone) doing at a green building show? Seems that the company has migrated from roadways to rooftops, and nearly everywhere in between. It offers an "Enviroready Roofing System," a rubber membrane married to a layer of insulation and other materials, that can accommodate everything from solar panels to vegetable gardens (both of which Firestone also sells). The company also offers permeable asphalt, zero-discharge stormwater collection systems that minimize toxic runoff into sewers and streams, and a range of metal products, from wall panels to sunscreens.
There were others. BASF, the chemical giant, offered a similarly bewildering array of environmental construction solutions — adhesives, solar panels, wall coatings, waterproofing, concrete, insulation, sealants, gypsum board, even termite control — each with its own green story.
(Therein lies one of green building's dirty secrets: To make buildings resource-efficient and less-polluting requires a host of not-always-friendly chemicals and materials, which is why BASF was joined by Dow, Dupont, and other old-line chemical companies at Greenbuild. As always, there are trade-offs: Constructing energy-efficient buildings requires using more synthetic materials derived from oil.)
There were a few pleasant surprises. Like Sanyo, offering a "synergetic hybrid bicycle," a two-wheeler that seemed to borrow the best of the Prius, featuring regenerative braking and seamless transition between electric drive and manual pedaling modes.
And there was more than a little hype — for example, the aforementioned Sanyo ("Think GAIA"), Steel ("The New Green"), Cold Spring Granite ("Releasing Rock's Full Potential"), and Armstrong, the flooring company, with a "Greenstock" hippie theme, including tie-dyed t-shirts and a VW bus. (What were they smoking?) There were green nails, green asphalt, green plumbing, green ceilings, green floors, and — for good measure — green artificial turf.
But I'll overlook a little irrational corporate exuberance in favor of the greater, greener good.
There's good reason for this exuberance: Green building is one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal building market. Consider Turner Construction, one of the world's largest construction companies, with $10 billion or so in annual revenue. This year, fully half of its projects will be built to LEED standards, a 20% growth from 2009 — a year when the company's overall revenue dropped. Put another way, green is propping up the building market.
Which is to say: Green building is no longer mere marketing hype — it's become nothing less than the status quo.
November 15, 2009 in Clean Tech, Green Marketing, State of the Art | Permalink | Comments (5)
Green Consumers and the Recession: Is It Really Different This Time?
How have consumers' green shopping habits changed during these tough economic times? There are at least a couple schools of thought: one, that green consumerism has gotten steamrolled by the recession, viewed as a luxury no longer affordable; the other, that green shopping has endured as consumers go back to basics, rethinking the need to consume, redefining what it means to be fulfilled, and becoming less wasteful and more conscious of the impact of their purchases.
So, which is it? Is a green shopping ethic alive and well, or has "saving the earth" taken a backseat to "saving the day"?
In search of answers, I recently tracked down Kathy Sheehan, senior vice president, and Tim Kenyon, senior market analyst, at GfK Roper. For nearly two decades, GfK (formerly Roper Starch) has been studying green consumer habits. GfK's principal product is the mostly annual Green Gauge, which it describes as a "long-term syndicated study of consumer attitudes and behaviors towards the environment." Green Gauge was the first, in 1990, to illustrate the "many shades of green consumers" through its market segmentation: True-Blue Greens, Greenback Greens, Basic Browns, and the like.
In advance of our conversation, Sheehan and Kenyon sent me three talking points about today's consumers, one of which was titled "It's different this time." It stated that "past recessions had a much greater impact on environmental attitudes and behaviors."
That was where our conversation began.
"When you look at people's concerns in the U.S., as well as globally, yes, their concerns about the economy have gone up," said Sheehan. "But it hasn't been at the expense of the awareness and concern about the environment." In fact, she said, "The recession has almost been a catalyst to being green." Sheehan explained that consumers are looking harder at energy- and money-saving measures, for example, taking advantage of rebates and other incentives.
But that's not the only difference. Another is that premium pricing for green products is a thing of the past, at least for mainstream consumers, says Sheehan. That syncs with the boon in less-expensive "house" brands of groceries, and in the continued profitability of Walmart and other discounters compared to their more midmarket counterparts. Except for a small niche of well-off consumers, people interested in buying green simply won't tolerate paying extra.
Given this, I asked, does being a green shopper these days extend only to the point that it saves money, such as in buying energy-efficient products? "For a majority of mainstream consumers, and especially given the economic climate that we're in, I think it does have a lot more to do with the personal benefit," said Kenyon.
That's understandable. Tough times lead consumers to make tough choices. But here's where Sheehan's and Kenyon's analysis stopped me in my tracks. As Kenyon explained: "What's interesting is that when you look at and compare some of the attitudes and behaviors in the U.S. to other developed markets, the U.S. is actually more like a developing market in terms of the way they think and behave green."
Say what?
Kenyon elaborated. "What we see in more developed countries is that, yes, there is the idea of having a personal benefit, but there is a greater sense of altruism when you're behaving green. In the U.S., it has more to do with the personal benefit as opposed to having some sort of general sense that we have to save the planet."
I wanted to be sure I understood. "So, in a developing economy, there's much more of a personal self-interest involved in making green purchasing choices, and less emphasis on the greater good, and that's similar to what you're seeing in the U.S.?
Replied Kenyon, "That's exactly what we're saying."
There you have it. American consumers may have more in common with their counterparts in Chad, Chile, and China than one might ever have imagined.
GfK's latest research also indicates that the recession may be leading Americans to let businesses off the hook in addressing their environmental impacts. In its most recent semiannual "core wave" survey of 4,000 consumers, it found that "being environmentally responsible" ranked last in a list of five qualities of what it means for companies to be "responsible," behind providing good jobs, protecting workers, producing quality products, and charging reasonable prices. In most developed markets, such as Western Europe, "being environmentally responsible" ranks second or third.
Moreover, when asked who should be taking the lead in addressing environmental problems, business again ranked last, with only 32% of Americans naming it as their first or second choice of who should be responsible, behind the federal government (46%) and individuals (39%). Says Kenyon: "It's no longer this idea of going green at the expense of some other issues."
None of this exactly shocked me — though the fact that personal responsibility trumps business responsibility seems noteworthy — and it's generally consistent both with my unscientific observations as well as the hardcore survey research done by my colleagues as part of GreenBiz.com's recently launched Green Confidence Index, which found a similar distrust for companies and a growing reliance on government for solutions, but still showed that green hasn't gone away during the recession, having become embedded in the marketplace.
So, is it really different this time? Not so much. In fact, I'm amazed how American attitudes toward green shopping aren't that different than they were nearly twenty Earth Days ago. As was true in the early 1990s, people today tell pollsters overwhelmingly that they want to be part of the solution, but that they won't budge much more than an inch to do so.
As I've been saying lately on the stump: When it comes to "change," Americans love the noun, hate the verb.
November 7, 2009 in Green Marketing, State of the Art | Permalink | Comments (4)
Introducing … the Green Confidence Index
Today marks the launch of a new monthly index, the Green Confidence Index, aimed at tracking Americans' attitudes about and confidence in their leaders and institutions, nationally and locally, on the subject of environmental responsibility, as well as in their own understanding of issues and their willingness to make green purchasing choices. It is the first comprehensive monthly tracking of consumers' green attitudes and purchasing.
The Index was produced by my colleagues at GreenBiz.com in partnership with a leading market research firm, Earthsense, and a leading polling firm, Survey Sampling International. It is based on a monthly survey of more than 2,500 adults who are nationally representative of the U.S. adult online population and calculated using responses in three areas:
- Responsibility — how well various groups and institutions are addressing environmental issues: too much, enough, or too little. The groups include the U.S. government, state and local governments, major corporations, individuals' own employers, their neighbors, and themselves (weight: 40%).
- Information — whether respondents feel they have sufficient information about environmental issues and solutions to make informed decisions when purchasing consumables (groceries, personal care, apparel, household care, office supplies) and "big ticket" items (household appliances, electronics, and cars), as well as when voting and investing (20%).
- Purchasing — green purchases made over the past year as well as anticipated green purchases over the next 12 months for three broad product categories, including food, personal and household care items, and "big ticket" items, including home purchasing and renovation as well as purchases of vehicles and major appliances (40%).
Why a new index? Americans' attitudes about how they view environmental problems and solutions are complex, dynamic, and continually shifting, a reality not always acknowledged by the studies and polls that flood my in-box. For years, periodic surveys have managed to capture snapshots of those attitudes, but they're just that: occasional snapshots. By surveying monthly, we believe the Green Confidence Index will illuminate real-time shifts and nuances that the annual or occasional studies can't see.
The Index was set in July 2009 at 100.0. Today’s release includes results from the first three months of survey results, through September 2009, when the composite Index stood at 103.8. You can download the inaugural issue free (PDF). Future issues will be available to paid subscribers.
Here is some of what we found:
- Responsibility perceptions are highest among individuals' perceptions of themselves — half feel they are personally "doing enough," with their employers not far behind. Perceptions of major companies and manufacturers lag the list consistently, with only 22.7% of respondents seeing companies as doing their share; this was the one significant change since the July baseline.
- Information is seen as being more readily available for energy-guzzling products such as vehicles (58.7%) and household appliances (56.6%). For half the categories GCI tracks, a modest — but significant — upward shift was evident (apparel, household care products, household appliances, electronics, automotive). Only 3 in 10 investors (28.0%) feel enough information is available about environmental issues when they make investment decisions.
- Purchasing of green products is holding steady. In past year, half of all U.S. adults say they bought at least one green product; nearly one-quarter (22.2%) said they are maintaining the same level of purchasing; and nearly as many (19.0%) said they've increased the number of green products purchased. Premium pricing is the biggest deterrent, usually because consumers cannot justify paying more (41.0%), compounded by the impact of the economic downturn on their paycheck (19.3%).
Moreover, we found considerable pent-up demand, particularly as green premiums diminish and paychecks regain their health. More than three in five who haven't purchased green say they are considering doing so in the coming year. Of the 52.0% who say they've never bought a green food product, more than twice as many say they plan to buy green (36.8%) in the future than don't (15.2%).
In addition to these three principal buckets of information, we will be asking other questions on a regular basis. For example, each month, GCI asks "What company, if any, do you think of as being 'green'?" It's an unaided question, meaning no list is provided. Respondents simply name companies that are top of mind.
The answer: Clorox and Walmart were named far more than all other companies, followed by (alphabetically) General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, SC Johnson, Toyota, and Whole Foods. Some smaller firms like Seventh Generation and Method also made the Top 20 list.
Another question asked what sources of environmental information Americans use and trust. The bad news for companies: Corporate websites and blogs ranked last in a list of 13 media types in terms of their use and trust. Word of mouth was seen to be potent: Friends, family, and colleagues ranked highest as the most used and trusted, followed by consumer ratings and reviews. Green blogs and websites had the biggest trust-use gap: they are a trusted information resource, though their usage lags.
I'm looking forward to watching the Green Confidence Index over the months and years, as we track this complex and changing landscape. I'm guessing it will provide a reality check for green optimists and pessimists alike: tracking the mood of Americans while shining a light on the faith they put in business, government, and other institutions to address our environmental challenges — and how, and how well, those institutions are perceived to be doing their jobs.
October 27, 2009 in Green Marketing, Trendwatching | Permalink | Comments (3)
How to Talk About [Whatever It's Called]
Do people care about the climate?
It's an open question these days, and opinion polls offer little help. Some show that climate ranks fairly low among public concerns, while others indicate a high level of concern among the populace. And in the run-up to the Copenhagen climate summit, now a mere six weeks away, those opinions count for something, particularly in the United States, where lawmakers are looking to be swayed one way or another.
Here's a sampling of the hodgepodge of public opinion.
- The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press last week reported that "There has been a sharp decline over the past year in the percentage of Americans who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising. And fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem — 35% say that today, down from 44% in April 2008."
- The World Wide Views on Global Warming, a global opinion poll released on the same day, reported that "90% of U.S. participants say it is urgent to reach a tough, new agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December and not punt to subsequent meetings," and that "69% believe the price of fossil fuels should be increased."
It's not just Americans who seem to be schizophrenic on this topic. Polls from Canada, Australia, Japan, Egypt — you name it — all seem to have conflicting results. Much of this, of course, depends on exactly what questions were asked, and by whom: the pollsters' agendas, when they have them, can steer answers in a certain direction. I'm not suggesting that Pew and the World Wide Views folks have done this. I'm just saying.
It's in this context that I recently spoke with my friend Cara Pike. Pike heads the Social Capital Project, a project spun out of the nonprofit Earthjustice, aimed at "building the base of public support for environmental protection." Pike — whose meaty and insightful "Ecological Roadmap" of Americans' environmental attitudes is the appendix of my book, Strategies for the Green Economy — has for years been combining research tools and storytelling techniques to build some of the most important national environmental campaigns of the past decade.
Pike's latest effort is a new report, Climate Crossroads: A Research-Based Framing Guide for Global Warming Advocates to Global Warming Advocates. The report is described as
a first step towards a unified conversation on global warming. It is a summary of what is known to date about the most effective communications approaches, developed by drawing on more than 25 advocacy organizations' experiences in the field, the body of research they built over the years, and new research conducted specifically for this project. This document identifies the ideas and values that will lead to public support for global warming advocates' shared objectives over the long term, and suggests ways to bridge from specific policy concerns to the broader, shared narrative.
The idea, says Pike, is to create a "Common Message Platform" that will provide organizations with "a shared set of key points and perspectives that will lead to both more effective communications on their own particular issues, and a more engaged and constructive national conversation on the topic with sympathetic groups."
In other words, it aims to answer the question: How do you talk about climate change?
Actually, that wasn't stated quite right, based on Pike's work. Her research led her to prefer the term is "global warming" over "climate change," not to mention "climate crisis," "global weirding," and any of the several other monikers that have been inflicted on this global malady. However, Pike acknowledge, global warming "is not a perfect term for a number of reasons. Scientifically, it's not as accurate, for example, but it is the term that's most familiar with the public." Accurate or not, it's what people seem to respond to.
(You can listen to a podcast of our recent conversation here.)
Pike pointed out just how far we have to go in educating the public. "What we found even in talking to people who are members of environmental organizations or who identify themselves as environmentalists is they often thought global warming had to do with the problem with ozone holes."
It's that bad, folks.
She continued. "The other thing that you find is that most people don't really have a sense of the connection between energy, the economy, and climate. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you, for example, that their energy or great majority of their energy might come from coal, for example."
Part of the problem, she said, is that the media — both the mainstream media and the niche environmental media — "has leaped ahead into this somewhat elite conversation. But even those who are trying to follow that conversation very actively are missing some fundamental information. So what we found is that you have to go back and fill in some of those holes."
Another problem has to do with identifying solutions that are meaningful to people, and that they're actually willing to do. "I think a growing number of Americans really do want to engage and do things that will make a difference," says Pike. But she adds, "I think that it's very confusing what really will make that difference and in particular, given how busy people are, how pressed they feel financially, they really want to know 'If I only have time to do a handful of things, what are the things that are really going to have the biggest payback and biggest impact on solving the problem?' I think there's been a bit of a scale issue around solutions where many of the things that the public are being asked to do don't seem to match the scale of the challenge. How can you really solve a global complex issue by changing light bulbs?"
Short answer: You can't.
It's a good question, though, and one that seems to have flummoxed marketers, public agencies, activist groups, and pretty much everyone else aiming to educate, motivate, and activate the public on global warming/climate change. Do you scare people, inspire them, threaten them, or bribe them? Are people more motivated by fear or greed? Do they care more about the future of their children or their day-to-day quality of life? Do they see this looming crisis as an inevitable calamity or an empty, sky-is-falling warning? Is it a crisis or an opportunity?
These all remain open questions.
I'll let you wade through Pike's report to find the nuggets of her research that are of greatest value to you in your work. And I'd love to hear your thoughts about what works, what doesn't, and how best to change the conversation, and the climate for action.
October 25, 2009 in Climate Change, Green Marketing | Permalink | Comments (3)
A Look Inside Good Housekeeping's Green Seal
It's long stated as near fact by observers of the confusing and confounding green marketplace that what's needed, once and for all, is something akin to a Good Housekeeping Seal for the environment. Good Housekeeping, it seems, represents a pinnacle of credibility and consumer confidence.
So, now that Good Housekeeping has introduced its own green seal, what should we make of it?
First, some background. The original Good Housekeeping Seal was introduced in 1909, when there was little regulatory oversight of consumer products. It represented an audacious marketing promise from its namesake magazine: If a product bearing the seal proved defective within two years, the magazine would replace it or refund the purchase price. Over the past century, the seal has endured in a world of fickle consumers and shifting brand alliances. And while its design has been updated to reflect modern times, the mission and purpose of the seal remains intact.
Last month, the Good Housekeeping Research Institute — the product-evaluation laboratory of the magazine, which itself is part of the media giant Hearst Communications — announced the first seven products to receive its new Green Good Housekeeping Seal, "developed to help consumers sift through the confusing clutter of 'green' claims on hundreds of products on store shelves today," according to the seal's website. The first batch of certifications include household cleaners and beauty products. Paints and appliances are expected to follow.
I sat down recently with a team from the Good Housekeeping Research Institute in its New York headquarters, including its director, Miriam Arond, to learn about the seal, what's behind it, and its promise for helping consumers make sense of the green marketplace.
I began with asking Arond to explain the process a product goes through to earn the seal. "In order to earn the Green Good Housekeeping Seal," she said, "a product first has to be reviewed for an advertisement in Good Housekeeping magazine. That means the scientists at the Good Housekeeping Research Institute evaluate the product to make sure it lives up to the advertising claims. Once a product is approved for advertising, it can apply for the Good Housekeeping Seal. We then further evaluate the product, because we want to make sure it lives up to all the claims on the website, on its packaging, to make sure that it actually performs as promised.
"Then, once a product earns the primary Good Housekeeping Seal, it can apply for the Green Good Housekeeping Seal, in which case we ask for quite a bit of data. In some cases, we are signing non-disclosure agreements, confidentiality agreements, because companies are disclosing to us a lot of data about how the product is manufactured and how it is distributed. Once we have evaluated the result, as well as verified the data, then they can earn, hopefully, the Green Good Housekeeping Seal."
I wanted to know about the criteria being used — the standard to which Good Housekeeping was holding companies. Arond explained that the questionnaire contains 56 questions that cover a wide spectrum of a product's potential environmental impacts, from upstream materials sourcing through consumer use and disposal. (A summary of the application process is here.)
"We got a lot of input from the environmental community," Arond told me. "We brought together a host of environmental experts — from academia, from industry, from trade associations, from NGOs — and we basically picked a lot of people's brains to see what they thought was important.
"We knew from the start we wanted to have an evaluation that was going to be comprehensive, not look at one or two aspects of green, because truthfully some of that already exists. We think it's a little bit problematic to only cite one or two areas of greenness, so to speak. We look at a very wide range, from everything involved in the manufacturing of the product and the water usage during manufacturing and the energy usage during manufacturing, and then, of course, during the product usage. We look at distribution, we look at packaging, its greenhouse gas emissions. We wanted to take as much into account as possible. Then we ran the application by environmental experts again and we continued to hone it, and to make sure that both small and big companies were able to answer it."
I knew that my friend Michael Brown, co-founder of Brown & Wilmanns Environmental Consulting, had consulted to Arond's project. Therefore, I assumed that the criteria had something to do with life-cycle analysis — or, more likely, a "lite" LCA, a simplified version that Brown and his partner Eric Wilmanns had deployed for other clients, including several major consumer brands.
Stacy Genovese, Technical & Engineering Director of the Good Housekeeping Institute, confirmed that her team looks at a product's full life-cycle but doesn't use a formal LCA. "We're taking certain things that you would do for an LCA into account in our criteria. But to do a full LCA analysis is quite costly, and we didn't want to make that the basis of the application, because then we're excluding people that just don't have the money to pay for a full LCA. And that wouldn't help our readers."
Arond pointed out something I would have guessed: that the information-gathering part of the certification process can be burdensome, even for big companies, requiring them to pull information from a range of different departments, suppliers, and partners. But companies need to learn how to do that, and those that do find that the more they know, the greater the opportunities to reduce energy, water, materials, toxics, and other forms of waste and inefficiency.
So, will the Good Housekeeping Green Seal help make sense of the eco-label clutter? Yes and no. On the one hand, it seems to be a well-thought-out initiative, done with rigor, responsibility, and a high sense of purpose. The bar seems to be set at a reasonable level: If a product has earned a Good Housekeeping Green Seal, it means something.
But the seal will have limited impact, if only because of its linkage to its magazine advertiser base. (Anyone can have a product evaluated by the Institute for $10,000, but such products aren't allowed to carry the seal unless they first earn the "regular" Good Housekeeping Seal, which inures only to advertisers.) That will be a barrier to all but the largest companies. Indeed, all of the seven products certified to date come from large companies — six from Clorox, Johnson & Johnson, and SC Johnson (the seventh is from Physicians Formula, a $115 million revenue, Nasdaq-traded company). The big-company limitation will hamstring the seal's ability to gain traction among many green-minded consumers, who may prefer products from any of countless smaller companies.
Perhaps what's most valuable about the whole exercise is the audience for which this is being done. Good Housekeeping magazine boasts nearly 5 million monthly subscribers, the sixth-largest magazine by circulation last year, according to the Magazine Publishers of America. Exposing green products to that sizable mainstream audience makes the Good Housekeeping's Green Seal an important contribution, even if it turns out not to be the game-changer some were waiting for.
October 18, 2009 in Green Marketing, State of the Art | Permalink | Comments (0)
Sky Vegetables: Taking Green Roofs to New Heights
"Hi, I'm Keith. We take underutilized space in urban areas and grow food there, creating green jobs, providing access to fresh produce, localizing the economy, and creating a better life by building communities through growing vegetables."
I have to admit, it was one of the cooler, more compelling elevator pitches I've heard, and I've heard a lot. This one came at a cocktail reception several weeks ago, at the Food Marketing Institute's Sustainability Summit, a gathering of major retailers and consumer packaged goods brands, where I was a keynote speaker. As such conferences are, this one was a magnet for a wide range of consultancies and service providers aiming to connect with Big Food.
Keith Agoada was one of those. He attended in order to talk up his young company, Sky Vegetables. At first blush, he looked like yet-another fresh-faced recent college grad — which he is — seeking to break into the "green space," as it is often called. But when he opened his mouth to tell me his story, I realized that this was a kid with a vision.
The vision is both simple and elegant: green rooftops, not just as gardens, but as urban agriculture hubs for herbs and edible greens, utilizing off-the-shelf hydroponics and aquaponics equipment in greenhouses to grow food to sell for profit within the community.
The idea came to Agoada just before his senior year at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, from which he graduated last year. "I saw the community gardens in Chicago and thought that it was fantastic that they were building community by growing food and doing it in the city," he told me recently. "So I went back my senior year at Wisconsin and received three credits for doing a feasibility study to see if rooftops could be commercial farming locations."
He quickly learned that it was possible to grow a myriad of things in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, "when it's below zero and it's covered in snow." That led to a business plan competition, which he won, garnering local press coverage and investor interest.
Amid all this, Agoada remained a reluctant businessman. "It's funny. I studied entrepreneurship in school and I learned that I didn't want to be an entrepreneur. I didn't want the gut-wrenching, the roller coaster — everything that they told me in business school what would happen if you start a company and try to make it a growth company, and that it's ruthless. I didn't want to take that path. I'd rather go to the farm or do something laid back, but the opportunity was great." He eventually took on investors and business partners, based in the Boston area, a continent away from Agoada's Berkeley, Calif., base. And Sky Vegetables was born.
Agoada walked me through the basics. "We come in on the rooftop as a tenant of the building. We rent the rooftop space. We pay for the upgrade, the insurance costs, the fixed costs for planning and development and the soft costs of architects, etc. We take all of that on. We outsource the equipment. We don't invent technologies. We're taking existing proven technologies and applying them to this rooftop. Then we make our money off the sale of the produce. The technology is controlled-environment greenhouses, year-around systems keeping constant temperatures and controlling the environment there. No pesticides, no herbicides, all integrative pest management systems and composting and trying to use paper and food waste from the building as the nutrient stream for our plants."
A typical project covers about 20,000 square feet — about half an acre — and fairly efficient, says Agoada. "Our growing techniques use somewhere between 5% and 10% of the water that they're using to grow lettuce out in Salinas Valley," in California's Central Valley, considered the nation's breadbasket. Given that around 80% of water use in the state goes toward agriculture — and about a fifth of the state's total energy use goes to move and treat water — such efforts could create significant water-efficiency and greenhouse gas benefits, should the Sky Vegetables model catch on.
That remains to be seen, of course. Agoada has done small-scale projects but is searching for his first major rooftop, most likely in my home town of Oakland, Calif., a city that marries a hunger for attracting green businesses; countless warehouses with large, flat roofs; high unemployment; and vast "food deserts," impoverished areas that lack easy access to grocery stores offering fresh produce. It's a perfect laboratory.
For now, it's merely a terrific vision, one I'm rooting for, but it doesn't necessarily stop with simply selling rosemary or romaine. "One of the projects we're looking at is a mixed-use building with a lot of residents," says Agoada. "Our pitch is to hire some of the people part-time and start to train them. Maybe one day, they become full-time there. Another idea we had was to let the building have open spaces. Maybe the building rents them out and people create their own pesto sauce or their own pressed soap business. We might contract with them. Or we'll grow mint or lavender or basil and turn these added-value products where we're creating more jobs down the line."
I love the vision, but also the unlimited potential. Says Agoada: "If you look at how many rooftop spaces are out there that can handle a 10,000 to 40,000 square-foot farm, you just keep adding zeroes to it. The economic potential of what we're doing is mind-blowing. But from a more general perspective, we'd be a catalyst in trying to localize food systems and localize vegetables, and protein perhaps as well."
Indeed. Sky Vegetables has unlimited potential to fill a hunger — not just for nutritious edibles, but for a simple but powerful model of food production that feeds all of our appetites for creative and conscious capitalism.
October 7, 2009 in Business Practices, State of the Art | Permalink | Comments (4)
Who's Invested in Newsweek's Least-Green Companies? (Maybe You)
One aspect of Newsweek's just-released rankings of 500 leading companies' environmental policies and performance is to view the list from an investor perspective. Specifically: Who are investors in the worst-ranked companies?
You might be surprised to find that it's you.
An analysis of the publicly available data shows that the 50 largest investors in the companies receiving the lowest scores — those ranked 490 through 500 on Newsweek's list — include three leading public employee pension funds as well as major mutual funds that hold millions of Americans' retirement accounts, including (in alphabetical order) American Century, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, TIAA-CREF, and Vanguard Group. All told, the 50 largest investors have sunk more than $55 billion into those worst-rated firms.
This is of concern on two fronts. First, the pension funds. There are three public employee pension funds on the list: the Florida State Board of Administration (which manages the Florida Retirement System Pension Plan), the New York State Common Retirement Fund, and the New York State Teachers Retirement System. Together, these three funds have invested more than $1.4 billion into Newsweek's worst on behalf of retirees. Increasingly, public employee pension funds have been active, if not activists, in engaging companies on a range of social and environmental issues. One of these three, NYSTRS, is part of the Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR), a network of institutional investors and financial institutions "that promotes better understanding of the financial risks and investment opportunities posed by climate change."
And New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who oversees his state's Common Retirement Fund, was a signatory to the 2009 Investor Statement on the Urgent Need for a Global Agreement on Climate Change, published last week in the run-up to the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. (All told, 5 of the top 50 investors signed this statement.) Last month, DiNapoli boasted about $200 million in new investments made from the retirement fund's Green Strategic Investment Program. Suffice to say, their investments in Newsweek's worst-ranked companies counters these well-intended efforts.
But all that's small potatoes when compared with the rest of the investors in Newsweek's worst. The top 15 investors — in decreasing order of investments: Barclays Global Investors, State Street Global Advisors, Vanguard Group, Capital World Investors, Fidelity Management & Research, T. Rowe Price Associates, Franklin Advisers, Capital Research Global Investors, BlackRock Advisors, Wellington Management, AllianceBernstein, Northern Trust Investments, Pictet Asset Management, TIAA-CREF Asset Management, and Goldman Sachs Asset Management — collectively have invested nearly $39 billion in the bottom-ranked companies. Three of these institutional investors — BlackRock, State Street Global Advisors, and TIAA-CREF — are also part of INCR. Some of these firms operate large mutual funds that are the bedrock of many retirement accounts; the 25 largest mutual funds holding these bottom-ranked companies had $11.5 billion invested. Others manage the money of institutional investors, a broad class of organizations that pool large sums of money to invest in companies. Institutional investors include banks, insurance companies, retirement or pension funds, hedge funds, and mutual funds. Together, these firms permeate the lives of the majority of Americans.
So, where is the activism in all this — the pickets and shareholder resolutions and research reports analyzing the dirtiest portfolios? The activists are there, but some don't appear to be paying full attention.
Cary Krosinsky, vice president of Trucost, and one of Newsweek's partners in creating the Green Rankings, called these findings "quite stunning."
"Few of the shares of these companies are owned by founders, company executives or other insiders," he told me. "Large institutions and asset owners appear to be stuck with long-term positions in these companies. There's clearly still much room for education and enlightenment on what it means to own environmentally sensitive companies."
Krosinsky added that some pension funds and index investors will argue that they feel obligated to be "universal owners" — that is, that their stock holdings are highly diversified and, typically, held long term. But, he adds, "That's not an excuse for passive ownership of the most polluting and least-green companies. Such investing creates an unwitting block of inertia that discourages companies such as these from changing their ways for the better."
Seems there's a lot more to do to clean up the world's largest financial institutions' balance sheets.
September 21, 2009 in Business Practices, Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (1)
Inside Newsweek's Green Corporate Rankings
Today, Newsweek magazine unveils its first annual Green Rankings, the fruits of a near-Herculean endeavor: rating and ranking the environmental performance, achievements, and reputation of the S&P 500. The list, published today in a 12-page special section in the magazine as well as online, is the culmination of an 18-month journey.
The resulting rankings are straightforward, almost elegant, but it wasn't a straight or easy path. Like most such rankings, they're imperfect. They'll likely be challenged and debated, especially by some of the lower-ranking companies, not to mention the activist/blogosphere community. But it may well be the best effort yet to rigorously and comprehensively assess the mainstream corporate marketplace — at least in the U.S.
Over the past week, I've spoken with the creators of the rankings to understand the story behind this effort: their methodology as well as the challenges they faced, and how they faced them. As the creator of the annual State of Green Business report, I know these challenges well: creating a defensible, easy-to-understand set of metrics on business and the environment in a world in which data can be sketchy, inconsistent, or simply nonexistent.
First, the basics. The Newsweek rankings assess the S&P 500 — the 500 largest publicly held companies that trade on either the New York Stock Exchange or NASDAQ, the two largest American stock markets — on three metrics:
- an "environmental impact score," based on more than 700 metrics, compiled by Trucost, a leading provider of data and analysis on company emissions and natural resource use;
- a "green policies score," an analysis of corporate policies and initiatives by KLD Research & Analytics, one of the pioneers in socially responsible investing research; and
- a "reputation survey score" resulting from a survey of CEOs, corporate environmental officers, and academics conducted by CorporateRegister.com, an online directory of company-issued CSR, sustainability, and environment reports from around the world.
Each company's score, and thus its ranking, was based on a weighted average of those three components: 45% for the impact score, 45% for the policies score, and 10% for the reputation score.
The overall winner: Hewlett Packard, which edged out its rival Dell for the number-one spot. Rounding out the top 10 after Dell were Johnson & Johnson, Intel, IBM, State Street, Nike, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Applied Materials, and Starbucks.
The bottom 10 companies — those ranked 491 through 500 — are FirstEnergy, Southern, Bunge, American Electric Power, Ameren, Consol Energy, ConAgra Foods, Allegheny Energy, NRG Energy, and . . . in last place: Peabody Energy.
Only one oil company made the top 100, Marathon Oil, squeaking by at number 100. The majors didn't fare so well: ConocoPhillips (238), Chevron (371), ExxonMobil (395); BP and Shell aren't part of the S&P 500, so weren't ranked.
It's interesting to peruse high-profile companies. Examples: McDonald's ranked 22, Microsoft 31, Walmart 59, Clorox 77, Google 79, General Electric 82, Kimberly Clark 120, Apple 133, Halliburton 169, Tyson Foods 479, Monsanto 485, Duke Energy 490. I encourage you to dive into the full rankings and do your own comparisons and analysis. (The online version has some great detailed data.)
It may not be surprising that half of the top-10 rated companies (as well as half of the top 20) are technology firms, and that 8 of the 10 lowest-rated are energy utility or coal-mining companies. That makes sense: Most tech companies don't actually manufacture anything themselves these days — they mostly purchase components from other manufacturers — while utilities and mining companies are known to make quite a mess, in terms of emissions and other impacts.
Therein lies one of the big questions of such an effort: What do the rankings really mean?
"We regard this as a best first effort," Peter Bernstein told me last week. Bernstein and his partner, Annalyn Swan, operate ASAP Media, a "publishing and content development firm," and collaborated with Newsweek to produce the rankings. Both Bernstein and Swan have served as senior editors at Newsweek, U.S. News, and Fortune, among other places.
The ASAP-Newsweek team, along with a small advisory panel — including Yale's Dan Esty; John Steelman of NRDC; Marjorie Kelly of Tellus Institute; Climate Counts executive director Wood Turner; and David Vidal of the Conference Board — wrestled with issues like the one described above, ultimately creating a system that tried to account for the different industries' footprints. As Swan explained: "The advisory panel asked all the relevant questions you would ask: How do you calibrate and fine-tune the weightings between the actual environmental footprint of companies and positive reputations and initiatives and policies. That took several months of discussions. We convened the panel on numerous occasions. This was not a light undertaking."
Added Bernstein: "If you rank companies solely on their environmental footprint or impact, certain industries would dominate that list — technology, health care, banking — they all don't have as great as environmental impact as other industries. So, we had to adjust that with intentions and an industry bias. That was the subject of discussions concerning the weighting between these various data points, something all of our data partners debated. It was the single most time-consuming subject that we went back and forth on with the advisory panel."
The fate of corporate rankings rest on any number of such institutionalized biases, but that's par for the course. If you peel back the methodology of any massive undertaking like this — Fortune magazine's annual ranking of the World's Most Admired Companies, is one of many such examples — you'll find minuscule differences between companies that, depending on how things are scored and weighted, can rocket any given firm up or down the rankings.
And then there's the quality of data, about which I know more than a little, having attempted various analyses over the years using other organizations' research. As Bernstein put it: "This is a field in which, across the board, a lot of the data isn't as good as one would hope, or isn't as fully exposed, or doesn't exist. In each of these areas, greenhouse gas emissions being the most obvious, not everyone has data. Concerning the [U.S. government's] Toxic Release Inventory, some companies have to disclose by law and some don't. All of these factors were a balance. We hope that both disclosure and measurement will get better over time. This is a first stake in the ground."
I (and many of you) could pick apart the Newsweek rankings — for example, they don't include some of the more admirable privately held companies, such as Patagonia; Interface, the iconic green carpet company, isn't included in the S&P 500, even though it's listed on NASDAQ (not sure why). But I'll leave the picayune stuff to others. I'd rather step back and admire this first effort, however imperfect, and salute the team for doing what hadn't previously been done, or done well: brought together a wealth of data on a broad spectrum of the world's biggest companies to provide a snapshot of the green business world.
There's also the bigger picture beyond the numbers. As Bernstein told me: "You can't help but be struck by the enormous range of efforts and programs across the board that so many of these companies are engaged in their environmental efforts. Whether they're the most effective programs that will have their intended effects, or whether they're just good public relations, remains to be seen. But to the extent to which these large companies are engaging in efforts to look at their own emissions and their own environmental footprint — and coming up with imaginative, creative programs that are addressing climate concerns, water usage concerns, supplier concerns — it's rather staggering."
I suspect that as you read this, scores of senior sustainability professionals are getting calls from their overlords in the C-suite, asking tough questions about why their companies fared more poorly than hoped, and demanding answers.
And for that reason alone Newsweek's rankings are a beautiful thing.
September 21, 2009 in Business Practices, State of the Art | Permalink | Comments (5)
Northern Exposure, Scandinavian Style
How does one explain U.S. environmental and climate policies and related corporate practices to audiences in the progressive countries of Norway and Denmark?
Pondering that question became a near obsession for me over the summer, as I anticipated my recent weeklong speaking tour in those two countries, just now concluded. The tour came at the invitation (and sponsorship) of the U.S. State Department, whose Office of International Information Programs sends a range of speakers to various countries, often at the host countries' request. I'd done such a tour in the past, in India in 2000.
According to the State Department's invitation, there was an interest among companies in Norway and Denmark to learn how, and how much, U.S. companies were engaged in addressing their climate and other environmental challenges. So, I was sent to Scandinavia to offer my perspective, unadulterated by State Department officials or others who might have wanted to "shape" my message. (There was none of that: no stated agenda, no talking points, barely a pre-trip briefing.) Speaking engagements were arranged by staff in each country's respective U.S. embassy.
I spent three days each in Oslo and Copenhagen giving roughly a dozen speeches — at business schools, trade associations, government agencies, and companies — along with a handful of media interviews. In Oslo, I lunched at the embassy with senior executives from the Norwegian offices of Coca-Cola, IBM, McDonald's, Microsoft, Pfizer, and other companies, an event organized by the American Chamber of Commerce.
I arrived on European soil with my own set of assumptions. First and foremost: Norwegian and Danish opinions of U.S. companies weren't very high, at least from the perspective of environmental leadership. American firms, I assumed, were seen as reactive and disengaged when it came to matters green, lobbying against change legislation and digging in their heels on most other environmental issues, lest their profits and share prices might suffer. I girded myself for criticism — criticisms that I, to varying degrees, shared.
In Copenhagen, where Danes are excitedly gearing up for the COP15 climate change conference in December (the successor to the 1997 conference in Japan that gave way to the Kyoto Treaty) I assumed that there would be disdain for the U.S.A., whose corporate and governmental leaders hadn't managed to come up with even a tepid climate change strategy. As much as I looked forward to the opportunity, I dreaded the questions.
It was all in vain. The questions, the criticism didn't come.
Norwegian and Danish companies, it seems, aren't much further ahead than their North American counterparts in addressing environmental issues. Indeed, the state of the art of green business in those two countries seems relatively on a par with that in the U.S. The challenges they described were eerily familiar: How to make the business case, engage and motivate employees, identify the low-hanging fruit in efficiency improvements, stimulate customer demand, align supply chains with environmental goals, work effectively with activist groups, get public recognition for environmental achievements — and on and on.
The feeling was similarly familiar at the four business schools where I lectured. They were concerned about how to integrate sustainability themes into the curriculum — whether there should be separate classes on environmental and social responsibility, or whether it should be integrated into the overall curriculum. They wondered how they compared with other business schools in the green arena and how use environmental topics to differentiate themselves.
It was a long way to go to feel as if I'd never left home.
This wasn't the first time this has happened. I'd been similarly surprised on previous trips to Europe and, as I've written, to Japan and Australia and New Zealand. Somehow, I keep being surprised how much things are pretty much the same all over, and how that never seems to change.
One thing that has changed: a newfound respect and excitement for America since Barack Obama entered office. Pretty much everyone I met volunteered that their, and their countrymen's, opinions of the U.S. had risen sharply over the past few months. So, too, had their hopes for a newfound American engagement in Copenhagen in December.
I tried to temper their expectations, given the rough road that climate change has traveled in American politics. But they could not be deterred. Europeans seem to be convinced there's a new dawn in America — that our government, and the country as a whole, has undergone a profound change. A change, as the old campaign slogan goes, they can believe in — perhaps even more than we do.
September 13, 2009 in Business Practices, Climate Change | Permalink | Comments (1)
