Photo by Limbo Poet

Excerpt:
When the going gets tough, costly good intentions can go out the window. Company spending has been squeezed by the global recession and budgets for corporate social responsibility have suffered disproportionately.

A survey of U.K. businesses by KPMG and Business In The Community found a third of companies cut their corporate social responsibility budgets in 2009. Corporate philanthropy has also been hit, with a study by the Giving USA Foundation revealing that charitable donations by U.S. companies fell by 8% in inflation-adjusted terms in 2008.

Perhaps this is not so great a loss. There is a growing feeling among company executives that marginal initiatives, which can so easily be dispensed, are not enough to alter corporate behavior. In a speech last year, Stephen Green, chairman of U.K. bank HSBC, said: “There has been a tendency to compartmentalize so-called corporate social responsibility activities as an adjunct to the mainstream business activities.” Mr. Green believes in replacing corporate social responsibility with a new focus on “corporate sustainability,” which, rather than being an add-on to a business. “is about the raison d’être of the company itself.”

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Excerpt:
In a repeat scenario from last January, Apple Inc. is contesting two petitions from shareholder groups to increase the company’s environmental efforts, according to Apple’s proxy statement, reports EE Times. Two of the proposals call on Apple to establish a board-level sustainability committee, and to report how the consumer electronics company will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and address other environmental and social issues such as toxics, recycling and employee and product safety, according to the article.

In January last year, Apple opposed a shareholder resolution that would require the company to publish a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, despite unveiling a number of new green products.

Apple’s board is rejecting both petitions this year, stating the company has taken appropriate steps to protect the environment including posting information at its Web site since August about its carbon footprint and recently released products, reports EE Times.

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From a great blog that covers ethical issues in the biotechnology industry.  Read the blog article here.

Excerpt:
Monsanto is widely considered to be Public Enemy #1 by critics of the biotech industry. But most who’ve heard complaints about Monsanto don’t know much more than what’s contained in the single-sentence slogans.

But if you’re going to form an opinion, it’s good to know a little more. As a start, here’s a good story by Christopher Leonard, writing for the Associated Press (and coming to you via The Atlanta Journal-Constitution), Monsanto seed biz role revealed. I strongly recommend the whole article. But here’s a taste:

“Confidential contracts detailing Monsanto Co.’s business practices reveal how the world’s biggest seed developer is squeezing competitors, controlling smaller seed companies and protecting its dominance over the multibillion-dollar market for genetically altered crops, an Associated Press investigation has found.

With Monsanto’s patented genes being inserted into roughly 95 percent of all soybeans and 80 percent of all corn grown in the U.S., the company also is using its wide reach to control the ability of new biotech firms to get wide distribution for their products, according to a review of several Monsanto licensing agreements and dozens of interviews with seed industry participants, agriculture and legal experts….”

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From a carbon emissions point-of-view, is it better to buy products online or in a store? You probably guessed the former. And if so, you’re right, according to a study conducted by MindClick GSM, a sustainability consulting firm and released today by GigaOM Pro, a subscription based research and analysis service covering green IT (among other topics).
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The researchers took these numbers and ran with them, calculating that the negative environmental impact of an in-store purchase made on Black Friday is 50 times that of an online purchase made on Cyber Monday. And in more general terms, it found that carbon emissions related to purchasing an item inside a store represents an increase of more than 15 times that of an online purchase.

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Kohl’s Department Stores is the first retailer to commit to net zero emissions as part of its partnership with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leaders program. Kohl’s pledges to achieve net zero emissions by 2010 and maintain carbon neutrality through 2012. The retailer said its goal is equivalent to offsetting the annual emissions from electricity used by more than 99,084 homes or removing 130,842 vehicles from the road for a year.

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“Organic food is not only not better for the planet,” he said, in an interview at The New York Times building on Tuesday. “It is categorically worse.”

The problem, Mr. Mack said, is that organic farming takes up about 30 percent more land, on average, than nonorganic farming for the same yield (though this varies by crop, of course). If the world wants to feed its fast-growing population on existing cropland — and Mr. Mack is clear that he does not want forests chopped down to clear more land for biofuel production, let alone food — then productivity becomes a key factor, he said.

“If the whole planet were to suddenly switch to organic farming tomorrow, it would be an ecological disaster,” he said.

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During the talk, Al Iannuzzi, Senior Director of J&J’s Worldwide Environmental Health & Safety unit, told a story of his early days as an environmentalist in the 1970s who believed that “corporations are evil.” He resisted working for big corporations until he read J&J’s Credo–which upholds its responsibility to its employees, the environment and communities–and found an interesting job within the company. He’s been with J&J now for nearly 30 years and wants everyone to know how J&J is using business for good.

“If we’re not saying anything, people assume we’re not doing anything,” said Iannizzi. So J&J wants people to know what their doing–but they don’t want to greenwash, either.

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The agricultural giant Monsanto may well still be the world’s most hated company. The company that brought the world Agent Orange, the defoliant of choice in the Vietnam War, followed up a decade ago with a strident push to flood the world with genetically modified crops. It alienated millions – and even its friends and rivals among GM supporters blamed Monsanto’s belligerence for putting back the cause by many years. But I’m going to ignore GMs and talk about water. And belligerence.

In part, no doubt, to help salvage its GM-tarnished reputation, Monsanto now makes great play of its efforts to help engineer a second green revolution built around “sustainability”.

Sustainability is a much-abused term and it infiltrates almost every corner of the company’s website. But to be fair they do try and define what the word means for its business. The company promises that its “sustainable yield initiative” will “reduce by one-third per unit produced the aggregate amount of key resources such as land, water and energy, required to grow crops by 2030.”

Many analysts now see water, rather than land, as the key limitation on growing food to feed a future world population of nine billion in the coming decades. So a third more crop for the same amount of water is a valuable goal. The company trumpets especially its work to engineer more water-efficient maize.

Of course, despite the company’s public pledge to “share knowledge and technology” the company’s corporate aim is to make sure that farmers buy Monsanto-patented water-efficient seeds by the trillion.

But you would expect Monsanto to be especially sensitive about how it manages water in its own farming operations, and particularly to show concern for how neighbouring farmers are facing up to water shortages. Wouldn’t you?

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In another sign of the widening divide in the business community over climate change action, Nike announced Wednesday that it would resign its position on the board of the United States Chamber of Commerce.

Nike said, however, that it would maintain its membership in the chamber.

Three large utilities — Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM Resources and Exelon — have announced their resignations from the chamber this month due to concerns about the chamber’s position on climate.

“We fundamentally disagree with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on the issue of climate change, and their recent action challenging the E.P.A. is inconsistent with our view that climate change is an issue in need of urgent action,” Nike said in a statement that was posted today on the Web site of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

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Excerpt:
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- PG&E Corp. (PCG) said Tuesday it is leaving the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over objections to what its top executive called the chamber’s “extreme position on climate change.”

In a letter to the U.S. Chamber published on PG&E’s blog, www next100.com, PG& E Chairman and Chief Executive Peter Darbee wrote that company employees “find it dismaying that the Chamber neglects the indisputable fact that a decisive majority of experts have said the data on global warming are compelling and point to a threat that cannot be ignored.”

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And just when I thought I had it figured out…

Read the article here.
Excerpt:

The local food, or locavore, movement has so much momentum that some of the food glitterati have declared that such food is better than organic.

But now comes a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis, who have started asking provocative questions about the carbon footprint of food. Those questions threaten to undermine some of the feel-good locavore story line, not to mention my weekend forays for produce. (A carbon footprint is a measure of the impact of human activities on the environment in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases produced.)

While the research is not yet complete, Tom Tomich, director of the University of California Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program, said the fact that something is local doesn’t necessarily mean that it is better, environmentally speaking.

The distance that food travels from farm to plate is certainly important, he says, but so is how food is packaged, how it is grown, how it is processed and how it is transported to market.

Greed is going green.

Carbon trading is becoming a lucrative specialty in London’s financial district. Major investment banks are buying and selling pollution credits, the new currency in Europe, where governments limit industries’ emissions. It’s a $30 billion market that is expected to expand rapidly during the next decade.
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Around the world, industrial nations are moving quickly to snag a slice of the fast-growing carbon trade. Bipartisan support for carbon allowances is growing on Capitol Hill, and we remain hopeful that Congress will pass cap-and-trade legislation.

For environmental and economic reasons, the United States should not sit this one out.GET A HEAD START

Here’s one popular vision for saving the planet: Roll out from under the sumptuous hemp-fiber sheets on your bed in the morning and pull on a pair of $245 organic cotton Levi’s and an Armani biodegradable knit shirt.

Stroll from the bedroom in your eco-McMansion, with its photovoltaic solar panels, into the kitchen remodeled with reclaimed lumber. Enter the three-car garage lighted by energy-sipping fluorescent bulbs and slip behind the wheel of your $104,000 Lexus hybrid.
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The issue of green shopping is highlighting a division in the environmental movement: “the old-school environmentalism of self-abnegation versus this camp of buying your way into heaven,” said Chip Giller, the founder of Grist.org, an online environmental blog that claims a monthly readership of 800,000. “Over even the last couple of months, there is more concern growing within the traditional camp about the Cosmo-izing of the green movement – ’55 great ways to look eco-sexy,’ ” he said. “Among traditional greens, there is concern that too much of the population thinks there’s an easy way out.”

The basic premise of socially responsible investing is simple: If money makes the world go ‘round, greener, more humane investments can improve the way it spins. Want sustainably managed forests? Provide loans or capital to eco-minded timber companies. Want Monsanto to get out of the genetic engineering business? Buy Monsanto stock and put forward a shareholder resolution demanding the company cease and desist. This isn’t just wishful thinking; social investors can point to many positive efforts like these. And their strength is building. Yet before hailing a new era of green capitalism, it’s also important to understand some of its limitations.

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How did corporations obtain this power? Is this the role that we envisioned for business entities in an economic democracy? In this paper, we will look at the history of corporations and their assumption of power that is incompatible with a free society. While we will consider a variety of views as to the proper role for corporate entities, the position of this paper should be clear. We need to reform the role of corporations in our country. We should consider placing limits on the duration of corporate charters, or conditions upon their renewal. States should exercise the responsibility that has always been theirs’ — the oversight of corporate activity. If the states are unwilling or unable to provide responsible oversight, we should consider removing their oversight power, and federalizing corporate charters. Finally, if we are going to consider the corporation to be a person and afford it the same kinds of rights and freedoms that are extended to the individual, perhaps it is time to revise the methods by which we hold the corporate “person” accountable. We should impose the same kind of punishments that we have established for individuals. If a corporation is convicted in the courts for a violation of law, we should curtail its freedom to conduct business for a period of time. In the event of repeat offenses, the penalties should be increased. In those instances where a corporation severely violates the public trust, it should cease to exist. The corporate charter should be revoked, the assets seized and the corporation dissolved.

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