It’s not Easy Being Green
First, my apologies for missing last week’s post. It was a particularly hectic week, getting ready for the holidays and doing client work, so I hope you’ll forgive me.
If you look at the most recent issue of “Entrepreneur Magazine” (December 2008) the cover story indicates that one of the hot industries in 2009, in spite of the economic downturn, will be any business that’s able to tie in “Green” technologies to their business model. In fact, the issue is littered with all kinds of ideas that birthed businesses, and they show that the overall “Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability (LOHAS) Market” in 2009 will be somewhere around $209 billion.(1) A small business would probably be considered successful if it could tap just a hundreth of that market, so it’s understandable that we could be witness to the next big industry trend.
Even some large companies are taking the initiative to clean up their act, and their unique methods are being released into the public domain in good will. The “Eco-Patent Commons,” founded by IBM and the World Business Council, is an effort to share technologies that could reduce factory emissions, replace harmful chemicals in the manufacturing process, or perform any of a number of other tasks in the manufacturing process with less harm to our environment. In September, ZDNet reported that the initiative was gaining momentum, with new patents added by the following:
- Xerox, with 11 different patents that describe a process of clearing toxic materials out of soil and water in months as opposed to years.
- DuPont, with four patents, one of which turns non-recyclable plastics into fertilizers, and the others that describe a new DuPont technology for better detecting pollution.
- Bosch, with a whopping 45 patents to reduce fuel consumption and emissions, while converting some of the currently wasted heat from vehicles back into energy so they can run more efficiently.
- Sony, with several patents added at the outset of the agreement, added an additional patent on how to recycle optical media more efficiently.
On March 8, 2009, New York will host the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change and you would think this would be yet another outlet to promote social responsibility and the risks we are putting both ourselves and our planet in by continuing our habitual pollution. However, as is evidenced by the banner atop the main website from the conference, there are increasingly loud grumblings in the scientific community that global warming may not have ever been the crisis we made it out to be.
In fact, some scientists wonder whether the crisis was ever a crisis at all, according to a recent Boston.com report. According to the article, 1998 saw the highest global temperature and they have been falling ever since. Some even argued that a period of global cooling may be on the way, but because computer models and even the science of climate change is relatively new, it’s hard to predict what kind of an effect, if at all, human activity is having on the weather.
The debate on both sides are growing fierce, too, according to the report. On the one hand, a senior climatologist at The Weather Channel, Heidi Cullen, has recommended that meteorologists be denied professional certification if they voice any doubts about global warming. Goddard Institute for Space Studies director James Hansen wants oil-executives tried for their companies’ role in global warming. And Al Gore is well-known for his steadfast support of the climate change theory.
On the other hand, confirmed speakers at this year’s conference challenge the theory with experts in climate science, including Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT, Roy W. Spencer, who pioneered global temperature monitoring by satellite, and even meteorologist John Coleman who founded the Weather Channel in 1982. With these prominent speakers and increasing coverage in the media, the movement against the theory that humans play a significant part in climate change is gaining traction.
The big question is, would this developing dichotomy cause anyone to change his or her mind? Personally, I’ve always wanted to be environmentally responsible. It’s kind of like how you treat 2-year-olds to be respectful of their house. Though they *can* mark up the walls with their crayons and watercolor paint, they probably shouldn’t, because they likely haven’t yet tapped their inner artist and their markings will likely be an eyesore at best. We teach our children to respect the homes they live in, because it is an extension of the respect they show both their parents and themselves. Why should our planet be any different, just because it’s so much more vast?
And then there’s our dependency on foreign oil. If we’re not going to be environmentally responsible, wouldn’t it still make sense to be economically responsible and protect ourselves from the whims of controlling oil companies throughout the world?
The only thing the skepticism about global warming does for me is allow me to feel a little more comforted that my children will have a planet in which to grow and not be fearful that we did anything to make that life shorter for them. Sill, I want to show them that I respected the planet when they were growing up, and didn’t scribble out a clear blue sky with a big black crayon.
(1) See “2009 trends to watch, trend:green“, by Tiffany Meyers, Entrepreneur.com, December 2008.
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