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While Amory Lovins and colleagues (Rocky Mountain Institute) have been singing the song for decades, this tune is becoming a true hit in executive suites around the world …

Making more green …
By going green …

Fortune Magazine’s polling of business leaders to find the top 20 respected businesses notes that “Fresh ideas and being green distinguish the winners in our 25th annual rankings.”

And, related, Sea Studios Foundation has just come out with Ahead of the Curve: Business Responds to Climate Change (warning: video). This 12-minute video looks at the situation related to energy and global warming … and how businesses are shifting to deal with them.

Well, let’s treat these in turn …

Fortune’s Most Respected …

According to Fortune magazine, being green is a key discriminator in survey responses as to corporate reputations. That is a serious change in the business world. As Fortune notes,

Consider: In 1982, the year of the first Fortune survey of corporate reputations, green was just the color of money. These days “green” means something more. The three Most Admired Companies this year – General Electric (Charts), Starbucks (Charts), and Toyota (Charts) – are building their growth at least partly on strategies and products aimed at helping preserve the planet.

Over the past 25 years, the world has changed. Two companies from the 1982 list (Johnson & Johnson, and General Electric) are still in the top ten (of the “Top 20 Most Admired Companies“. Both of them have focused on ‘going green’.

In a true and truthful version of Intelligent Design as they set their futures,

The handful of companies that have consistently won the applause of their peers over this quarter-century have adapted to the changing environment in ways that Darwin never dreamed of, and they plan to keep it up. As even the Bush administration reluctantly acknowledges that hydrocarbon emissions may be imperiling the planet, many of the Most Admired Companies are busy figuring out ways to think green and garner more greenbacks too.

And, while “garnering more greenbacks” through energy savings, increased productivity, increased sales, these companies are also garnering increasing respect and improved reputations. “It’s no coincidence that the top three companies on the list are among the most vocal about how green they are.”

General Electric, on top for the seventh time, is described as follows:

GE’s much-publicized “Ecomagination” campaign is aimed at supercharging revenues while doubling its $700 million R&D budget to come up with solar-energy hybrid locomotives, lower-emission aircraft engines, more efficient lighting, and ever more sophisticated water-purification systems. Evidently conservation begins at home: GE cut its own energy bills by about $70 million last year, partly by installing new lighting in more than 100 of its plants, and reduced its greenhouse-gas emissions by about 150,000 tons.

$70 million in energy bill savings. Now, that is starting to make a real mark.

[NOTE: This list is, of course, a polling of business leaders. These companies each have their strengths and weaknesses — being Green (or Greener), by itself, does not necessarily make them a business worth emulation or admiration.]

Sea Studios Foundation

First, off, I don’t know about you, but this introduction to their mission statement makes me like this group before looking at anything else.

Sea Studios Foundation is a powerful team of award-winning filmmakers, scientists and strategic communicators. We’re dedicated to raising awareness of all the ways human life is entwined with the natural environment and motivating action on urgent threats to our planet’s health. Whether a primetime television series for the public or a specialized video targeting business or government leaders, we rely on extensive scientific and public opinion research, work with a vast network of collaborators, and rigorously evaluate everything we do.

Reality-based policies and issues of critical issues related to humanity’s interaction with the environment … seeking innovative ways for communicating … striving for serious evaluation … okay, they’ve hooked me.

But, yesterday, they released Ahead of the Curve: Business Responds to Climate Change (warning: video). . This 12-minute video looks at the situation related to energy and global warming … and how businesses are shifting to deal with them.

“Far too many people see it as a win-lose game and it’s not that at all …

It can be a win-win game …”

Chad Holliday, CEO, Dupont

DuPont has been a real leader on shifting its policies, procedures, and products … and Holliday has been eloquent in discussing these changes at conferences and, we would hope, meetings with government leades.

“Corporations that are looking at their bottom line … are achieving reductions in their greenhouse gases … showing that you can make money doing it.” William Reilly, former Director EPA

Doing the right thing for your shareholders should mean doing the right thing by the environment … at least for many businesses.

“We are at a tipping point in terms of the business community’s approach to this problem.” John Holdren, President, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Absolutely, the Fortune magazine top 20 list discussion is a clear statement of this.

What does this video point to? The ‘no regrets’ strategy of seeking profitable paths for reduced pollution (of all sorts, but especially greenhouse gases).

According to Brenda Davis, a Johnson & Johnson executive,

“Early on, many were skeptics … many questions were brought to the table … today, we have already reduced emissions, in absolute terms, by 11.5% in the same time frame our sales have increased 350%. … investments are saving the Corporation $30 million each year …

“Our conviction is that this is good for the long term, good for the business, good for the planet, ultimately of critical importance to human health, we think is being vindicated.”

Discussed, of course, is Walmart … “Its a revolution …”

“Wal-Mart’s probably the best example. Nobody’s better at reducing costs than Wal-mart … they’ve discovered a whole number of things that they can do to operate more cost effectively.

“The can improve the inflation on their trucks .. they can save moeny by how they design their stores … All of those things are there for the taking.”

Now, while the entire Wal-Mart business model might be unsustainable (throwaway cheap goods from China bought by people driving SUVs to the Walmart far from public transportation), it is clear that they are striving mightily to cut their (and their suppliers) energy use and, as a corollary, the GHG footprint of their stores. (Note that Walmart was possibly the largest single organization represented in training by The Climate Project — sent by Wal-Mart to learn how to talk to people about Global Warming and the Climate Crisis …)

DuPont is not a surprising voice in this discussion either. DuPont claims $3 billion in savings and is claiming a focus on delivering more climate friendly products to their customers. “We are finding our customers are demanding this from us.”

Environmentally smart business practices according to this video is simply smart business.

That message is not restricted to just a 12-minute video but is increasingly part of the discussion of business practices.

NOTE: Thanks to Geoff Dabelko at Grist for the tip to Sea Studios.

*Now*, we should ourselves. Do we care? Does it matter what these business are doing? My answer: absolutely. If we are going to meet the challenge of our and coming generations that we face with the * Climate Crisis, to turn us (US and the world) away from a catastrophic path on Global Warming, business — big business — is a critical part of the solutions.

There is no such thing as a Silver Bullet that will solve Global Warming and avert disaster from Peak Oil. We, as individuals, can do silver dust (or microparticles) through making our own lives energy efficient and working with others. Businesses … these $100s of billions per year businesses like GE and Walmart … well, they can be doing some Silver BBs as part of the solution.

Both of these — Fortune magazine and Sea Studios Foundation’s new video — point to the possibility that being green is becoming cool (could we say “iPod COOL”?) in the Executive suite. From my perspective, that is a great development … and one that we should both applaud and encourage.

Ask yourself: Are you doing your part?

NOTE 2: This was originally posted in 2007 and, for whatever reason, didn’t make the transfer to this site.