Op-Ed: Will big business save the earth?

[Louisiana1976]

snip

The embrace of environmental concerns by chief executives has accelerated recently for several reasons. Lower consumption of environmental resources saves money in the short run. Maintaining sustainable resource levels and not polluting saves money in the long run. And a clean image — one attained by, say, avoiding oil spills and other environmental disasters — reduces criticism from employees, consumers and government.

What’s my evidence for this? Here are a few examples involving three corporations — Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Chevron — that many critics of business love to hate, in my opinion, unjustly.

Let’s start with Wal-Mart. Obviously, a business can save money by finding ways to spend less while maintaining sales. This is what Wal-Mart did with fuel costs, which the company reduced by $26 million per year simply by changing the way it managed its enormous truck fleet. Instead of running a truck’s engine all night to heat or cool the cab during mandatory 10-hour rest stops, the company installed small auxiliary power units to do the job. In addition to lowering fuel costs, the move eliminated the carbon dioxide emissions equivalent to taking 18,300 passenger vehicles off the road.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06diamond.html?hp

[izquierdista]

1. Only if it helps the short-term bottom line

If they can't translate it into better quarterly earnings, or yearly at the longest, don't expect them to do squat.

[Deja Q]

3. +1,000,000,000,067,004^893. Worse,

it doesn't help big business, who are actively seeking out every shortcut. Which means lower quality, having to replace faster, and hastens the predicted doom and gloom. Not quite what the article was advocating, now is it? :D

Besides, I fathomed all that long ago. The article the OP put out isn't as realistic as we'd... hope.

[kristopher]

7. You omitted the name of the author - Jared Diamond.

Author of arguably one of the best environmental discussions in the public realm - Collapse.

Diamond's discussion of failed cultures and the way their collapse was intertwined with environmental degradation is something that everyone should be required to read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond

[BeFree]

2. Save the earth? Hahaha

A conversation like this has taken place far too often in boardrooms:

We should spend one million dollars to reduce our pollution by purchasing and operating pollution control equipment.

The response has nearly always been:

We don't have to. No one can make us do it and it is cheaper for us to spend 10,000 a year for 100 years on lawyers who can fight to keep us from having to do it.

[joshcryer]

9. Conservation and efficiency is *always* cheaper. Even if short term costs are high.

But pollution really comes from consumers as an aggregate.

Gasoline and coal aren't going anywhere. Wal-Mart can install solar power on all of its buildings. It would be a pithy dent in emissions.

[IrateCitizen]

10. Your title line hits the problem on the head.

Even if short term costs are high.

With the financialization of America over the past 30 years, the short term is the only thing that is considered. Therefore, no firm is willing to take on significant short-term costs because they will be savaged by Wall St. speculators, sending the price of their stock crashing and opening them up for a takeover, or worse, bankruptcy.

[tom_paine]

4. As usual, the Old Grey Whore falls for & transmits any and every corpro-Bushie lie

Absolute credibility is ALWAYS the motivation for corporate-Bushies, or so says our laughably misnamed "Liberal Media".

Anyone who defies The Corporate Power, exercised through the dog-and-pony-show of Good Cop/Bad Cop, onbviously has an ulterior and devious agenda, or so says our Cable TV Infoganda and the rest of the M$M.

That is pretty much the entirety of the story in Inverted Totalitarian America, which is now rolling through a very brief, soon to be over "Good Cop" phase.

And when Bad Cop comes back, as "he" surely will and probably soon, it's goingto make Bushler look like Ghandhi.

And yet still, the "plausible deniability" game will be played and we will continue to ease into whatever nightmarish future the Corporate Neo-Feudalists.

Because this is still dangerous game, as beaten down and submissive the Amerian Subject Populace is. America's Founding Myth remains their biggest obstacle and an awakening of that sentiment amongst the subject populace is what the Corporate NeoFeudalists fear most.

So the game must continue to be played, and the third of our nation that are and have always been lunatic witch-burners and concentration camp guards-in-waiting, must be further driven insane with absolutist and eliminationist language.

So that, in the EXTEMELY unlikely event that the American Subject Populace gets "uppity", not only will all the force of the Modern Inverted Totalitarian State be brought to bear, but also a devoted cadre of Brownshirts, too.

Plus a change, plus a la meme chose.

(the more things change, the more they stay the same)

[hatrack]

5. If it interferes in any way at all in the maximazation of short-term profits, uh, no.

Duh.

[pscot]

6. No.

n/t

[joshcryer]

8. Highly unlikely.

The math simply doesn't add up.