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It's easy to get the impression that there is no hope for climate action.
Perhaps you've heard that the recent snowstorms in Washington, D.C., buried any chance to pass a comprehensive energy and climate bill? Or that hacked emails have set the climate movement back a decade?
We have a completely ineffectual Senate, a gun-shy EPA, too, and a dysfunctional global climate community. Our political leadership also seems to be paralyzed by fear to take on the climate crisis.
That's not the impression, however, you'd get reading the business news. There, you would have seen a year of climate momentum. In October, for example, several major companies left the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over its position on corporate climate action. Bill Gates called for making climate change our No. 1 priority.
Every week, another company seems to launch a new effort to reduce its climate impact. The steady ticker of corporate action toward energy efficiency, renewable energy investment, carbon neutrality, and extraordinary technological innovation tells a remarkably different story than our stuck-in-the-mud politicians and lightweight public discourse on climate.
Our new project, Climate Counts Industry Innovators (or i2), will help to build this momentum. We heard from so many companies -- even after our first year of company scoring in 2007 -- that simply got it. They understood that an external review of their climate actions made simple for consumers could have real long-term brand benefit in an increasingly competitive world. We found a forward-thinking group of companies that voluntarily wanted to go through our scoring process; they wanted to face Climate Counts' scrutiny of their carbon management efforts to bolster an already strong spirit of environmental innovation with an outside point of view.
Six of those companies now comprise our charter group of i2 companies: Amtrak, Ben & Jerry's, Clif Bar, REI, Shaklee, and Timberland. They represent different sectors, geographies, sizes and corporate structures, but they share a commitment to telling consumers that climate action is business leadership. They're helping build markets for renewables, testing new technologies, helping employees and consumers make the link between their lives and climate change, and they're doing the common-sense work of running their companies more efficiently.
Agree
while reading your article i couldn't help but notice that, yes, companies are doing their best to reduce emissions, but the government needs to step in a have regulations and/or regulator bodies to enforce legal limitations. Presently, America is the only country that is "developed" that did not sign the Kyoto Protocol. Conversely, the United Kingdom, who did sign the Kyoto Protocol, now has more Green jobs and a Carbon Trading market place.
I recently purchase American carbon credits from a carbon trading company Gwynella Energy, Inc. This company is the brainchild of Jason Bishara. Being an investor myself, i found that not only was Jason's company helpful in gathering information about carbon and how to buy carbon, but the customer service was probably better experience than calling my broker with Goldman Sachs that i have had for 15 years.
Now i own about some carbon credits as part of my portfolio but because they are American i do have the ability to cross trade with United Kingdom. I know that this legislation will pass, but the question is will our congress see the need to create a strong, functional, and stable market that only helps increase America's wealth but creates real "green" jobs.