Noam Ross is a senior analyst at GreenOrder, an LRN company. The strategy and management consulting firm has helped leading companies turn sustainability into business value since 2000.
Another ugly battle is raging in the ethanol wars. Sadly, while everyone is arguing over whether ethanol is bad, no one is talking about how to make it better. The worst impacts of ethanol occur far from Iowa or Washington in the forests that are burned down to respond to demands for cropland.
The current catastrophic loss of honeybee colonies around the world may mean immediate bad news for agriculture, but it also offers an important lesson for companies that are not looking at their dependence on ecosystem services when examining risk or growth opportunities, Noam Ross argues.