With apologies to another ancient Mediterranean civilization, is it useful — when in Greece – to do as the Greeks might have when it comes to addressing climate change? In other words, with a crisis that demands such urgent and widespread human action, do we have time to be philosophical?

Dr. Ole Faergeman, a renowned Danish cardiologist and co-chair of a groundbreaking international conference on the intersection between sustainable agriculture and land use, human nutrition, and climate protection opening this week in Olympia, Greece, has invoked Aristotle when trying to make sense of ongoing challenges to mobilize people globally on climate change. Certainly, Aristotle had no concept of global warming, but some of his ideas may help us with our own.

In addition to the political, journalistic, and economic challenges that have shaped our unwillingness to acknowledge the current and future impacts of climate change on our lives, persuades Faergeman, we may also be confounded by a certain “giddiness” as we stare into the abyss of time, both past and future. Climate scientists have shown again and again the alarming rates of atmospheric greenhouse gases today versus not only other times in human history but also prehistoric time. But does science’s ability to help us see eons into the past and to project decades, even centuries into the future hurt us more than it helps us?

Does climate modeling make us dizzy with our insignificance in the grand scheme of things? Does it render us powerless? It must be the only reasonable explanation for why we seem incapable of doing things like reach a meaningful international target for emissions reductions (a la the frustrations of COP15 in Copenhagen) or pass comprehensive climate and energy legislation in the US. One can almost imagine aging members of the Senate attributing “no” committee votes on cap-and-trade (or any other bill attempting to reduce climate impacts) to the clear futility of human existence.

In addition to being mercifully oblivious to the impacts of the future industrial age on the environment, ancient Greeks also had no concept of “deep time,” no sense of where time was going or where it had been. The result was a fixation on the personal, rather than the global, not only in terms of the quest to find meaning but also of the role and ability of human beings to affect events. As a result, they seem to have lacked the paralysis that too many of us bring to enormous global challenges like climate change. For Aristotle and other thinkers of his time, the choice of pathways was simple: logos or tragedy? The implications of a tragic trajectory – like our current one – are clear.

But logos implies a rational, even optimistic approach to dealing with catastrophe. Aristotle and his fellow Athenians might have first acknowledged the obvious effects that fossil-fuel burning humans have on the atmosphere, if for no other reason than for the way those effects would affect human quality of life – even the pursuit of happiness that so motivated founding Americans. They might have then said, “Conditions are changing that are affecting the safety and health of human communities, as well as our ability to produce and source food, so we must simply use common sense to fix the problem, whether through behavior change or technology.” Interestingly, the ancient idea of logos is not terribly different from a rational human view in aspects of our modern world, for example, a market economy, but it is largely missing from our collective response to climate change.

Some will inevitably argue that being philosophical about something like global climate change is the definition of absurd. But perhaps existential philosophy is precisely what has been missing from our response to climate change so far. As Faergeman urges, it’s time to be like the Greeks and think big thoughts about what we are going to do – for our own satisfaction and sense of accomplishment – without worrying too much what the universe ultimately has in store for us.

Wood Turner is the executive director of Climate Counts and is currently posting from Greece from the Stonyfield Farm-sponsored Inaugural Conference of the World Council on Genetics, Nutrition, and Fitness for Health. He and others are tweeting from the conference at @climatecounts using #greekhealth, and also on Facebook.

By Wood Turner

The devastating and escalating events in the Gulf of Mexico underscore an amazing collection of problems: reliance on polluting energy, absence of a coherent national energy plan, the problems with lax government oversight, and dozens of others. Perhaps most clearly, it shows the gulf we should have seen years ago between the image of BP and the reality of BP.

This spiraling disaster might literally have never happened if BP had made a real and deep commitment to changing more than its logo. Almost 10 years ago, BP — the largest corporation in the UK — spent an extraordinary amount of money and resources on a now infamous rebranding effort ($125 million a year, according to the New York Times) to show its commitment to a world “beyond petroleum.” Branding experts would certainly argue it was money well-spent; for a time, the company became emblematic of the environmental transformation that could occur even within the largest of the world’s businesses and of the ROI that could result when the marketplace rewarded those changes.

Consumers were promised a cultural shift and, to a large degree, bought it. The company was going to remake itself. It was going to become a very high-profile example of how a company with the resources and know-how to profit from 19th century energy solutions was perfectly positioned to do the same in a 21st century where the realities had changed. The company could be a leader in renewable energy and even transition away from the business of oil extraction. The company could even be positive voice for corporate climate action from an industry sector with a vested interest in increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

It was all a façade.

Unfortunately, the BP case illustrates a glaring example of the disconnect between cynical rebranding efforts designed to shore up the dollars of a growing and loyal green consumer segment and the cold, hard realities of global business. Consumers didn’t get the culture shift they thought they were buying. It’s now clear they saw a company paying the worst kind of lip service to sustainability — while still polluting heavily, while still profiting from the extraction of fossil fuels, while still cutting major corners on safety, while still promising the moon to communities where they did business, while still pouring huge dollars into political campaigns, and lobbying designed to win powerful friends of fossil fuel expansion in Congress and in statehouses around the country. BP had played a game of smoke and mirrors. There was no corporate culture shift in “beyond petroleum.” It was cultural disdain. Essentially, the company said,”Who needs to invest in 21st century solutions when people will give us credit whether we’re really leading or not?” The company realized the consumer could be hoodwinked into not asking the hard questions.

When a disaster like this happens, it’s sometimes reassuring to try to find the potential good that can come from it. There is more and more evidence that neither the White House nor the Congress will be using this disaster to issue the necessary clarion call for the new energy future we so desperately need. If we’re lucky, maybe the impact will be largest in deepening both consumer savvy and consumer scrutiny of corporations so that their programs to “go green” have both measurable depth and staying power. Otherwise, we’ll never be far away from being duped again.

Note: As an organization annually scoring well-known companies on their efforts to address climate change, Climate Counts made the conscious decision when we launched in 2007 NOT to score oil & gas companies and automobile manufacturers. In trying to help consumers make more climate-conscious choices when they spend their money, it seemed almost absurd to evaluate companies that had such an inherently profound impact on the climate crisis. Would it really be reasonable to suggest to a consumer, as they drive down the road in a vehicle produced by any one of the numerous car makers who’ve fought vehemently against increased fuel efficiency standards, that they are truly more responsible by choosing to buy gasoline for that car from Shell vs. ExxonMobil vs. Chevron vs. ConocoPhillips vs. … BP?  We chose to opt out of that fool’s errand.

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Earth Day is coming, and with it, hours and hours of “green” television programming and print media coverage. People who hardly give the environment a thought all year will be “Green Watching” programs – and advertisements – about how to be more environmentally responsible. In the past, I always thought of this heightened awareness as a good thing. The added programming draws broader attention to serious environmental problems like the climate crisis, and I firmly believe an educated public is critical to generating strong climate action throughout society.

However, this Earth Day, I think it’s important to ask: At what point does “Green Watching” become a form of greenwashing? Should media companies lead by example on corporate climate and environmental action or, because of their importance in educating the public, is talk enough?  

Green Watching can get complicated.

Obviously, media companies (like all companies) are in business to make money. In 2009, the six major media companies Climate Counts scored brought in well over $300 billion dollars in revenue. It’s safe to assume that making money is somewhere behind the creation of all Earth Day, Week, and Month programming; if it was all altruism, there wouldn’t be hours of mostly-mindless commercials. Second, I think we all understand that a network’s brand is a critical part of how it builds an audience (and increases ad revenue). Network brands are becoming increasingly important as people have more information and entertainment options. A network that does environmental programming during Earth Week is trying to brand itself in a certain way.  Yet even if the motivation is profit and the strength of a brand, media companies do have a big impact on both the political debate and in setting cultural and societal norms.      

So, how can we as consumers be informed Green Watchers?

The first is to know what commitment these companies have made to addressing climate change. But the facts will blow your mind. 

Based on our latest round of scoring (released in November 2009), notoriously conservative News Corporation was near the top of green-committed media companies, with 68 points out of a possible 100. Notoriously hip Viacom (the parent of MTV, BET, Comedy Central, and VH1), however, was not only among the lowest in the media sector with just  three points, but among the lowest of nearly 150 companies scored in 16 major sectors.

You read that right. The company that owns Fox News and the Wall Street Journal is doing more to reduce its own climate impact than the company that is watched by the young, edgy, and culturally dialed-in. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity work for the company doing more on the corporate side to address the climate crisis than the company that gives John Stewart and Stephen Colbert their megaphones. And perhaps what’s most striking is how little improvement Viacom and other low-scoring media companies like CBS and Time Warner have shown in the more than three years since Climate Counts began tracking their performance.

While Rupert Murdoch, the CEO and major shareholder of News Corporation, has been subtly stepping out as a mover on climate change for several years, his counterpart Philippe P. Dauman of Viacom has shown little to no concern regarding Viacom’s lack of even the most basic climate action. It’s hard for a company to score 68 points on our scorecard, but frankly, it’s even harder—almost laughable for any self-respecting, well-managed company—to score just three.

However, in terms of influencing political debates, News Corporation has done as much as anyone to confuse the public on the climate crisis, while Viacom programs like “The Daily Show” and CBS programs like Letterman’s “Late Show” have done much to educate viewers on the dangers of climate change.

But wait, there’s more.

While some of its shows may add depth to the public conversation about climate change, CBS launched an entire “Green Campaign” with the tag-line “putting our green where it counts” to do nothing more than promote its Emmy-nominated shows. With a score of 13 on our most recent scorecard, CBS has not demonstrated action to match its programming or its self-promotion.                

Time Warner, known best for news and entertainment divisions like CNN, Time Magazine, and HBO, earns less than a third of the points available on the Climate Counts scorecard for making real efforts to reduce climate pollution. And what is the contribution of media companies to climate change? Let’s start with the sheer number of people who work for or contract with these companies. Indeed, whole cities exist to support the media business. And then consider the energy their equipment, data centers, and facilities use. They’re not refining oil or mining coal, but their impact is not insignificant.

Even Disney, parent company of ABC, ESPN, Pixar and others, while relatively better overall than most of its competitors (47 out of 100 points, up 22 from the previous year), still has a very low score on its efforts to measure its climate pollution (one of the areas we track) and to take responsibility for its enormous supply chain, a massive sphere of influence.

 The truth is that “Green Watching” actually isn’t that complicated. People just need to know where these companies stand in all areas of their business—and urge them to improve. If you’re interested in becoming a more active and informed Green Watcher, follow Climate Counts’ new “Green Watching” campaign on Facebook and Twitter.  Next week on and around Earth Day, when all eyes are on the environmental programming of major media companies, help us urge big media companies to talk the talk and walk the walk.

Or are you just going to watch?

Wood Turner is the executive director of the non-profit organization Climate Counts.

It’s easy to get the impression that there is no hope for climate action. Perhaps you’ve heard that the recent DC snowstorms 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, and a dysfunctional global climate community. Our political leadership seems to be paralyzed by fear to take on the climate crisis.

That’s not the impression you’d get reading the business news, though. There, you would have seen a year of climate momentum. In October, several major companies left the US Chamber of Commerce over its position on corporate climate action. Bill Gates has called for making climate change our #1 priority. Every week, another company seems to be launching 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 politics and lightweight public discourse on climate.

We’ve launched a new project, Climate Counts Industry Innovators (or i2) that will help this momentum build. 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, different geographies, different sizes, and different corporate structures. But what they share is a commitment to making it clear to consumers that climate action is business leadership. They’re helping build markets for renewables, they’re testing new technologies, they’re helping employees and consumer make the link between their lives and climate change, and they’re doing the common-sense work of running their companies more efficiently.

This is yet more proof that businesses that are committed to their own long-term viability understand the realities of climate change, aren’t being misled by the climate deniers, and respect the steady evolution of consumers on issues as complex as climate change. They’re positioning themselves to out-compete the companies still dithering on climate.

Companies that are setting a high bar on corporate climate responsibility are increasingly faced with a critical issue: how to gain the consumer’s attention for that leadership. Since launching our Climate Counts Company Scorecard three years ago, we’ve always maintained that companies wanting to see real ROI from credible sustainability programs and investments need to make it abundantly clear to consumers what they’ve done and why.

When it comes to innovation of all kinds (technological, environmental, or otherwise), consumers want to be wowed. They are drawn to CEOs who have put the time and resources into developing meaningful solutions to problems. Consumers may not always know what to ask of companies about their climate and sustainability programs, but they want to be impressed by the innovation they represent. More importantly, though, they have to believe it. But it’s not just about who’s the loudest or more effusive or uses the best shade of green in a logo or ad campaign. In a world where recycling and light bulbs still define the consumer environmental conversation, companies have a unique opportunity, even responsibility, to lead consumers on the issues that really matter.

What’s the best news about the innovative actions of these companies? While they’re confidently preparing to put distance between themselves and climate laggards, they’re also helping us all imagine a world that’s both better for good business and better for the people and resources upon which they depend.

By Wood Turner

Every year around this time, the father in me starts thinking deep thoughts about why I’ve dedicated my career to environmental awareness and, in particular, helping people who don’t consider themselves activists understand why environmental issues should matter to them. In more recent years, it’s morphed into an almost singular focus for me on why the climate crisis should matter to all of us.

For me, it’s simple. It’s the kids.

As a parent, I want to do everything I can to make sure my kids are exposed to fewer hazards than I was. I always laugh when my own mom says, “Well, we fed you [some processed food I could never imagine giving my kids] and you turned out OK,” or “We didn’t even have carseats when you were growing up and you’re just fine.” Yeah, yeah, yeah – I for one feel completely free of nostalgia for the “good old days” of the toxic dangers of the 1970s. We’ve gotten smarter and that’s a good thing.

That’s why I was so disappointed to find out how stuck companies that are making the products we parents are buying to protect our kids are on climate because climate is simply toxic to our children’s future. When Climate Counts (which I direct) announced scores on the climate action of the toys and children’s equipment sector a couple of months back, results were dismal.

At the request of the many consumers who were interested in this sector, we scored 13 of the biggest companies – companies who make familiar family brands like Graco, Safety 1st, Instep, Evenflo, Chicco, One Step Ahead, Britax, Peg Perego, and more – and TEN scored less than five points out of a possible 100 on climate. No understanding of the overall impact of their companies’ energy use, waste, distribution, and sales on climate. No evidence of any efforts to reduce energy use or greenhouse gas emissions. No support for good climate policy. And, no conversation at all with the legions of parents who buy from these companies because they want to ensure the safety of their kids. No conversation about climate change, something that could have a greater impact on the current generation of children that maybe anything else.

The companies that make children’s safety equipment are incessantly frightening parents like me into an upgrade: “Hey concerned parent, remember that carseat you used for your newborn in 2006? Well, nothing could be more dangerous for your newborn with a 2009 birthday. You’ve got to buy this year’s model in order to keep you kid safe!” Most of us hear the call and do just as we’re told, stretching our own wallets way too often to support a business model fueled by planned obsolescence.

Look, I’m a big believer in steady safety improvements and appreciate that these companies are constantly looking for ways to make their products safer. But here’s the problem I do have – why hasn’t that thirst for safety carried over yet to climate?

Children’s equipment companies know parents want to keep kids safe. And that’s not just today or this week or this year. I think about the safety of my kids long after they’ll have left my house, long after I’m gone. I want their entire lives to be safe and secure. I want to take every precaution possible in the way I treat the world I leave them. I’m not trying to anticipate what could result from global climate change. I don’t want to know – and not because I’m trying to avoid thinking about it. I don’t want to know because I don’t want it to happen.

So that affects the way I think about the products I buy ostensibly to keep my kids safe. I think those choices have to extend far beyond the catastrophic car accident I hope will never happen, far beyond the tiny fingers that might get slammed in the bedroom door (which has happened, despite my precautions), far beyond the potential toxic chemicals that may be in the food we feed them. They have to extend to climate change.

Today, Climate Counts is releasing our review of the pharmaceutical industry, and they’ve made for an interesting case: they are both extraordinarily profitable and have received the highest scores yet of any of the 14 industries on our Climate Counts Company Scorecard. But in spite of good scores on measurement and reporting, they’ve been weak on reducing their emissions and have, for the most part, failed to use their formidable collective lobbying muscle to help pass strong climate legislation.

That’s quite a mixed bag–what does it all mean?

Profits and climate action are (of course) compatible

Fourteen of 16 pharmaceutical companies we scored fell into our “striding” class—the highest level in the Climate Counts ranking system (typically at least 50 points out of a possible 100)—and two companies (AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson) scored over 75 points. These are all companies from an industry (pending mergers notwithstanding) that is one of the most profitable in the world. So the good news is we have yet more proof that climate action is compatible with good business.

Why not do more?

We evaluate climate performance in terms of impact measurement; reductions achieved (including management accountability for reductions); public policy engagement; and openness and transparency in reporting. Pharmaceutical companies are proving to be consistently good at getting their houses in order; greenhouse-emissions tracking is a sector strength, as is acknowledging and showing public support for a collective societal approach to addressing climate change.

The majority of companies in the sector, however, have not set aggressive or specific goals to reduce their emissions. They are also falling short at taking real steps to cut emissions. Many pharmaceutical companies rely on lengthy and antiquated supply chains, so logistical efficiency improvements could be a priority that would result in reductions (some, like GlaxoSmithKline, seem to recognize this opportunity). Additionally, those big pharma companies that don’t actually manufacture their products could play a market-leading role in encouraging climate action and climate leadership throughout the value chain.

Invest in climate

The prescription drug business is overflowing with profits. Despite a widely held perception that companies sacrifice much profit to drug research and development costs, the margin they enjoy on most drugs is on the order of 91-95%. The industry has the added economic benefit of having a locked-in market (the government represents the three largest purchasers of pharmaceuticals: Medicare, the VA, and Medicaid) and limited competition between companies since most are highly specialized. The upshot? The industry can afford to be — and by many accounts, is — notoriously inefficient at manufacturing.

The pharmaceutical giants could be investing significant amounts of money in the kinds of renewable energy and energy-efficiency technology that most companies and sectors can only dream about right now. In other words, the kind of ROI evidence that less profitable, less successful companies say they need in order to truly prioritize climate protection? Big pharma could really be the test case.

Speak up in Congress

Notably, the pharmaceutical sector — which pays big dollars for lobbying support in Washington, D.C., on issues related to healthcare — is conspicuously absent (or obscured) when it comes to advocating for strong legislation to fight climate change. Johnson & Johnson, a member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, is an exception, but what if the sector presented a coordinated voice to lawmakers? It’s time to move behind a small and select group of companies willing to speak out on climate change. It’s time for entire sectors to step forward, armed with a compelling narrative about how climate action and energy-efficiency investments have changed their businesses in extraordinarily positive ways.

Actually, the overarching question really is, why isn’t the sector demonstrating explicitly that strong, voluntary corporate climate action is consistent with good business? That’s the message the marketplace needs, now more than ever with a possible climate law on the horizon that many have argued wouldn’t in its current form go far enough to address the scientific realities of climate change.

Regardless of their high scores, there is much more that the pharma industry could and should be doing on climate, and that’s true of every company and every major company we’ve scored so far. To be perfectly clear, though, big pharma is better than most industry sectors in embracing corporate climate responsibility. Better, though, is not good enough. If money is what’s needed to address climate change with the kind of technology and logistical improvements worthy of 21st-century, future-friendly companies, then the pharmaceutical companies certainly have it to spend. Whether they will show they’re serious about being climate innovators depends on whether we hold them to a standard worthy of the profits they’ve earned in the name of innovating for our health.