Climate Technology

Environmentalism’s confusing accounting

The L.A. Times published an interesting if somewhat odd piece in last week's magazine about efforts to coax the business community into loving the environment by assigning a dollar value to our natural resources, or "ecosystem services."

So, for example, we learn that dung beetles provide $380 million of waste management services to the U.S. cattle industry. One mile of coastal wetland provides $2.4 million of storm protection. A nice fern is worth $4, or you can get 3 for $9.99.

I made up the last one.

The odd part of the article is that it wraps together these efforts to place a concrete value on natural resources with a very different phenomenon: the use of pollution markets to curtail environmentally damaging activities.

Romance blossoms between big biz and enviros over a candlelit dinner

Love is in the air. Photo: iStockphoto The on-again-off-again flirtation between big business and the mainstream environmental movement seems to be progressing into a full-on steamy love affair — and perhaps even a committed, long-term relationship. On Tuesday morning, a handful of Fortune 500 execs joined Jonathan Lash, president of the environmental think tank World […]

With big biz jumping on the green bandwagon, should activists cheer or jeer?

“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” It’s time for greens to co-opt corporations. Photo: iStockphoto If so, then the growth of the green economy — embraced by corporations, […]

Model Summer Rayne Oakes quizzes him on socially responsible investing

In this guest post, model and sustainable business consultant Summer Rayne Oakes recounts her recent interview with socially responsible investing expert Thomas Van Dyck. (Read more about Oakes in a Grist profile.)

I first met Thomas Van Dyck in June 2005 during the height of San Francisco's World Environment Day celebrations. It was a brief two-minute introduction wedged between a chaotic green trade show and a trippy drum-circle gathering. All I managed to find out during that time was his job description: investment consultant. In my mind, I lumped him in with the typical French-cuffed, Ferragamo-tied, Rolex-wearing beings I see on my occasional sojourns to Wall Street. I couldn't have been more wrong.

As I learned after running into him a few more times, Thomas Van Dyck is one of the top socially responsible investment (SRI) consultants in the business. He happened into the field in the early '80s, while working as an environmental activist, and he's helped to shape and grow SRI ever since. Van Dyck and his team, who work in the heart of San Francisco's Financial District, consult on close to a billion dollars in assets, with clients ranging from foundations, unions, and pension funds to entrepreneurs and celebrities. Ninety-nine percent of his clients have at least one socio-environmental screen on their portfolios, and the vast majority has multiple screens. In addition to his investment work, Van Dyck founded As You Sow in 1992, a nonprofit organization that uses shareholder advocacy to push for more enlightened corporate practices.

Bed Bath & Behind

Ceres publishes list of top 10 industry laggards on climate change Which companies will be caught with their pants down when greenhouse-gas regulations hit? Environmental investment group Ceres has released a list of 10 U.S. corporations that shareholders say have failed to adequately plan for the climate-changed future. The list includes Wells Fargo, urged to […]

New Belgium beermakers to brew algae-based biodiesel

New Belgium Brewing Co. is known for its Fat Tire Amber Ale and a number of other bubbly bevvies. But you’ll want to think twice before chugging the company’s latest concoction: the ecofriendly microbrewery is teaming up with energy startup Solix Biofuels to brew biodiesel from algae. (Yeah, I pirated the headline — arrr … […]

Biz, Biz, Oh What a Relief It Is

M.B.A. students increasingly required to take courses in sustainability We can’t say finance, accounting, and marketing get our rocks off, but we’re jazzed about a growing trend: 54 percent of U.S. business schools require students to take a class in sustainability or corporate social responsibility, a jump of 20 percent since 2001. At MIT’s Sloan […]

They’re Just Not That Into You

Green jobs are all the rage these days, so why are you still unemployed? “If the green job market is so hot,” asks one frustrated jobseeker, “why can’t I find a job?” Could columnist Kevin Doyle of the Environmental Careers Organization have been wrong about his assertion that environmental careers are on the rise? Doyle […]

I thought the green job market was hot!

“If the green job market’s so hot, why can’t I find a job?” I’ve been talking up the rising eco-job market so much that I should have known there would be a backlash. It came most recently from an exasperated job seeker who’s failed to land a decent job, let alone get an interview — […]

Business leaders honed in on climate, carbon, and concrete at Davos

The snow at Davos didn’t melt away worries about climate change. Photo: Benjamin Zurbriggen/World Economic Forum There was something different in the air at this year’s Davos gathering of global movers and shakers — and not just an increase in CO2 concentration. Instead of the irrational exuberance of the 1990s or the celebrity-studded glitz of […]