Climate Technology

Yukon Fool Some of the People Some of the Time

GM builds world’s first LEED-certified auto plant, slows SUV production If BP went Beyond Petroleum, does that mean GM is Greening Motors? The struggling U.S. automaker recently unveiled two nuggets of eco-friendly news. Its brand-spankin’ new Lansing Delta Township assembly plant in Michigan received the U.S. Green Building Council’s gold LEED (Leadership in Energy and […]

To Tech With It

Investment money pours into the green-tech sector Investors are ga-ga for green. In 2005, clean energy projects in the U.S. were showered with $17 billion in investment money, up 89 percent from 2004. Just in 2005, the worldwide market for carbon credits blossomed from essentially nothing to around $11 billion. And these are not just […]

Wal-Mart’s green makeover

I have an op-ed on TomPaine.com today about Wal-Mart's recent green initiatives. Give it a read. I'm sure the accusations of corporate whoredom will come rolling in at any moment.

I worry that, even given the copious pixels expended, my overall point was not entirely clear. So below the fold, I shall try to express it in more compact form.

Wal-Mart’s devious profit motive

I'm in the midst of writing an op-ed about Wal-Mart's green transformation. One theme that comes up frequently in the commentary is this: Wal-Mart is "only" doing these things because they'll improve the bottom line.

Um ... yeah.

It's a business. It's supposed to make money. As a publicly held corporation, it's required by law to make money. If it went around doing things that deliberately reduced its profits, it would be subject to a shareholder lawsuit.

The whole point of the green business trend is that green makes business sense. Reducing waste is good management. What kind of bizarre message does it send if a business sees the light on this issue only to be told that they get no credit because their motivations are financial?

Sometimes I'm just not sure what greens expect.

Wal-Mart and culture

This NYT piece about Wal-Mart's failure to fit in culturally in various of its international conquest states is just fascinating. Apparently wanting everything available in one place, at the lowest possible price, in huge impersonal stores is not a fundamental feature of human nature, but a cultural artifact. In Germany, for instance, the company is just giving up entirely.

Trolling through the article, I pulled out these nifty tidbits:

Which is thicker, blood or oil? A longtime shareholder reflects

My family has been intimately involved with Exxon through the years. My great-great-grandfather Maurice Clark went into the provisioning business with John D. Rockefeller around the time of the Civil War, but ended up selling the nascent oil-refining part of the business to Rockefeller in the late 19th century. Years later, my grandmother’s uncle ran […]

The Station Agent

Chicago Tribune series traces a gasoline fill-up to its source Told that tracking gasoline from a single gas station back to its sources was impossible, reporter Paul Salopek did it anyway. In compiling a multimedia series for the Chicago Tribune, Salopek sourced gas dispensed at a Marathon station in South Elgin, Ill., to the Gulf […]

Are the world’s green-biz supermen losing their powers?

It’s early yet to begin writing the business obituary of long-standing BP CEO Lord John Browne, slated to retire in 2008. But the man once billed as the closest thing to a green Superman has had his cape singed recently. Have we been duped? Could anyone reading BP’s annual sustainability reports the last few years […]

Sub Pop Records offsets energy use

As Grist's unofficial music correspondent, I feel compelled to share this exciting news with you: Sub Pop Records announced today that they have partnered with Bonneville Environmental Foundation to purchase enough Green-e certified Green Tags to offset 100 percent of the company's energy use.

Based in Seattle, Sub Pop Records has worked with bands ranging from Nirvana and Soundgarden (when they were relatively unknown) to The Postal Service, The Shins, Iron and Wine, and others.

"Sub Pop has been synonymous with helping talented new artists support their passion for creating music," said Patrick Nye, director of sales at Bonneville Environmental Foundation. "Now, Sub Pop Records is directing the same energy toward new, renewable sources of power."

Rock on.

Learning to love Wal-Mart

We've done some good stuff on Wal-Mart's greening, but Marc Gunther's cover story in Fortune this week pulls it all together better than any single story I've seen, and advances it in some interesting ways.

Particularly in reference to our ongoing debate over morality, listen to Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott:

To me, there can't be anything good about putting all these chemicals in the air. There can't be anything good about the smog you see in cities. There can't be anything good about putting chemicals in these rivers in Third World countries so that somebody can buy an item for less money in a developed country. Those things are just inherently wrong, whether you are an environmentalist or not.

He later says:

I had an intellectual interest when we started. I have a passion today.

What moved him from intellectual interest to passion? Morality.

I hadn't realized how big a role a Walton played in the story. This line sounds like the beginning of a joke: