Richard Heinberg 05/02/2009

A hundred years ago, markets ruled: fortunes were made, workers abused, bubbles blown. The Austrian School of economists, led by Ludwig von Mises, said this was fine: despite temporary messiness, the market knows best.
But the messiness of markets was

'Why are environmentalists so anti-business,' I was asked by a young friend who knew that I had been an organizer of Earth Day in 1970. 'Because when we got our start,' I answered, 'business was anti-environment.'

That's true. In the economic parlance of those days, air and water

I am often asked, 'If you don't eat it, why would you care if your T-shirt is organic?'

I care because of how cotton is produced. Upon completion of the ginning process, where the seed and fiber are separated, cotton consists of 60% seed and 40% fiber. The fiber is shipped to

The just-passed California Global Warming Solutions Act, which imposes a cap on all greenhouse gas emissions, is the toughest legislation in the United States to tackle global warming. It is truly historic.

What's also historic is that, for the first time, the debate was cast not

Recycling paper at your company? How's it going?

If you answered 'yes' to the first question and 'not so good' to the second, you're in fine company. After years of trying, an astonishing number of outfits both large and small are having trouble accomplishing this seemingly

Conventional economic wisdom goes something like this. Traditional energy is cheap and renewable energy expensive. Therefore we should 'wait' until the day renewables become cost competitive before they can be considered a realistic proposition. This viewpoint may have been true for the last two oil

Some years after the pharmaceutical industry first shot itself squarely in the foot when it tried to sue the South African government, the issue of patents for essential drugs is once again centre stage. This time it is predominantly flu drug Tamiflu maker Roche that has to resolve the

There is some discussion that a number of the people in the leading companies - the pioneers, the CSR enthusiasts, the committed - are getting pretty fed up of being on the hamster wheel of churning out annual CSR reports. They spend most of their time collecting data, and not coming up

I've encountered very different perspectives from the world of business in the past few weeks -- emblematic of the challenges our industrial society still faces.

I spent two days recently at the 'Cradle to Cradle Design and Intelligent Materials Pooling in Practice' workshop

Have you ever heard of the term 'inverse manufacturing'? It refers to a manufacturing system that considers the entire product life (planning and designing, manufacturing, use and disposal) at the design phase and incorporates into the design consideration of the process of collecting used

Foreign direct investment is beginning to flow in the right direction: out of slow-growing wealthy countries and into emerging markets. But overall, capital is still moving from the developing world to the developed-and, in the process, helping to increase the imbalances that put the world

The Economist's Thinking is Yesterday, Corporate Social Responsibility's Thinking Is Today

Terry Mollner

We always think we are operating at the highest layer of maturity of thinking - if we knew of a higher layer, we would be using it. As is clear to any of us who have

Over 70 percent of single women in Japan are satisfied with their lives, according to a nationwide questionnaire survey on marriage that was conducted in February 2005 by Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan's largest daily newspapers.

To the question, 'Do you agree that women can spend

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) launches the Desertification Synthesis, prepared in response to governments' requests for information received through the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). This report presents a synthesis and integration of the findings of the four MA

Hazel Henderson

At last, the public debate over corporate social responsibility has been fully joined by the mainstream financial press. Let's be grateful for this. However, to properly context this debate and counter the kind of nonsense propagated by The Economist in its Survey,

Professor James Lovelock's Gaia theory describes the earth as working like a giant living organism. According to Lovelock, Gaia -- derived from the Greek for goddess of the earth -- is physically and chemically entwined with life on this planet.

For his work, Lovelock has been

General Electric, the 125-year-old behemoth born out of Thomas Edison's electric light company, is casting a bright light on sustainability. Its chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, has just announced that the $150 billion company is hitching its future to the growth of clean energy, clean water,

In collecting examples of technologies learned from nature, we find that they can be categorized according to the level at which the learning process takes place. For example, technology learned from the behavior of living things is the simplest to apprehend. It is more complicated to learn

Some call it arrogance, the way human beings believe it is possible to out-smart nature with science and technology. Now, Houston and other large cities deal with excessive water runoff as a result of cutting down forests and paving over prairie. The fish in most Texas lakes and in many lakes

Over the next three years, experts from around the world will engage in the detailed and daunting task of defining what it means to be 'socially-responsible', reports Paul Hohnen from the recent ISO meeting in Brazil

The occasional revolution aside, change occurs mostly in a series

The social enterprise sector has blossomed over the past decade and now offers a viable option for charities looking to buy products and services, says Annie Kelly.

In an era when ethical business is fast becoming a buzzword and fair trade has finally become trendy, the commercial

Could the American dream in China become a nightmare for the world? For China's 1.3 billion people, the American dream is fast becoming the Chinese dream. Already millions of Chinese are living like Americans--eating more meat, driving cars, traveling abroad, and otherwise spending their

'A law of indiscriminate profit is being globalized, and by its application all too many corporations contribute to the abuse of human rights in poor countries.'

This declaration sounds like it came straight off the podium of the anti-globalization protests that fill the streets

In recent years, we have been witnessing an increasing enthusiasm among Japanese people for building a locally sustainable economy in which the guiding principle is the local consumption of locally produced goods. For example, consumers seek safe local foods produced by someone they know

The dollar is on the decline, with its value having fallen by around 30 per cent relative to other major currencies since 2002 and by close to 20 per cent in trade-weighted terms. Yet, the US government feigns being unconcerned with the problem. In the G-20 meeting held in the second half of

Although the United States has long consumed the lion's share of the world's resources, this situation is changing fast as the Chinese economy surges ahead, overtaking the United States in the consumption of one resource after another.

Among the five basic food, energy, and

We always think we are operating at the highest layer of maturity of thinking - if we knew of a higher layer, we would be using it. As is clear to any of us who have children, there are layers of maturity of thinking. As we mature, they build on one another, with the higher ones being

In Hindu scriptures, a mantra is often repeated to show the multitude of sheer power latent within the human mind-

Aham Brahmasami -

'I am He, the all seeing! Awake!!'

The inclination to lean towards the practical reality laced with idealism is the

'In recent months, rising oil prices have focused the world's attention on the depletion of oil reserves. But the depletion of underground water resources from overpumping is a far more serious issue,' says Lester R. Brown in his new book, 'Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in

Although salt and various salt derivatives melt ice effectively and make both walkways and roads safer, they can be damaging to the environment. After salt is applied, it washes off paved surfaces into storm drains or onto adjacent ground, and can then be carried into nearby bodies of water.

The business response to the tsunami disaster in Asia has been swift, substantial, and has provoked the kind of soul-searching debate over the role of companies in extraordinary times that gives an important taste of things to come.

As someone who writes on corporate social

We are all seeing rather less of the Sun. Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global

In his now classic essay 'Buddhist Economics,' Fritz Schumacher imagines an economic system informed by the teachings of the Buddha.

Key to such a system is simplicity and non-violence.


'. . . the Buddhist economist would insist that a population basing its

As inaugural planners iron out the details of the many events surrounding President Bush's swearing-in Jan. 20, well-connected donors are contributing six-figure checks to help pay for it all.

The 55th Presidential Inaugural Committee last week revealed that it had raised close to

The widely-touted, so-called 'Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics' isn't a proper Nobel Prize at all. For many years, I and others have sought to correct this widespread error by reminding people of its actual name: The Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel. The Bank

Last week, the Financial Times carried a story about how GrupoNueva aims to target the world's poor as a potential market by aiming to design and sell affordable wood and water pipeline products to this vast segment of the world's population. The company, it said, was aiming to show how

Residents of a remote crofting community in rural Scotland have voted overwhelmingly in favour of taking ownership of their land. In a move that could set a precedent for crofting communities throughout Scotland, 87 per cent of the community of Pairc this week voted for a hostile takeover of

I don't know whether its eating too many chocolate flapjacks or some form of dyspepsia, but I seem to spend increasing proportions of each allotted 24 hours in a rage.

This has been overcoming me somewhat in recent years, and I had been wondering whether 46 is a particularly

All responsible members of society contribute in important ways by doing their own work. In fact, the work that underlies a well-functioning society is so important that without it no society could function. This essential work, however, is not recognised by the economy and is done in spite

Plastics and most other synthetic macro-molecules made from petrochemicals do not decompose naturally, and this makes their disposal and treatment a matter of serious concern. In this context, attention is being increasingly paid to studies of natural cycles of synthesis and

You can't go wrong bringing up Charles Dickens this time of year. But instead of Scrooge, I'm going with the whole best-of-times, worst-of-times thing in looking back at 2004 through the lens of clean-energy development and growth.

There's plenty to go around for both 'best' and

As someone who speaks on corporate responsibility reasonably often, I am trying to do more platforms that are not about preaching to the converted. This is a recommended experience, but not for the faint-hearted.

There are some pretty entrenched positions out there, and being the

Eliot Spitzer's actions against embedded corporate malpractices are gaining in potency and reach. A second term US President George W Bush promises an agenda rich in pro-business action. Apart from tort and healthcare reform, there has even been talk of resurrecting the 'Cheeseburger Bill'

The movement towards a slower life aims to reduce the pace of economic growth and to reconsider our present lifestyles, and has spread to various fields, leading to the coining of such new expressions as slow food, slow life, and slow business.

Japan Junior Chamber [of Commerce]

The question of the role of business in society has received a high profile in recent months with a couple of films that have sought to shine a critical spotlight on what many see has the dominant institution of our times.

Of these, Super Size Me, is the least interesting.

Oil is the principal energy source in the modern economy. According to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2002, oil accounts for about 40 percent of the world's primary energy. In oil-dependent Japan, the dependence is even more obvious: oil accounts for about 50 percent of the

With the news dominated by devastating storms and flooding, the need for an energy revolution is clear. And public support for wind farms is growing, despite a small but aggressive campaign against proposed wind energy in recent months.

The new poll by ICM shows that 80 percent of

Like art, hemlines, and marriages, corporations go through cycles. These periodic but powerful historical chapters redefine what companies value as essential to their success and cultural identity. And, in parallel, what their finicky audiences demand from them. One such cycle started with the

Joseph Schumpeter called it 'creative destruction'. Karl Marx was referring to something similar with his oft-quoted phrase 'all that is solid melts into air'. Observers of capitalism have long marvelled at both the energy and the turbulence that markets and profit-seekers unleash in society. But

A 215-year-old law originally written to address piracy and crimes abroad against American ambassadors is at the heart of litigation targeting some of the world's largest energy corporations.

Plaintiffs allege that ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, Unocal, and Royal Dutch/Shell are

While many of us may feel we don't have the extra money, let alone the spare time, to take the plunge into the vortex of socially responsible investing (SRI), just about everyone has a bank account. A developing trend in banking allows customers' deposits to be used to fund low-interest loans

The annual Business in the Community awards, which took place on July 6th, saw the usual crop of examples of best practice from a range of areas relating to responsible business practice and community involvement. It was however the first time a CSR award made it onto the front page of

Tony Blair calls Africa a scar on the conscience of the world. Gordon Brown has a means for healing that scar through a doubling of aid. The chancellor says his international financing facility (IFF) is the only game in town, but so far the teams are still stuck in the dressing

This book is an extremely influential document about the conditions under which Americans of African descent lived during the first half of the twentieth century. It became, in fact, the definitive study of 'the American Negro' for its time -- carefully documenting social and economic

White argued that:

'What people do about their ecology depends on what they think about themselves in relation to things around them. Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny -- that is, by religion.'

Judaeo-Christianity the most

About 600 Japanese companies are said to have issued environmental reports. The General Press Corporation, a JFS corporate member and web content provider, issued a 'Survey of Corporate Environmental Reports 2003' based on a study of 285 Japanese companies. Here we present some of the trends

The paperless office does appear to still be a distant dream. A recent University of California, Berkeley study found that, worldwide, the amount of printed matter generated between 1999 and 2002 not only did not decrease: It grew by 36 percent.

The quantity of information we now

Over the last month, particularly in the UK but elsewhere as well, a great deal of nonsense has been written about corporate social responsibility and obesity. It has been a debate that has shown many of the commentators at their worst.

On the one hand, there is clearly a shift in

Starting in the mid 1990s, an increasing number of Japanese companies began developing environmental management systems aimed at ISO14001 certification. By the late 1990s, the term 'kankyo keiei' (meaning 'environmental management' in Japanese) began to come increasingly into use, and

When China announced last November that it would impose strict new fuel-economy standards for small cars and minivans, it was only one sign that the world's most populated country is headed down a more sustainable path - while the United States moves in the other direction.

'China's

The benefits of clubbing aren't just available to the nation's youth, and at weekends. It is a highly sociable, health promoting activity, which we could all do more.

At the club I belong to, other clubbers have even reported experiencing occasional bouts of euphoria, which they've

One of the common arguments arising from the Corporate Social Responsibility movement - particularly in the developed economies - is that CSR is just as important for small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs) as it is for the big boys. I wonder why.

One response is that SMEs make