I just finished reading Newsweek´s massive "
Environment
& Leadership" section. Well, I read most of
it. Last I checked, the average day still contains 24
hours, and I have just about that many hours´ worth of
work to do today.
Anyway, I recommend reading this section. It´s quite a
special special report, thorough and eye-opening, with a
wealth of interesting information to chew on. Overall the
viewpoint strikes me as slightly left of center, but
that´s Newsweek.
There´s a
story about the
relative greenness of presidential candidates John McCain,
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; a forward-looking
technology section,
"10 Fixes for the Planet" (absolutely fascinating stuff
here); a
report on
Iceland´s renewable energy-powered economy; a
piece describing
the Green M.B.A. movement afoot at American universities;
a
story about
environmental programs being undertaken at Major League
Baseball stadiums; and lots more.
Speaking of information to chew on, I found a couple
quotes in this section highly intriguing. I´m not sure I
wholly agree with either of them, but in the contexts in
which they´re presented, they do set the wheels turning.
First, this quote from Hunter Lovins, author of
"Natural Capitalism," on what she sees as U.S. companies´
overall disregard for the idea of factoring the
environment into their financial plans and reports:
"We treat [the environment] as if it has a value
of zero, and that´s bad capitalism."
The other quote, probably the more provocative of the
two, is from Gary Hirshberg, the creator of
ClimateCounts.org, a Web site that ranks corporations on
the basis of environmental criteria such as their carbon
footprint and emission reduction programs:
"We have to stop treating the earth as if it were
a wholly-owned subsidiary of our economy."
There you have it. Read the section. Check the
contexts. And discuss.
Pete Fehrenbach is
managing editor of Waste News. Past installments of this
column are collected in
the Inbox archive.
To subscribe or visit go to:
http://www.wastenews.com
