Word: carbonations
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...outside the city of Abu Dhabi, with row after row of solar panels angled to the Middle Eastern sun like bathers lying poolside. The solar farm is the earliest tangible part of Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, a $22 billion project designed to be the world's first zero-carbon-footprint, zero-waste settlement--the embodiment of this oil-rich Arab city's surprisingly green dreams. "This is bringing attention and capital from around the world to Abu Dhabi," says Khoreibi. "We're going to use this as a launching pad for clean development...
...currently being made may not be "addressing planetary problems at sufficient scale and speed." Regardless, he says, the green momentum is still growing, not so much because businesses such as solar power or recycling have become financial titans (they haven't), but because green values - efficiency, reducing waste, managing carbon - have increasingly become standard practice for any smart business. "It's really becoming business as usual," says Makower. "These are practices that don't go away during a recession." (Listen to Makower talk about the state of green business on this week's Greencast...
Energy efficiency and waste reduction should be no-brainers - both factors contribute directly to the bottom line. But an even more encouraging trend from 2008 is the inclusion of a company's carbon footprint in the calculation of its financial targets. Businesses now increasingly measure and work to minimize their carbon footprint, even reporting their efforts in publications like the Carbon Disclosure Project. In part, that's because CEOs are simply greener today than they've ever been, but also because, with a new President in the White House promising carbon cap-and-trade legislation and the world working...
...many believe, why does Makower insist the "glass is half full?" Just as it is in the political sphere, the pace of change in business isn't anywhere near fast enough to meet the challenge posed by climate change, dwindling resources and myriad other environmental problems. Makower notes that carbon intensity - the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of GDP - decreased by 0.6% in 2008, the smallest decrease since 2002. (The faster carbon intensity decreases, the more output businesses get for their carbon.) The failure of green business so far to produce a Google-like success story - a company...
That's one more reason why the world must work together to reduce global carbon emissions to minimize the impact of climate change. The trouble is, though, CO2 cuts won't be enough. As a recent paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science points out, even if we are successful in cutting carbon emissions rapidly - hardly an easy task - the momentum of climate change will continue for centuries. That means our ability to adapt to the impacts of warming, including more aggressive responses to wildfires like those in Australia, will become all the more critical, lest natural...