Word: greenes
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...hardly bears pointing out that during these days of 7.6% unemployment, when the business pages of the local newspaper look more like the obituaries, no industry is doing well - and that includes green business. Wind and solar manufacturers, starved for credit, are cutting back on projects and laying off workers. Whole Foods, the organic food superstore, has seen its stock price drop more than 70% over the past year, and has cut back on planned expansions. Companies - including Time Inc., which publishes TIME and Time.com - have eliminated their sustainability officers, and the business press seems more concerned with plotting financial...
...true, why is Joel Makower feeling (relatively) optimistic? Because despite the current downturn, Makower, editor of the website GreenBiz.com and one of the best-known names in the field, has watched sustainability rise from a niche concern to something about which every executive must at least pretend to care. Green businesses may not be flourishing, but business is still going greener. Of course, the recession has restrained sustainability practices and as Makower writes in his just released State of Green Business report, whatever progress is currently being made may not be "addressing planetary problems at sufficient scale and speed." Regardless...
...building managers are now paying attention to energy efficiency, up 10% from the year before. "We're finally coming to grips with the financial and environmental cost of waste," says Makower. "It's exciting the amount of innovation that's coming out of this." (Read TIME's top 10 green stories...
...green isn't crashing, as 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...
...Makower says, the chief impediment to green business will be a lack of cash - just as it is for the rest of us. And like the rest of us, green businesses will be looking to Washington for a savior, hoping that President Barack Obama's promises to use stimulus spending to make the U.S. economy greener, leaner and cleaner was more than idle campaign talk. "If there's one thing I'd like to see from the Administration, it's a vision for what the green economy will look like," Makower says. "But right now, we're in uncharted territory...