Word: immelt
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...Those close to Clinton say he has similarly ambitious hopes for his Clinton Global Initiative. In its inaugural conference last October in New York, Clinton brought together celebrities, business moguls and world leaders from Mick Jagger and Angelina Jolie to General Electric Chairman Jeff Immelt and Starbucks President Jim Donald to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. To be invited to the Davos-style gathering, each guest was expected to promise to do something specific within a year in one of the conference subject areas: worldwide poverty, religious conflict, corruption and global warming. It claimed...
...Jeff Immelt...
...Despite Immelt's pledge that it's a new green day at GE, it would be a mistake to think the company has quit protecting its less eco-friendly interests. GE has a history of opposing environmental regulations that don't suit the firm. In 2000, superstar lawyer Laurence Tribe asked the U.S. Supreme Court, on GE's behalf, to throw out EPA standards for smog and soot (the court declined). In 2003, GE was part of an industry coalition that lobbied for revised EPA regulations allowing utilities and refineries to modernize their oldest and dirtiest facilities, in some cases...
Told of the Taylor amendment, Immelt remarked, "I wasn't even aware that's the case ... We are who we are." GE would continue to defend its interests, he added. GE has reserved the cash for the Hudson cleanup, estimated to cost $500 million, and is cooperating with the EPA on a project design, he says. Nonetheless, the dredging operation, ordered in 2002 and scheduled to start in 2006, was recently delayed by a year. And GE may still legally challenge an EPA order to perform the cleanup or sue the agency to recoup costs...
Ultimately, GE's contradictory behavior on the environment is completely rational. Selling green goods represents growth and profit. Spending money to comply with antipollution laws and paying for cleanups represent cost centers--and every GE exec knows you reduce cost and feed growth. No wonder, then, that Immelt dismisses the naysayers on either side of his green initiative--the environmentalists who grouse that GE is being hypocritical and the conservatives who complain that companies should not spend an extra cent on the environment since that wastes economic resources. "There are just some people you don't listen to," he says...