Once The Cause, Now The Cure?

Big business was once thought of as all consuming with no concern for the environment and only cared about profits, with no accountability to regulators or shareholders. Much of this idea has come from the Robber Barons, in the 19th century. People like Vanderbilt, Carnegie, and Rockefeller. These were fierce business men who used every advantage they had to get ahead. An example of their ruthlessness was the strike in Homestead between Andrew Carnegie’s Carnegie Steel Company, and the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers, which ended in an actual gun battle where several people died. They were individuals who many people today still aspire to be like, especially business people. The government has added new rules and regulations to keep things from being as open and uncontrolled as they were during that time period. In today’s world the main goal for business is profit, and as much profit as is possible. For awhile many people thought these ideals and the idea of “going green” or taking care of our environment were very much in contrast, but recently companies have been finding ways to not only reconcile profits with being green, but to actually increase profits by going green.

There are three examples given in a recent New York Times article written by Jared Diamond-the Pulitzer Prize winning author of “Guns, Germs, and Steel”. The article discussed the strategies of Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola, and Chevron. Wal-Mart has been very focused on short-term profits, and to help increase immediate profitability. Wal-Mart has done things like install small auxiliary power units inside their trucks, allowing them to keep them heated or cooled during mandatory 10 hour breaks, but using less power than was traditionally used when they kept the truck engines running the entire time. This also helps to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions and has led to the equivalent of 18,300 cars being taken off the road. Wal-Mart has also shifted to getting their fish from certified sustainable fisheries which has helped them keep their costs down, because with the old fisheries the amount of fish would decrease causing a raise in prices. Coca-Cola has focused more on the long term. Coca-Cola is made locally in the places that it is sold, but making Coca-Cola requires water, a resource that is quickly becoming very scarce. Because of this the company has become extremely focused on water conservation, with goals like working on the conservation of seven of the world’s river basins, including the Rio Grande, Yangtze, Mekong, and Danube. The next company that is discussed in the article is Chevron, a company which most would think would be the last to focus on the environment. To quote the Jared Diamond article--“Not even in any national park have I seen such rigorous environmental protection as I encountered in five visits to new Chevron-managed oil fields in Papua New Guinea”. Chevron gave five reasons for focusing so much on the environment as well as how they justify it to their shareholders. The first is because they feel that preventing an oil spill is much cheaper than fixing it, second clean practices help keep landowners from becoming angry, third because the regulations on environmental protection are getting stricter all the time, and Chevron believed it would be much cheaper to do it right from the beginning instead of having to retrofit it later. Next having clean operations gives them an advantage of going into other countries, and finally having good practices make employees proud of their company and improves moral.

So we can see that three major companies which at one time in our history would most likely have had no concern for the environment have managed to do a complete 180 and make the environment one of their top priorities. All still being done with a focus on profits that would make the “robber barons” proud.
Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06diamond.html?pagewanted=2&_r=3&hp