Last month, I wrote about how some more economically advanced countries were helping the developing world to deal with the impacts of global warming. Far from the distant doom predicted by scientists and derided by climate change deniers, these warming impacts are already manifest in many areas of the world. But now, a professor at England’s University of East Anglia suggests developing countries ought to be channeling more effort into preparing for the near-term effects that changing weather patterns will have.

“Are we paying too much attention to uncertain long-term climate predictions - dominated by greenhouse gas-driven global warming,” asks Professor Mike Hulme, “whilst taking our eye off the more immediate weather futures which will determine the significance of climate for society over the next years and decades?” Professor Hulme’s recent BBC editorial questions the current focus on carbon emissions, citing irregular weather patterns that are becoming all too familiar in Europe. “We will never know empirically on any useful timescale whether or not we have accurate climate predictions for 2050.” He continues, “We may end up just as maladapted and just as exposed to weather risks as if we had ignored global warming entirely.”

Could this really be true? Global warming doctrine states that temperature change will occur gradually and imperceptibly until it is too late, most famously illustrated by the boiling frog in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. Yet many cities, even in developed nations, seem to be battening down for impending impacts. London has already announced a water management plan to prepare for heavy flooding, while in the U.S., the city of New Orleans continues to re-evaluate its storm protection systems. Clearly, while the temperature increases themselves may not be directly perceptible to humans, the impacts these increases have on the weather system are very real.

So is it time to start selling people on the immediate effects of global warming, rather than prophesying an unsustainable future some distance down the road? I’m not entirely certain, but I find myself leaning against it. Immediate effects are something that people can understand and endure. In a way, this makes them useful tools; walk instead of drive to the corner store and your basement won’t flood. But that might just encourage people to build more houses without basements.

Even worse, it might make people who do not yet suffer any of the consequences of global warming to continue in their unsustainable daily routines; my basement’s not flooding, so why should I care? The long-term goal of climate change prevention through emission reduction plays off people’s fears that their grandchildren’s basements will flood—and it will be their fault.

Most importantly, the focus on warming over flooding or overcast days attacks the problem at its root. Sure, short-term preparedness will save lives and keep the economy moving, but in the long run, our dollars will be better spend ensuring that today’s preparedness measures remain strictly short term.

Photo courtesy U.S. Geological Survey via Flickr

It's easy to get lulled into thinking that rising sea levels threaten only people who live in distant or obscure places -- places like the Tuvalu Islands in the South Pacific where tidal floods are lapping over crops with increasing frequency, forcing people to evacuate to New Zealand.

But right in the San Francisco Bay area, the Sacramento Delta has just joined those low-lying coastal regions that are the early victims of sea-level rise. This is a typical suburban area that boasts great salmon fishing and is home to one of the stars of the UC system, CalDavis, renowned for its environmental study programs.

A CalDavis-Public Policy Institute of California study has found that it will become increasingly beyond the ability of California taxpayers to keep shoring up levies to save specific tracts of the Sacramento Delta the next time it floods.  The study suggests that these areas should be abandoned.

While conceding that this is a controversial opinion and a very difficult conclusion for property owners to reach -- especially if they had received help following floods on prior occasions -- study spokesman, Professor Jay Lund, says, "I don't see any way they are not going to be losers, so the state policy should be that we all quit losing." Landowners would forfeit their property under the plan.

When a delta levee collapsed in 2004, the state and the federal government spent a combined $75 million to repair land worth only $22 million. Richard Howitt, a UC Davis economist who helped put together the study felt that this was an irresponsible use of public funds. “Throwing a lot of money at a low-value private asset is not something you want to do with taxpayer money very often,” he said.

The participants making this tough collective recommendation represented diverse disciplines: civil engineering, climate science, economics, hydrology and biology. They established the boundary between the areas that should be saved and the places that would be abandoned to the waves.

Triage decisions like this one are already being practiced by other low-lying coastal regions facing rising sea levels and costly climate change defenses. Seaside resorts on the coast of the UK are making an almost identical cost-benefit analysis, and relocating.

Inevitably, the financial issue is rushing to the fore. Who will pay? Who should pay relocation costs? The town of Kivalina in Alaska is filing a lawsuit against oil companies for redress. The Sundurbans were already a lost cause in 2003, but little financial assistance has been forthcoming for them.

Ten percent of the world's population (600 million people) live in coastal areas that are less than 33 feet above sea level, and are facing abandonment by their insurers. Furthermore, these direct climate change costs are in addition to the heavy price we already pay to repair damage caused by natural disasters like hurricanes and floods, which have increased four-fold in the last two decades.  Clearly there's no easy answer to the question of who will pay the price of climate change, except to say that we all will, to some degree.

Artwork by Dutch Artist Jaap Vliegenthart

Via MIT Tech Review

In a world where water is an increasingly precious resource, a desalination installation powered by sea, air and sunshine is likely to please any eco-geek.

A sweeping lattice design intended for Spain's Canary Islands combines Charles Paton's "seawater greenhouse" desalination technology with a public performance space called Teatro del Agua.

"Just as the Prius will replace the Hummer on our nation’s roads, the TeaDesalination Using Sun, Wind And Seatro del Agua will replace the energy-intensive desalination plants of old, worldwide," says Joe Mohr of Cleantechnica.

In this video, Paton demonstrates the project engineering, and discusses how clean-water solutions also help solve the planet's problems. Grimshaw, the architects responsible for the aesthetics of the design, say that the result should be the world's first harbor-side development that is entirely cooled and irrigated by natural means.

The entire structure is oriented to the prevailing northeasterly wind off the ocean, exploiting the natural resources of the islands. Any shoreline location with wind coming off the sea could work the same way.

The design consists of a gigantic honeycomb lattice, with smaller grids (pink) in each section of the lattice. The entire structure is really a series of solar panels, evaporators (pink) and condensers (blue).

First, hot salty air (hot pink arrows) flows through the grid (pink) on the right, toward the blue tubes, which are the condensers. They are filled with very cold seawater pumped up from the deep ocean (that's why it has to be next to a deepwater source, for the heat differential) with holes at the tops, under each solar panel "roof."

Solar-powered fans blow the cold ocean spray out, toward the pink grid, against the prevailing warm sea wind coming through the grid. The combination of cold spray and warm air causes the salt to dry on the grid.

Once the warm, humid sea air, cleansed of salt, reaches the columns, it is rapidly cooled by the  seawater inside each column. The resulting condensation drips down each column, sliding into containers at the bottom. It's stored underground, producing "enough fresh water to supply a city," according to Paton. That depends on the size of this desalination structure and the city size and population.

The diagram below shows how the flow rates could be controlled by louvers on the leeward side. The entire structure tilts so the flat "floors" you see in the diagram below are really solar panels -- that's why the structure is not built straight up and down, but rather angled to maximize the amount of sunlight hitting the panels.

This installation could be built in other places, but it has a few siting requirements. It has to be adjacent to a source of deep water and have steady wind direction off the water source. The place also has to be mostly sunny.

What makes Charles Paton's invention so exciting is that it uses the deep, cold ocean water/warm land air differential like the cold-water powered air-condioning systems that some cities and towns are turning to. But Paton takes that idea one step further -- this structure makes fresh water on a municipal scale using renewable power.

Charles Paton's previous project, the seawater greenhouse, also desalinates water naturally, using just sunshine, wind and seawater, and then uses that water to irrigate crops. He was lead engineer on Britain's Eden Project.

The simple technology has a lot of potential and the sweeping structure of the form is an inspiring change from fossil-fueled desalination plants this could replace.

Via Inhabitat

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Keeping with San Francisco's pioneering reputation, four Bay Area agencies joined forces in a groundbreaking effort to address climate change at a regional level.

Through a series of summits and meetings with government officials and members of the general public, they came up with recommendations on how the Bay Area can meet and surpass state and federal mandates of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, resulting in a draft plan, Transportation 2035: Change in Motion.

The four regional agencies: Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), Bay Area Air Quality Management District Oakland (BAAQMD), Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), had one common goal: to set an example for California, the nation, and the world.

“This plan is unique in that it integrates the goals of virtually all Bay Area transportation and regional growth agencies,” said Ted Droettboom, Regional Planning Program Director for the Bay Area’s Joint Policy Commission. “We all wish to break the cycle of worsening congestion, traffic delay and air quality. And for the first time, we added a new indicator: global warming.” All the agencies felt the urgency of addressing climate change.

California law AB 32 requires the reduction of carbon emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020, while California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger calls for an 80 percent reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Since 50 percent of the Bay Area’s greenhouse gas emissions are generated by carbon dioxides emitted from cars, the Change in Motion plan provides detailed recommendations for reducing dependency on cars, lowering congestion, and promoting public transit.

For instance, included in the plan are the MTC’s programs which encourage increased transit ridership, more walking and biking for short trips, congestion management and intelligent transportation system programs to reduce emissions through smoother, more efficient traffic flow.

Plan Recommendations

Specific recommendations in the transportation part of the plan include:

• High-occupancy toll lanes (HOT) lanes: Taking from the Europeans, HOT lanes are a way to lower congestion on city streets and highways.
• Land-use: Develop more regional “priority development areas,” communities with jobs and public transit.
• Technology development to address shrinking fuel supplies and dealing with vehicle emissions.
• Encourage the convenience of walking and biking and taking public transit.
• Encourage the development of Focused Growth communities.

High-Occupancy/Toll (HOT) Network

The plans for the regional HOT network involve converting existing High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. A HOT network, according to the agencies, provides the following benefits:

• Reductions in congestion and emissions, including carbon dioxide, by making more efficient use of the freeway system
• Providing a reliable travel option for express bus and carpools and those who choose to pay the toll
• Completing the HOV/HOT network 20 to 40 years sooner than if by relying on traditional state and local funding mechanisms.

Focused Growth

Participants in the workshops supported the concept of “Focused Growth” as way to help reduce greenhouse gases without compromising quality of life. Focused Growth describes compact, walkable, mixed-used communities, well served by transit.

Focused Growth can also reduce carbon by reducing the need to travel while also helping to revitalize distressed communities and improving public health by providing more opportunities to walk and bicycle. The principles of Focused Growth include:

• Expansion of transportation choices
• Pedestrian paths/trails
• Transit options
• Transit-oriented development
• Bicycle paths

Reduce Car Dependency

The planning attendees recognized that a paradigm shift is required to truly achieve climate protection. Lifestyle changes are required, especially the dependency on driving.

Even with all the technological improvements — new engines, smaller and lighter cars, emission control devices, and alternative fuels — the planners argued that the State’s aggressive greenhouse-gas target would not be met. Therefore, they emphasized changing driving behavior, particularly decreasing unnecessary trips and reducing excessively long trip lengths, and taking more public transportation.

According to Droettboom, Bay Area regional agencies are hampered in their promotion of the use of alternative fuel and electric cars due to limited funding and an absence of mandate. “There’s not a lot we can do at a regional level to encourage their use since it’s a funding and mandate issue,” he explains. “It’s up to individual entrepreneurs to develop the technology and government to support research and development. Cities and towns can encourage new technology through fleet purchases.”

All in all, the agency directors are pleased with the results of the plan. Final outreach meetings will be held in early October and the plan will be released in December for public review. The final plan is slated for adoption in March 2009.

Photo by Flickr user Alexander Steffler

 

In Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, a former coal town, agribusinesses were spreading sewage sludge on fields, and a mining company was dumping coal ash and river dredge into an empty strip mine. Three Superfund sites are also nearby.

Cathy Miorelli, a school nurse and mother of young children, grew concerned about the health implications of this waste, as she worked on a study documenting an elevated cancer rate in the area. That inspired her to run for a position on the borough council.  She won, and in 2006, helped Tamaqua pass one of the first laws granting ecosystems rights.

Legal rights for nature is an idea that has been around for at least 35 years, and since Tamaqua’s action, other municipalities in Pennsylvania have passed similar ordinances, partly in an effort to change the way humanity treats nature. Now Ecuador is considering the adoption of such a law nationally. These laws grant ecosystems “standing,” a legal term that means people can sue on their behalf if their right to exist is threatened.

The ordinances in Pennsylvania grew out of local governments’ attempts to control corporate activity in their jurisdictions. In 1995, the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF), a public interest law firm, began working in the state on behalf of local communities that were trying to stop certain activities -- such as factory farms, incinerators, quarries, and Wal-Mart stores -- from coming into their towns because they feared negative environmental and economic impacts.

Most communities began by passing ordinances banning the specific proposed activity. Given that state power trumps local, this strategy often proved ineffective, because the state had already permitted these activities. In addition, corporations today have won a wide range of constitutional rights and protections, including those afforded to people and granted in the 1st, 5th, and 14th amendments, said Mari Margil, associate director of CELDF. These rights allow corporations to override community laws, she said.

In response, CEDLF counseled towns to write laws restricting corporations’ rights within their jurisdictions. Still, state law supersedes these ordinances as well.

Because these corporate activities often cause air or water pollution or other environmental impact, legal strategists suggested granting ecosystems legally enforceable rights in the community. “It strengthens the hand of the community,” said Margil.

Ecosystem rights might seem radical in our society, where nature is treated as property. But activists at CEDLF say it is a continuation of the civil rights struggle that, in the United States, has included blacks and women.

For some, it is a significant leap to move from rights for people to rights for nature. Humans separated themselves philosophically from nature with an Enlightenment idea called the “Great Chain of Being,” a hierarchy ranking God at the top, then angels, then people, then various mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, fish, insects, and macrobiotic life. This ideology was handy for rationalizing human exploitation of nature and is at the root of our current law.

But Margil pointed out that as recently as 150 years ago, blacks and women were also considered property.  “There are always the people who will say something is radical,” she said. “But was it really radical to say that women should be rights-bearing people, or that African Americans should be? I don’t think that’s radical at all. It’s an expansion of rights, and I think this is very much in that vein.”

The campaign can be slow going. For example, in East Brunswick, the Pennsylvania attorney general is suing to overturn that township’s local ordinance that prohibits the use of sewage sludge. The state passed a law in 2005 that compels the attorney general to review complaints about local ordinances brought to its office. If the local ordinance is found to have restrictions greater than state law, the office must proceed with a negotiation or suit.

But Miorelli believes certain federal laws override this state-and-local struggle.  “The federal government tells me that I have a right to clean air, clean land, and clean water,” she said. “What’s more important than human life? No amount of money.”

Miorelli said that her town needs other municipalities to adopt similar ordinances to win legal strength. In addition, Tamaqua’s water source and reservoir sit in other townships, so she has been working to convince her neighbors to pass similar legislation.

“In Tamaqua we’ve opened the door for other communities,” said Miorelli. “I think we’ve shown that we, the people, can stand up to these big corporations and do the right thing and not be afraid.”

Ecuador has played host to major environmental offenses -- such as Texaco’s almost three decades of dumping toxic waste into waterways that sustain indigenous people – and, as a result, is primed to adopt such legislation. In a political reorganization designed to correct inequality and exclusion in government, the country is currently redrafting its constitution, which contains language granting nature rights.

These proposed laws seek to limit the economic activity of corporations and the state in favor of the common good, saying that no human activity will be allowed to endanger the regenerative processes of nature.

The Pachamama Alliance, a U.S.-based NGO that works with native Ecuadorans on protecting indigenous rights, suggested the language, which gained support from the indigenous and environmental movements, artists, media figures, and political sectors.

Attorney Mario Melo is advocacy coordinator at Pachamama and handled the legal aspects of the proposal. “The idea to recognize that nature isn't a ‘something’ but a ‘somebody’ who should have rights appealed to me because it picks up deep spiritual traditions that are still alive in Latin America and many other places in the world.” He continued, “It’s such a simple idea that has enormous ethical, legal, and political implications.... I saw in the rights of nature an opportunity to demolish old-fashioned systems that have taken the world to the brink of environmental disaster.”

Melo is not surprised that Ecuador is poised to be the first country to pass such legislation. He said it draws deeply from the well of its diverse cultures and ancestral traditions. “The indigenous peoples have been the main actors in the most important political moments of the two last decades,” he said. “For this reason, this innovative proposal that, while picking up ancient traditions faces the main problem of modernity, the environmental crisis, had to be well received by many national sectors.”

The new constitution has yet to be ratified, but Melo is optimistic.

Although the movement is still grassroots, it is critically important, said Margil, pointing to fishery and ecosystem collapses, global warming, and the energy crisis. In spite of many countries enacting major environmental laws, the health of the environment has declined significantly in the last 40 years, she said. “In this country and around the world, we have to recognize that these things aren’t working,” she said. “We need a fundamental change in our relationship with nature because we’re far exceeding our ability to live even close to sustainably on this earth.”

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Developed nations create the lion’s share of the world’s heat-trapping emissions, yet developing countries are invariably the first to face the growing consequences of a warming world.  It’s an unfair and unsustainable situation. But a possible solution has been put in motion by the British government, which hopes to “climate proof” the vulnerable nation of Bangladesh.

The low-lying south Asian nation, a former British colony, has been hard hit by climate patterns in recent years.  Despite some novel solutions to the problems this poses, the constant erosion and threat of land loss have had a tremendous impact on the nation’s already struggling economy.  As the UK’s International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander puts it, “Climate change is today's crisis, not tomorrow's risk, and is already affecting millions of people in Bangladesh

So, to the tune of $133 million, the UK government has begun a program of assistance to the beleaguered tropical nation. The idea isn’t simply to pick up the pieces and pay for restoration, but to fund a preparedness project. Rather than repair damaged schools, the funding will go to refitting school buildings on elevated platforms, to give them a better chance at evading destructive flood waters—an innovation seen in some houses in hurricane-prone regions of the US.  Other water-damage mitigations include proposals such as improving costal defenses, raising protective levies near urban areas and croplands, and distributing seed stocks that can better tolerate the salt and other chemicals laid down by the frequent inundations.  

These actions mark something of a change in direction for climate-mitigating efforts from more developed nations.  Previous strategies have consisted largely of pay-to-preserve efforts, in which developing nations received money for leaving natural areas untouched, or limiting their carbon emissions. This project marks a much more hands-on approach, aiming to reduce the impacts of corruption while creating a lasting impact on the people the funding was intended to protect in the first place. 

That having been said, previous efforts to fund development of climate change resources in the world’s poorest countries have largely been failures. The UN has two funds to help nations suffering the climate change/low GDP double-whammy, but little has been donated to them since their creation. Poverty-combating NGO Oxfam estimates that sums upwards of 50 billion dollars a year will be required to help poorer nations combat the negative effects of global warming. 

Still, this hand-up, not hand-out, approach represents an interesting new direction for aiding developing countries, and the improved stability it offers the Bangladeshi economy may seed more locally-driven, locally-funded efforts to combat the effects of harmful climate change in the near future.

Photo part of the image collection of the International Rice Research Institute

 

In order to mitigate deforestation from generations of forest clearing and land degradation due to climate change, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is working with Portugal’s landowners to ramp up the planting of cork oak trees.

According to WWF, cork trees “support one of the world’s highest levels of forest biodiversity, including endemic plants and endangered species such as the Iberian Lynx, the Iberian Imperial Eagle, and…the Barbary Deer.”

Halting deforestation ranks high among the many reasons this effort is important. WWF estimates that by increasing the country’s cork forest by 20 percent over the next 12 years, Portugal could effectively put an end to deforestation.

The tree adapts extremely well to a changing climate; cork trees have grown successfully under dry conditions, which climate modeling show is a real threat for the area. Cork trees are also efficient at regeneration. In fact, “as soon as the bark of the cork oak tree or the cork is removed, it is replaced by a new layer which begins growing once more," according to Portuguese Forestry. The ability to quickly renew its stock also makes for a lucrative economic boon to Portugal’s forestry service. 

One of the greatest benefits of the cork oak tree is its innate resistance to fire. With the help of the WWF, Portugal is working to prevent deforestation from wildfires by planting cork oak into fire-prone or potentially hazardous areas, such as around eucalyptus trees, which are highly flammable. Planted strategically, cork trees act to keep fires at bay, providing an important line of defense between fires and eucalyptus trees.

At around 25 years of maturity, the cork tissue material can be harvested for corkboard production and for other industries like wine making. According to an article in Portuguese Forestry, cork trees “can survive as long as 150 to 200 years, and production of cork is thus certain for a long duration.”

Cork tree farms can be -- and are -- passed down through generations of landowners' own family trees. Boosting the number of cork trees in Portugal will bring additional revenue to the country and help landowners make ends meet.

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Cork oak tree photo by Flickr user Francois Schnell
 

FELDA, the Malaysian land development authority, has announced plans to collaborate with the Brazilian Environment Minister, Carlos Minc, in the creation of a plan that would establish massive plantations of palm oil trees in Brazil and allow local farmers to count the non-native vegetation toward their quota of “legal forest reserve.” While many environmental groups object, the plan has massive potential to further Brazil’s status as a world leader in biofuel production.

One of the world’s great ecological ironies is that the soil that supports such tremendous biodiversity in the rainforest is incredibly nutrient-poor.  A repercussion of this fact in the rainforest-rich nation of Brazil is that biofuels crops common to the region, such as sugar cane and soybeans, have provided relatively little monetary incentive for added deforestation.

But the combined effort between Brazil and Malaysia, dubbed “Floresta Zero,” could make use of some 2.3 million square kilometers of land, roughly 18% more than could be used for sugar cane cultivation, and nearly seven times the area suitable for soy. In addition to the massively increased capacity, palm oil plantations could also slash unemployment in the South American nation, as they require around one farmhand for every tenth of a square kilometer.  

However, these massive economic gains could be coming at some dire environmental expense.  Allowing farmers to plant non-native species in depleted rainforest lands, while still counting them as renewed rainforest could have a domino effect, as palm oil trees force out the native species, pushing depleted lands further into the rainforest. 

On a more global scale, this destruction of rainforest habitat, combined with the energy required to grow, maintain, harvest and process the palm oil plants may make the payback time on any biofuels created from these plantations prohibitively long. Greenpeace, for example, has been particularly adamant in expressing this position. Diminished or non-existent carbon savings would dramatically reduce the value of palm oil biofuels in a potentially carbon-capped global market, reversing many of the economic gains that Floresta Zero offers.

While Minc insists that the economic benefits are well worth the environmental impacts, the best solution might be to study a smaller-scale implementation of palm oil plants first, before giving the go-ahead to a larger project.  Rather than the initial 100,000 hectare plot already approved, a tiny trial plantation would provide real-world data to allow a fair and quantitative comparison of the costs and benefits of this project, without making an irrevocable impact on the slowly recovering ecology of the nearby rainforest. 

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Photo by Flickr user Nicky Fernandes

Though environmental films and documentaries have a long record of winning international acclaim and drawing a wide international audience, they’ve all too often taken the form of head-turning fright pieces, or invectives against the excesses of corporate culture. But a new series of films produced by Coca-Cola, along with the beverage company's significant involvement in “greening up” the 2008 games, looks to reduce the divide between corporations and the widespread shift to sustainability, and instead focus on the cooperation of individual and corporate efforts to effect positive environmental change in the world. 

 

 The collection of films features biographical vignettes about seven of the Olympic torchbearers in this year’s historic, round-the-world torch relay.  Coca-Cola specially selected these seven individuals—referred to by the company as “environmental champions” because of their commitment to a variety of eco-friendly activities. The torchbearers ranged from the first American to ski to the South Pole to the Undersecretary General and Executive Director of the UN’s Program on Human Settlements, and represented every continent except for South America. 

The film, which will debut this Wednesday at the Beijing Olympic Games, is yet another piece of the environmental stewardship the games seem to have brought out in what is stereotypically an environmentally unfriendly country.  From the wind turbines that power the Olympic Village, to the solar collecting arrays of the Olympic stadium, to a vehicle fleet showcasing a variety of developing clean vehicle technologies, these games have been a rallying point for environmental awareness in China.

While setting an impressive precedent, the film is far from Coca-Cola’s biggest contribution to the Games. The long-time Olympic sponsor has invested heavily in its eKOfresh refrigeration units, which run on a natural, highly-efficient refrigerant, eliminating the danger of ozone-depleting CFC emissions, and decrease carbon footprint by using less energy. Over 5,600 of the units have been deployed at Olympic venues, reducing greenhouse emissions by 4,000 metric tons. 

The soda manufacturing giant also provided every 2008 Olympian with a complimentary T-shirt made from a cotton-recycled plastic blend, and has dispatched its own fleet of electric and human powered vehicles to help reduce both smog and global warming pollution.

It’s clear through efforts like Coca-Cola’s that corporations can and must be part of any solution for the long-term environmental preservation of the planet. While there is a long history of corporate pollution and regulatory side-stepping, the massive amounts of capital wielded by multi-national companies, as well as their unrivaled capacity to bring environmentally-friendly products to the consumer make them invaluable allies in a cleaner, more sustainable future.

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Photo by Flickr user bubbleofinterest

 

 

Students pursuing MBAs are looking for courses able to provide them with environmental perspective. And while the average business student seems to be interested in working for socially responsible employers, there is also an element of practicality involved.

Just a few years ago, corporations weren't specifically worried about greening business practices. There has been a rapid transition in the consumer psyche, and greener companies have had a marketing edge. Now, running a business in a sustainable manner has become essential rather than a marketing gimmick. Students have paid attention to this change and have realized that they have a lot to learn to join capitalize fully on the sustainability revolution.

Students have made a push for including environmental classes into business school curricula. No longer do they have to head off for special programs to learn environmental stewardship. The Aspen Institute has even started ranking schools on the basis on their environmental curricula — Stanford University holds the first spot on the institute's 'Beyond Grey Pinstripes' list.

According to a poll by Experience Inc., 81 percent of students say that it is important to work for a green company and 79 percent say that they would be more likely to accept a job offer from a green company over other options, assuming the offers were similar. Up until now, the real question has been whether those students -- with brand new MBAs in hand -- would be able to find the sort of socially responsible jobs they hoped for.

These days, though, there are no questions. Corporations need to fill positions that didn't exist ten years ago — jobs like environmental consultant, corporate governance specialist and ethics officer — and they're turning to students to take on the challenge. In only the past four years, the number of CSR jobs has grown 37 percent, according to Net Impact. 

The number of educational opportunities available to students interested in the field could still use a little improvement, however. Because of the relative youth of the field, internships are often limited. Many schools are still working to implement green curricula, and quite a few are still in the absolute beginning stages of the process. Many students are looking for educational options with more depth than those offered on many campuses. They're looking for classes that cover environmental issues on a macro level: how alternative fuels might affect shipping options, the costs and benefits of carbon offsets and similar issues. These students want case studies, facts and figures, and even textbooks. MBA programs are still working on providing them.

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