Eco-Officers are moving into executive suites

At many companies, sustainability officers are placed in the upper echelons of companies, where they are highly visible. In some cases, the CEO has taken on the extra duty.

By Tiffany Hsu

LA Times, December 30, 2009

During his more than three decades in real estate David Pogue played many roles, but environmental expert was never one of them.

That didn't stop his company, Los Angeles real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis, from naming him the company guru of all things eco-friendly nearly two years ago. Pogue suddenly found himself in charge of making the firm and its projects more energy efficient and environmentally conscious, an abrupt switch from his previous property-management responsibilities.

"I'm an outsider, a real estate guy trying to become an environmentalist," said Pogue, the company's national director of sustainability. "But I believe in what I do, that it's something bigger than myself."

As companies grapple with climate change, try to attract eco-conscious customers and develop alternative energy agendas while complying with regulations, a new kind of administrator is moving into the executive suite to help out.

Sustainability officers and green supervisors, some say, are successors to the diversity managers and innovation specialists of the 1990s -- with their focus equal parts corporate responsibility, public relations and profit.

"Our clients expect this," Pogue said. "A company of our size doesn't have the luxury any longer of not participating."

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Inventing A New Economy

Slate.com

By Eliot Spitzer 
Posted Monday, Dec. 28, 2009, at 4:09 PM ET

As the economic cataclysm of the past two years has unfolded, there has been no shortage of data to help us understand what has already happened and what might happen next. GDP growth, unemployment rates, trade and federal deficit levels, inflation rates, foreclosure rates, capital and leverage ratios—all have been paramount in our conversation.

As we continue to parse the economy and try to understand what the future holds, I want to focus occasionally on some numbers that do not typically generate headlines the way that, say, the monthly unemployment numbers do. Yet over the long run, these statistics may be a more important part of the larger economic story line. I call them "other numbers that matter."

The first of these data sets relates to patent applications. America's overall economy, we are often told, is increasingly reliant on America's "innovation economy." Our national economic rebirth will be spurred by our historic ability to create new methods of production and new technologies, which will keep us one step ahead of the competition even as we lose the comparative advantage we used to have based on other factors, such as size of market or access to capital.

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*Posted by Shelby. "One of our key assets in Jefferson County is incredible intellectual wealth. Invention, improvement, innovation and prototype development are areas we must continue to support and cultivate with care...this is the emerging economy!"

Poll: Action on climate will heat up economy, jobs

By DINA CAPPIELLO, Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

More Americans believe steps taken to reduce global warming pollution will help the U.S. economy than say such measures will hurt it. It's a sign the public is showing more faith in President Barack Obama's economic arguments for limiting heat-trapping gases than in Republican claims that the actions would kill jobs.

In an Associated Press-Stanford University poll, 40 percent said U.S. action to slow global warming in the future would create jobs. Slightly more, 46 percent, said it would boost the economy.
By contrast, less than a third said curbing climate change would hurt the economy and result in fewer jobs, a message Republican members of Congress plan to take to an international global warming conference in Copenhagen this week.

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