Business Warming to Environmental Issues

The Business Roundtable, a trade group of chief executives of leading U.S. companies, yesterday announced a new effort to improve the environment and society in general through a series of voluntary programs. Programs could include cutting energy use, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing waste products, or funding education programs. The effort is called SEE Change because it is an effort to improve society, the environment and the economy. Chief executive officers from Sun Microsystems, Xerox, DuPont, Dow Chemical, Office Depot and American Electric Power described their companies’ individual efforts at a press conference announcing the initiative yesterday. Although SEE Change is an effort to improve society in general, one clear focus is on environmental protection. The executives said embracing environmental protections such as reducing energy use or reducing pollution makes good business sense in attracting both socially conscious consumers and employees. But most also added that they would oppose efforts in Congress to mandate similar pro-environment goals, such as cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions. “Regulation is impossible to make work,” said Scott McNealy, who is the chairman and CEO of Sun Microsystems, in a typical response. That’s so, he and others indicated, because American business is too diverse for an overarching […]

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