How Small Business Can Slow Global Warming
No entrepreneurial firm can tackle huge environmental issues singlehandedly, but there is strength in numbers, says a green-business advocate.
CNNMoney:
Consider this: if all 19,700 members of the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) reduced their energy consumption by just 10%, they would save approximately $193 million in energy costs and eliminate more than one million tons of greenhouse gas emissions each year.
This is now underway. Early this year, nearly 500 auto dealers made a pledge to cut back as part of the NADA Energy Stewardship Initiative, launched in collaboration with EPA’s Energy Star Small Business program. NADA’s initiative is a good example of ’silver buckshot.’ No small business can combat global warming effectively on its own, but by aiming at the same target simultaneously, groups of entrepreneurial ventures can have significant impact.
The ’silver buckshot’ strategy has emerged from the growing recognition that a cap-and-trade program to reduce carbon emissions, important as that would be, does not constitute a silver bullet that will eliminate the threat. ‘Cap and Trade and More,’ an article written by Michael Northrop and David Sassoon in the June 2007 issue of Environmental Finance, notes that current efforts won’t reach 50% of emissions. Even if stronger limits on emissions were imposed today, the authors estimate that it could take up to a dozen years for the federal government to implement them.
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