Business Believes in Global Warming. Shouldn't You?

The insurance industry is always way ahead of the times because they are a business that is ready to predict what won't happen so they can convince their customers what will happen.

There is a book by Jonathan Kozol, 'Savage Inequalities,' that examines the effects that basing funding of public schools on the property values in the neighborhoods of each individual school -- this, of course, means that the more money a neighborhood of individuals has, the more that the school receives from the government. In my opinion, it is one of the leading causes of poverty being a cycle. He found in his study that in East St. Louis, Illinois, which is just across the river from St. Louis, Missouri, that corporations go into an already underfunded area and build a factory with a chain link fence around it, call the grounds of their factory a city, and exempt themselves from property taxes to the city of East St. Louis. Futhermore, they pollute the area through the groundwater, and a city so poor that there were red lights that could no longer be operated or maintained, so they just dangle. The is a high rate of all kinds of diseases and there is sewage that backs up into the schools. The children walk through sewage mud around the school.

Businesses will only do what is best for their current bottom line. They are slaves to the shareholders and shareholders demand consistently increasing returns on their investments. You hear it everyday on the news - a company may be reporting a current quarter rise in profits, but if they predict lower profits for the next quarter, the price of their shares fall immediately, even though it is just a prediction based on a ficticious number.

In the case of the insurance industry, this move will save them money in the short and long term, thus pleasing their investors. In the case of other industries, they will only change if the change provides the same immediate result, regardless of their acceptance or denial of global warming.

"An Inconvenient Truth"
Whatever your politics, it's worth watching...

This post reminds me of a recent report from the British Gov't on the economic impact of Climate Change (a.k.a. Global Warming)... We stand to lose 20% of global GDP...

Nearly every business magazine out there is showcasing the many ways companies are thinking ahead--much more so than the current Administration--and acting in the best interests of all.

We often love to engage in corporation-bashing, and I do it too now and then, but the times are changing... and so is the business community. Check out last month's issue of FastCompany, for example (and you can check out that business magazine's website at fastcompany.com). Social Capitalism is big business. "Doing well by doing good" is definitely where it's at!