Why Businesses Should Cut Carbon

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Wal-Mart is the lead dog, but many other big companies in other value chains are asking tough questions as well, in particular about carbon. And the best answer wins—more shelf space, more mind space, more money.

5. Attract and retain the best people. Even though unemployment is high right now, over the long term, the battle for good talent is still waging and will get worse. The next generation of workers cares about green and sees no trade-off between financial success and corporate social responsibility.

6. Drive innovation. Constraints are the mother of invention. Need to deliver your product or service with drastically less energy, toxicity, water, and other resource use? Then you better get thinking.

In addition, at the macro level, decoupling our economy and growth from carbon, and particularly oil, will...

7. Keep us safe. The U.S. sends over half a trillion dollars annually to parts of the world that fund extremism and terror. We put our troops at risk defending oil, and more will be at risk as climate change destabilizes regions and creates climate refugees. (Okay, so this point does have something to do with climate change.) See the American Security Project reports—from a group of distinguished former admirals and generals—which describe how climate change is a "threat multiplier."

8. Make the U.S. more competitive. We're losing the race to the clean energy future to China, Germany, and others. The pursuit of new technologies, a new grid, massive installations of new energy will create new jobs and invigorate the country.

These reasons have little to do with the science of climate change. Unfortunately, the focus on eliminating CO₂ as being solely about battling climate change has been misplaced, both from the environmental community and from the contrarian/skeptical community (such as the authors of Superfreakonomics). The business logic, instead, is compelling and unavoidable: all businesses must get much leaner on energy and carbon—for their own competitive advantage and survival. Get started now to be more profitable no matter what happens in the policy world.

HBR's Copenhagen Climate Talks Coverage

• Focus on the (Carbon) Negative
• Why the U.S. Should Build a Green City
• Are You Guilty of Personal Greenwashing?
• Eight Reasons Businesses Should Cut Carbon (that Have Nothing to Do with Climate Change)

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