Business & Finance

With many companies in the goal-planning stage as they retire 2015 targets and set new ones, it is an appropriate time to evaluate our troubled relationship with carbon goals. Despite strong agreement within the scientific community that we need to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, Tim Greiner is not seeing goals that are bold enough to get us where we need to go.

With both Wal-Mart and Whole Foods moving aggressively to measure sustainability of their suppliers, Jeff Dlott believes meeting expectations of buyers can be both a requirement for doing business and a market opportunity for produce marketers. “Don’t kill the messenger, but sustainability is becoming a requirement in major markets,” said Dlott, president and CEO of SureHarvest, Soquel, Calif., at a workshop at the 2015 Potato Expo on Jan. 8. He urged suppliers to be clear on their target markets and align their strategy accordingly.

Electric utilities in the United States can expect an extra $12 billion a year in annual revenue by 2030 as heat waves increase the demand for air conditioning. Oil and gas companies may find it easier to drill in the Arctic, where sea ice is melting. But grocery manufacturers are shouldering hundreds of millions of dollars in unexpected costs as extreme weather disrupts their supply chains.

SureHarvest, a leading agrifood sustainability solutions company, announced that it is rolling out sustainability performance management software with three new clients – produce supply chain management company PRO*ACT, the California Cut Flower Commission and the Oregon Hazelnut Marketing Board. These organizations are deploying SMIS, SureHarvest’s secure online sustainability performance management platform.

Every year, the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) sends out a survey to PV solar manufacturers. Though companies do not have to respond, this does not stop the SVTC from evaluating them. It simply means there is less information and, consequently, they receive lower marks. The “Industry Leaders” on SVTC’s 5th annual 2014 scorecard are: Trina Solar (92), SunPower (88), Yingli Green Energy (81), SolarWorld (73) and REC (71).

While the practice of biodiversity conservation has matured over the past decade, decisions for proposed actions still commonly lack evidence-based and return on investment (ROI) frameworks. That picture, however, is beginning to change. Planners and practitioners are beginning to embrace operating frameworks similar to the “effectiveness revolution” in public health. Relatedly, rather than ignoring the economics of conservation practice, planners and practitioners are adopting approaches that incorporate the costs of interventions into prioritizations.

In a phone interview with The Huffington Post, Dennis Takahashi-Kelso, the Ocean Conservancy's executive vice president, said both Exxon and BP were reminders that plans for dealing with spills are meaningless if companies can't actually execute cleanup. Takahashi-Kelso was the Alaska Commissioner of Environmental Conservation during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and says that the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 was a "very substantial improvement." But companies still struggle with execution of the response plans when a spill does happen.

One of the ways our Fellows lead is by providing expert testimony before state and national legislative bodies. In March, Mike Wilson and Evan Hansen were called to testify before the U.S.