 |
| The sun sets behind an oil well sited in the middle of a soybean field in 2008 near New Haven, Illinois, USA. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images |
For many years, the most compelling issue driving sustainability
efforts among businesses, consumers, governments and activists has been
climate change. We are all becoming increasingly concerned with the
impacts of rising temperatures and extreme weather events on our supply
chains, cities, transportation networks, agricultural industries, and
lives.
We have become increasingly alarmed about the results of burning too much coal, oil
and gas; the consequences of excessive emissions resulting from some of
the most useful substances humanity has ever harnessed. We have
identified our most important struggle – to maintain economic growth
while reducing carbon emissions.
Because our concern has been
first and foremost the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, we have
designed and sporadically implemented economic incentives to reduce
carbon emissions. We issue carbon credits to companies that emit less
carbon. We offer cash to countries who don't cut down their forests.
We
have trusted that oil reserves would hold out long enough for a
substitute to be developed, and focused on the impending catastrophe of
climate change. Peak oil
theories, so common a few years ago, were relegated to the back burner
as gas and oil were discovered in US shale deposits, the Artic thawed,
exposing the possibility of off-polar shore wells and much of northern
Alberta was transformed into bitumen mines.
Source: Guardian Sustainable Business Blog
Comments
Post a Comment