Tropophilia

Jeff Immelt, Chairman and CEO of General Electric, spoke at a conference I attended recently (though the conference was weeks ago, I’ve slowly written about it as I’ve digested the information). You can listen to the full audio of his remarks here. I’d like to–unfairly–use Immelt’s address as a starting point for a broader criticism of some in the corporate sector. I say unfairly, because in many ways Immelt said all of the right things; for instance:

• he argued that a cap-and-trade system is desperately needed in the US to curb carbon emissions
• he emphasized GE’s progress toward energy efficiency–both in their products and in their production processes
• he repeatedly underscored the importance of innovation, investing in R&D, and the power of larger companies like GE to try new clean tech ideas; as he said, “I don’t have to pick which technologies are going to work . . . I get to invest in all of them”

But he also voiced an argument for all things green that I find troublesome:

“being another company in the corporate social responsibility [movement around] the environment had no essential interest to me fundamentally, or to the people inside our company, or to our investors . . . what we set out to say is that green is green.”

I honestly believe that clean technology can and must be profitable (albeit oftentimes less profitable in the short term compared to traditional options) in order to be successful…but profit alone won’t bring about the change that we know is necessary. While focusing on the $green$ benefits of clean tech might be a necessary strategy in the current political and business environment, we should be careful to embrace innovation driven by unsustainable choices and priorities.

Because when we say “green is green” and brush aside environmental and sustainability concerns, we omit the fact that both types of green are needed–both economic growth built on innovation AND cleaner technologies that reduce our impact on the environment.  By placing a singular focus on profitability, we end up with “clean” coal and corn ethanol: innovative technologies that might encourage economic growth and lessen dependence on oil, but that are environmentally unsustainable and fail to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way.

Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of Flickr user Flipped Out.