BNET Intercom

Two Seattle-based organizations illustrate how the distinction is blurring between charities and businesses.  Grist is a popular news blog and Groundwire is a consulting shop that helps organizations build up their online capabilities. Grist competes with every other new media site for eyeballs and advertising dollars while Groundwire has to battle with every other ad agency for new website contracts.

But both have an inherent advantage over other service providers in the field.*  Because they have an environmental component to their missions, they are both classified as nonprofits.  That means they avoid paying many federal income taxes and can supplement their operating budgets with tax-exempt donations.

First off, it is worth noting that there are disadvantages with establishing an organization as a nonprofit.  The group’s founders cannot sell or cash out, for example.  And it’s not necessarily easier to rely on donors rather than just customers.

And finally, I am not accusing either of these groups of doing anything illegal or unethical.  Both have to make their cases to the IRS that they should qualify as tax-exempt charities working solely in the public’s interest and they’ve both been approved.

However, I’m not convinced that nonprofits with this level of commercial activity deserve the exact same tax breaks as pure charities.  Perhaps it’s time for Congress to clarify the rules.

*Disclosures: I’ve helped an environmental group with a media buy on Grist before.  I also own a for-profit online news site as well as a consulting practice that helps environmental groups, among others, develop websites.

Al Gore has made quite the comeback since losing to George W. Bush.  Back in 2000, the former Vice President couldn’t even pull off a proper kiss with his wife.  But now he’s a rockstar among environmentalists and other policy elites for his crusade against climate change.

It’s been three years since an “Inconvenient Truth” changed the debate.  But Gore is still all over the news.  This week, he’s on the cover of Newsweek. He’s also got a new book out called “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis.”

And there’s going to be even more Gore stories in the media as we approach next month’s UN summit in Copenhagen on climate change.  Gore recently sat down with CBS’ Katie Couric to make the case that America needs to act quickly to solve what he calls the “climate crisis.”

But many are growing skeptical over Gore’s fast push for laws that could fundementally alter our economy.  Perhaps that’s because Gore stands to profit off of legislation that regulates carbon emissions.  Gore’s green-tech investments could make him the planet’s first “carbon billionaire,” according to an estimate in the UK’s Daily Telegraph.

Last April, Republican Representative Marsha Blackburn gave Gore the chance “to clear the air about [his] motives, to which Gore replied, “Congresswoman, if you believe that the reason I have been working on this issue for 30 years is because of greed, you don’t know me.”

Do you take him for his word? Is it ok for Gore to make money from climate change legislation?  Please discuss below.

By 2050, between 200 million and 1 billion people could see their homelands devastated by floods and droughts due to climate change, says the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development.  And news reports say they are bound to threaten US borders as they seek refuge in the West, even though the legal status of these “climate exiles” is still up in the air.

Ahead of this year’s huge Copenhagen summit on climate change, there have been plenty of alarmist headlines in America’s major media outlets, many focusing on new reports which outline the chaos that could result from migration due to climate change.

However, if you actually go back and read these reports, you’ll see the fine print.  No one really knows how climate change will affect global migration patterns.  A few telling quotes from a few of the reports that are making the rounds:

• “The estimates of climate-change-induced migration are highly uncertain and ambiguous.” ~ World Bank’s “World Development Report 2010″
• “Estimates of the numbers of migrants and projections of future numbers are divergent and controversial, ranging from 25 to 50 million by the year 2010 to almost 700 million by 2050.”  ~ CARE International’s “In Search of Shelter”

Here’s a lead economist at the World Bank’s take on assumptions about mass climate-caused migration:

What concerns me more is that this simplistic viewpoint has very little factual analytical backing. Data on migration trends over time are bad. Data on climate change as they relate to migration are even worse. What is worse, migration experts are not necessarily talking to the experts on climate change.

The relationship between climate change and migration should be studied.  However, trying to scare Americans into taking action by suggesting Chinese refugees will soon be pitching tents in their front yards — that’s probably counter-productive.

92 percent of executives surveyed for MIT Sloan’s inaugural Business of Sustainability report claim that their company is “addressing sustainability in some way.” Considering that stat, it is somewhat surprising that we don’t hear more about the environmental moves of American businesses.  After all, you’ll always make some green by going green, right?

Well, not so fast. According to MIT Sloan Management Review’s editor-in-chief Michael S. Hopkins, even though companies such as Nike are taking green strides, they still tend to keep quiet about their efforts. That’s because some firms worry that their customers don’t really want them to go green:

Nike fears that by going out and saying look what we’ve done — and it’s really win win — customers will say “wait, I thought you created your product solely to make sure I got the best performance out of it. Sustainability has to compromise your other goal.” Nike is really worried about it, and as a result, they’re quite decidedly not pushing it.

The conventional wisdom suggests greener firms will usually win the reputation wars.  But apparently, consumers don’t always equate green with quality.

Have you ever decided not to purchase something that was marketed as green because you were skeptical that it wouldn’t work as well as the traditional option?  Please share your insights below.

Investors have been concerned about a “green bubble” from speculation in environmentally-friendly firms all year. Some even suggest that the bubble has already burst, at least in terms of support from politicians and the public. The most common bubble-beware argument suggests venture capitalists will repeat their dot-com mistakes and throw billions away at the green version of Pets.com.

But there are plenty of reasons why the dot-com/green-tech analogy doesn’t quite hold up.

For one, many investors have been, and still are, quite skeptical about whether the green revolution is real. Also, there have been no significant land grabs yet (with the possible exception of managing “smart” electric grids due to new regulations) brought on by advances as significant as the web browser, wireless internet or smart phones.

Furthermore, venture capitalists are playing it safe since there are so many possible ways to solve environmental problems and few established platforms from which to build upon.  In the green sector, patents and proven revenue sources matter more to funders than fancy ideas, brands and buzz, according to Bryan Korba, managing partner at Y Street Ventures, an investment firm with green interests.  And finally, the attitude seems to be that the green revolution will be a slow one that could take decades.  There are no green “get rich quick schemes” similar to flipping domain addresses.

However I could see a green bubble arising if the government meddles too much in the marketplace.  Consider the competition for the first mass-produced electric car between Fisker and Elon Musk’s Telsa Motors. The federal government has backed both of them up with roughly half a billion bucks at this point. Having your government pick the winners is sketchy but having the government pick everyone? That kind of guarantee is a recipe for disaster.

There are already a bunch of organizations (Fortune, the EPA, Greenpeace) which score American corporations on their environmental and social responsibility efforts. But this looks like the most ambitious effort to date by an authoritative third party.

Newsweek has ranked every company in the S&P 500 to determine the greenest large corporations in America. Their top 10 are HP, Dell, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, IBM, State Street, Nike, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Applied Materials and Starbucks. Ideally, rankings like this will cause corporations to take real steps towards sustainability as they fight for customers and talent.  Such a green arms race could theoretically save the planet and the American economy.

The magazine pulled in some heavyweights from academia (Yale’s Dan Esty), the nonprofit sector (John Steelman of NRDC) and the CSR consulting world to help them develop their methodology, which primarily factors in greenhouse gas emissions, water use, solid waste disposed and acid rain emissions. The data was normalized by revenue to allow comparisons between corporations of varying sizes.

But the apples and oranges issue will nonetheless fuel the debate over the validity of Newsweek’s effort, as green business consultant Joel Makover has noted:

It may not be surprising that half of the top-10 rated companies (as well as half of the top 20) are technology firms, and that 8 of the 10 lowest-rated are energy utility or coal-mining companies. That makes sense: Most tech companies don’t actually manufacture anything themselves these days — they mostly purchase components from other manufacturers — while utilities and mining companies are known to make quite a mess, in terms of emissions and other impacts.

Furthermore, many of Newsweek’s greenest corporations are conveniently consumer-oriented companies that are more likely to advertise with the weekly.  That might also contribute to skepticism.

If most people don’t really buy into these rankings, Newsweek may sell a few more magazines as the world keeps on turning as before.  Please share whether you think these rankings will make a difference in the comments section below.

Amid the fallout of the Van Jones (Obama’s former green jobs adviser) resignation, many are now questioning how the White House has been relying upon “czars” to execute the Administration’s agenda.

Technically just “advisers” to the President, the czar system, which has been around since Nixon, actually exploded during the George W. Bush reign.  Dubya pushed legislation through Congress which grants his advisers access to confidential information formally available only to those with Senate confirmation.  Since the czars work within the West Wing, they enjoy almost total immunity from any accountability to Congress under the claim of executive privilege, according to an analysis by FOX News’ Andrew Napolitano.

Having unelected, unaccountable “czars” running federal agencies and doling out taxpayer dollars is clearly unconstitutional.  Therefore, some Republicans are now suggesting a “shadow government” might be managing everything from health care, climate change and Afghanistan to the auto sector. GOP critics claim there could be between 30 and 44 czars in the White House. But their case obviously isn’t helped by the fact that about a third of those czar positions were there during the Bush years.

Congressman Patrick McHenry wants 44 of Obama’s advisers to testify before Congress to determine whether their duties are actually allowed by the Constitution.  From his open letter:

If the czars have high-level, decision-making authority as their titles would indicate, then it is my concern that their appointment without Senate approval represents a circumvention of our Constitutionally-mandated confirmation process.  On the other hand, if the czars have no actual power, then I am equally concerned that taxpayers are fronting the bill for the salaries of these figureheads and their staff.

Are you concerned about a “shadow government” run by czars?  Or are these advisers just helping to salvage the economy? Please share your thoughts below.

We will never really know how much the Federal Reserve’s policies alter markets, considering that news organizations like Fox have met legal resistance as they try to check the bank’s books on the public’s behalf.  Right now it’s an academic question as to whether the recent bailouts will cause the next bubble.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, for his part, won’t accept any responsibility for the financial crisis.  That’s because he thinks human beings have an “unquenchable capability” to think the good times will last and always “take speculative excesses” during times of prosperity.

“Unless somebody can find a way to change human nature, we will have more crises and none of them will look like this because no two crises have anything in common, except human nature,” Greenspan argued in a recent interview with the BBC.

So what are the leading candidates for the next bubble? Business Insider has offered its top ten. Here are a handful for them, listed below and edited down for length:

• The China Bubble: Many believe the [Chinese stock market's] rally has been driven purely by government-supplied liquidity, rather than fundamentals.
• The Green Bubble: As the economic recovery takes shape, alternative energy could see excess investment on hopes of big future returns.
• The Gold Bubble: With some predicting a doubling of prices to $2,000 an ounce, too many people could jump in and spike the real value of the precious metal.
• The Trash Stock Bubble: Shares of junk financials — companies like Fannie, Freddie, AIG, Citi and Bank of America — are being pushed up by a short squeeze.
• The Education Bubble: Last year, the amount borrowed by students and received by schools grew some 25% over the previous year, to $75.1 billion. [Yet] as many as one-third of all private colleges surveyed said they expected enrollment to drop in the next academic year.
• The Life Insurance Securitization Bubble: Wall Street is planning on securitizing “life settlements” — policies that the sick and elderly can sell for cash while they’re alive — much like it did subprime mortgages.

Where do you think the next economic bubble will arise?  Share your predictions in the comments section below.

Times are tough for the Obama Administration. Healthcare reform is on the ropes, partly because the President has acted like a timid politician rather than a leader. Even the President’s pitch to America’s schoolchildren has backfired. And Afghanistan is quickly becoming “Obama’s war.” Add it all up and the news has sent the President’s approval ratings to the lowest levels of his term, currently around 53%.

There is one area where Obama is still given the benefit of the doubt–the nascent green economy.  Obama has promised that millions of green jobs will materialize thanks to his policies, even though the quality and quantity of those green jobs is actually still up for debate.  But all things being equal, green jobs could be great jobs for the economy in the long run.  That’s why the job of Obama’s “Green Jobs” adviser, currently held by the Yale-educated lawyer Van Jones, is so important.

Unfortunately for the Obama Administration, Jones has been dogged down recently by two controversies.  Conservatives have always been skeptical of Jones.  And now they have their ammo.  There’s a tape on the web which catches Jones calling Republicans “a**holes.” And if that wasn’t bad enough, it turns out Jones signed a 9/11 Truth petition which questions whether the Bush Administration allowed the terrorist plot to happen.  Thus far, Jones has apologized for his past and the Obama Administration has weakly supported their green jobs advisor, saying “he continues to work in the administration.”

But as long as Jones works for the White House, entertainers like Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are going to have a field day with the controversy.

Do you think Jones needs to resign for the sake of the Presidency and the green economy?  Or should the Obama Administration stand up and defend its team?  Share your thoughts below.

It can be tough to draw conclusions from surveys that ask people their positions on social norms.  In other words, if you ask a consumer whether they care about the environment, they’ve been trained to say “yes,” even though their purchasing behavior suggests otherwise.

Nonetheless, marketing surveys have consistently found that roughly 3/4 of consumers could be roughly characterized as green (the light green/dark green divide is another story).  The Shelton Group, an ad agency focused on the green market, surveyed the consumers who could be classified as green and found six myths that are “shattering the stereotypes of the green consumer.” Here the are, edited down for length:

• Myth: Green consumers’ top concern is the environment. Greens still care more about the economy (59 percent) than the environment (8 percent).
• Myth: Green consumers’ main motivation when reducing their energy use is to save the planet. 73 percent are mainly motivated “to reduce my bills/control costs.”
• Myth: Green consumers are all-knowledgeable about environmental issues. 49 percent incorrectly believe C02 depletes the ozone layer.
• Myth: Green consumers fall into a simple demographic profile. While the study detected some demographic tendencies, it found that green consumers aren’t easily defined by their age, income or ethnicity.
• Myth: Children play a big part in influencing their parents to be green. Only 20 percent of respondents with children said their kids encouraged them to be greener.
• Myth: If people just knew the facts they’d make greener choices. Individuals who answered all of the science questions correctly did report participating in a significantly higher average number of green activities. However, the 25-34 age group consistently answered the question correctly, yet, on average, their green activity levels were lower than those of older respondents.

Are you surprised by this survey’s findings?  What do you think is the biggest “myth” about the green consumer movement?  Please share your thoughts below.