Posted on 02/02/2006 10:50:47 AM PST by presidio9
Corporate America must face up to green and ethical challenges if they are to avoid disaster, former US Vice President Al Gore has told the BBC. Firms are so focused on delivering quarterly financial figures, he said, they lose sight of long-term trends.
"The quarterly reports might look good for a little while and then they fall off a cliff," he told BBC Radio 4 In Business presenter Peter Day.
The US car industry's problems is an example of consumer power, he said.
"Ford and General Motors are now in a state of crisis in the United States because they have missed the long term shift in consumer preferences and societal preferences toward more efficient automobiles with much less pollution," Mr Gore said.
Managing money
As such, it is not just US companies that need to change their ways.
Five years ago, a Supreme Court decision put George W Bush in the White House, leaving Mr Gore out in the cold.
Mr Gore shuns companies that pollute
He immediately changed direction.
"I went into investment management and very quickly began to notice some rather odd developments that seemed to me out of touch with reality," Mr Gore said.
"So many very significant factors that affect shareholders, that affect the health of the company were being sort of systematically ignored.
"And not only the environment, but also corporate ethics and stakeholder analysis; how're the communities where a company is located being dealt with?"
Bubble of unreality
Mr Gore said he firmly believed the impact a company has on the environment and on society affects both its underlying health and the price of its shares, and he believed ever more US business leaders are waking up to this new reality.
So he is putting his money where his mouth is.
In 2004, he and the former Goldman Sachs investment banker David Blood founded the international investment firm Generation Investment Management, which actively seeks to invest in companies that take a sustainable view of their business.
"David and I met privately with the chief executive of one of the largest companies in America," Mr Gore said.
"He has been a supporter of President Bush and still is, but he said to David and me in confidence: 'Let's face it, 15 minutes after President Bush leaves office the United States will have a new policy on climate change and carbon emissions'.
"I think the significance of that is that many business leaders are now looking at their 'hole cards' as we say in America, and realising America is in a kind of bubble of unreality.
"As soon as the current administration leaves, and perhaps before it leaves incidentally, there will be a change and those companies that get out in front of this curve are going to be better positioned," he predicted.
Mr Gore is also doing his best to spread the word.
He recently criss-crossed America to warn about global warming, at about 1,000 gatherings - a journey documented in the independent film "An Inconvenient Truth", which premiered at the Sundance film festival in Utah last week.
What about Chinese businesses, Al? Look at any map of the world and it's obvious that China is a gross polluter; cranking out multiple times more pollution per capita than the United States. And that's air, water and soil pollution.
Funny how the Kyoto accords and Al Bore only want to handicap U.S. businesses...
Turn green? The kind just before you puck?? Please point it at Gore.
I'm really tired of all the bloviating about oil from people who drive cars using gasoline, investing in stock portfolios full of companies, owned, operated and run by people and machines that use fuel. When I see one human person, evnironmentalist or not, who has totally divested themselves from any contact or relationship with oil, I will tip my hat to them and ask for tips on how to do the same. Until then, everybody bloviating about oil needs to shut up. No credibility - bunch of hypocrites.
Short this one ... as close to a sure thing as you're likely to find.
Hey Al, PLEASE just go away!!!
Can't he go green and just get planted somewhere.
"The quarterly reports might look good for a little while and then they fall off a cliff,"
Gore's an expert on GOING OFF THE EDGE!
Cue Kermit: "It's not easy being green..."
How about putting this loser a-hole in a LOCKBOX
Or what, he's gonna hold his breath???!?
"Occidental's investment in Gore has paid rich dividends. In late 1997 the Vice President championed the Administration's $3.65 billion sale to the company of the government's interest in the Elk Hills oilfield in Bakersfield, California, the largest privatization of federal property in US history."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20000522/silverstein
Interesting hit piece by the Nation, no less....
(yawn)
Gore knows as much about running a business as the Kennedys know about driving, skiing, flying and skippering a boat.
"US firms must go green, says Gore"
Even Occidental Chemical, creator of Love Canal and formerly run by Al Gore Sr.?
STFU, AL!
One could parse this a few ways. Is actively seeking to invest the same as actually investing? Does having a "sustainable view of their business" imply that other companies take an unsustainable view? What is the meaning of is?
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