11 December 2008

Pinto's Point

Green must go mainstream

By Jim Pinto

Three decades from now, we will need to feed another 2.5 billion people, two-fifths more than today. We should aim to provide them with at least 50-60% more food in order to ensure they are all adequately nourished and to cater to increased affluence.

This challenge compares with that of the first Green Revolution, when the world’s farmers expanded grain production by 164% in just three decades, a period when global population almost doubled. Can farmers do it again?

Today’s challenge is at least as big, and it is made tougher by decline in the environmental resource base: soil erosion, water shortages, desertification, acid rain, increased UV-B radiation, and global warming.

Whether it is because of the high fuel prices, or worries about global warming, or the recent financial crisis that reminds us our past success was only transitory, green environmentalism seems to be going mainstream.

Al Gore’s film about global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth” is the 3rd highest-grossing documentary in history. The nay-sayers are being ridiculed as oil-company pawns. A major poll finds more than two-thirds of Americans now believe global warming is having a serious impact, and it is necessary to take steps right away to counter its effects.

Companies are learning to make their profit by helping nature rather than by destroying it. Capital is shifting toward making green (money) through going green (environmentalism). That is a seminal shift into a different kind of economy.

Maybe because they are being forced to think this way, but automakers are finally getting serious about hybrids, expanding offerings and retooling gas-guzzling pickup trucks and SUVs as hybrids. Consumers are looking for more energy saving, which puts green builders and building products in demand. Skyrocketing energy prices are changing the math.

When energy costs were relatively low, making investments to reduce future costs was an uphill battle. But today’s energy costs moves the issue to simple fiscal responsibility. The financial crisis must shift the emphasis from the transitory illusion of success of the past to doing the important things for the future. Green will go mainstream.

Related links:

• CNN Money – Green goes mainstream:
  http://money.cnn.com/2006/04/14/real_estate/green_in_mainstream/index.htm
• InTech e-News – Green Means more Business:
  http://r.listpilot.net/c/isa/2p27nvr/1ha4e
• Newsweek review: Let’s Rally Around the Green Flag:
  http://www.newsweek.com/id/158747

Behind the byline

Jim Pinto is an industry analyst and founder of Action Instruments. You can e-mail him at jim@jimpinto.com or view his writings at www.JimPinto.com. Read the Table of Contents of his book, Pinto’s Points, at www.jimpinto.com/writings/points.html.