New York City, October 22, 2005

These last few days I attended and participated at so many valuable
meetings
that I really did not get to report on them; I will try to integrate
them in
a couple of articles.

Monday, October 17, 2005, morning and early afternoon, at Columbia
University, a conference on “New Perspectives on Reforming the United
Nations” (two panels - “Reflecting on Successes and Obstacles”, and
“Opportunities for Achieving Real Reform at the UN”).

Monday, October 17, 2005, late afternoon, at Columbia University,
“Refining
and Fuels.”

Wednesday, October 19, 2005, morning, at the Citigroup Corporate
Headquarters Building, award s breakfast and meeting on “Beyond Grey
Pinstripes 2005 - preparing MBAs for social and environmental
stewardship”,
organized by The Aspen Institute Business and Society Program.

Wednesday, October 19, 2005, evening, organized by Nation Books at the
New
York Society for Ethical Culture, a meeting with authors Scott Ritter
and
Seymour Hersh on intelligence, the UN, and the start up of the war in
Iraq.
Going there I had to miss the meeting of the Regional Rail Working
Group of
the Consortium of Transit Advocacy Organizations.

Thursday, October 20, 2005, all morning, a meeting with Scientific
American
Magazine, organized by the Columbia University Earth Institute,
“Crossroads
for Planet Earth”.

Thursday, October 20 2005, late afternoon, Columbia University Earth
Institute Seminars on Sustainable Development, “Natural Hazards:
Barriers to
Human Development?”.

Friday, October 21, 2005, meeting of the American Branch of the
international Law Association, two sessions dealing with legal issues
related to climate change: ” Legal Issues in Carbon Finance and
Emissions
Trading’, and “Adjudicative approaches to Climate Change.”

Further, I would like to mention here also a previous seminar I did not
cover yet, of Tuesday, October 4, 2005, at the Center for Energy,
Marine
Transportation and Public Policy of Columbia University School of
International and Public Affairs (SIPA), that brought in Michael Grubb,
Chief Economist, UK Carbon Trust, and Professor at The Imperial College
Energy Studies Department, who spoke on the Economics of Greenhouse Gas
Mitigation. His presentation here was a warm-up for his testifying the
following day in Washington, DC, on the subject before a US
Congressional
Committee.

—————————

Having Introduced all these various events, I will proceed now to
report
only on one corner of these subjects, the business related aspect, and
the
other topics will be dealt with later. I will start with the October 19
“Business and Society Program”.

James A. Harmon, Chairman of the Board of the World Resources
Institute,
said in 1988 the WRI started to evaluate course work at business
schools and
in 1999 the Aspen Institute came on board and they created jointly the
Business and Society Program. First WRI was trying to help prospective
MBA
students to find schools that have social and environmental classes,
then
the new program came into existence in order to help business school
come up
with such coursework. Today, the thirty schools that are part of the
program
have 25% of their coursework that qualify under the program’s intent,
compared to only 8% in the schools that are not part of the program.
The
growing success regarding the increase in such courses comes because of
social and environmental consciousness among the prospective students,
but
also because of increased awareness on the part of an increasing number
of
corporations that work with governments, NGOs, and communities, in
order to
solve arising, or endemic, problems. Solving problems such as declining
ecosystems, climate change, water scarcity, endemic poverty, social
iniquities…, through innovation, are seen increasingly as business
growth
opportunities.

The Executive Director of the program told us that they looked at 91
business schools on six continents: 54% require a course in ethics,
corporate social responsibility, sustainability, or business and
society, up
from 45% in 2003 and 34% in 2001. “Beyond the Grey Pinstripes” is a
biennial
ranking of these business schools, spotlighting the schools that lead
the
way in integrating issues of social and environmental stewardship into
their
curricula. We got the list of the30 top ranking schools, and then the
top
ten schools got awards and the Deans had a chance to give a small
presentation.

This was followed by special awards to five young people who are
already
faculty members and who distinguished themselves as innovators in
various
areas, and this was followed by life-award giving to University of
Michigan
Distinguished Professor C.K. Prahalad who was one of the main
ideologues
pushing these programs.

From the presentations I marked myself courses such as Corporate
Transparency and Pollution Prevention at Stanford University. (Stanford
was
at the head of the list and young Assistant Professor of Operation,
Information, and Technology, Erica Plambeck got the “Rising Star”
award).
Research on Sustainability was mentioned by Dean Dezso Horwath of York
University in Toronto, Canada. U. of California at Berkeley is working
with
corporations such as Nike, Microsoft, HP, and one of the awardees was
Kellie
McElhaney who came across as a very enthusiastic Executive Director of
their
Center for Responsible Business.

Of the first five Schools, two are from the US, and one each from
Spain,
Canada, and Mexico. Looking at the complete list of 30 top ranking
schools -
four are from Canada, two from Spain, and one each from Mexico, UK,
Netherlands, Philippines, France, Finland, and the remaining 18 are
from the
USA. NYU, or Columbia, did not make it to be included, I am specially
curious about Columbia which is so prominent thanks to the Earth
Institute,
but seemingly the School of Business does not run its own courses;
I will eventually check into this. A young Professor of Management from
Rio
Grande do Sul, Brazil, was an awardee, but his school did not make it
to the
list; same thing regarding MIT - is this perhaps an attempt to
influence
those schools? Prof. Prahalad said that the biggest accomplishment
would
come if ten years from now there will be no need for these awards -
read
that every school will be doing the right thing.

Following the awards part, there was a panel discussion. My title for
this
article - GREEN IS GREEN - comes from a statement by Todd S. Thomson,
Chairman and CEO, global wealth management division of Citigroup, the
meeting’s host. Plainly this mean that if you do the right thing (you
are
green) you will also make a lot of dollars (that are green). Profits
and
social responsibility are connected he said. “Toyota succeeds but GM
and
Ford are disasters.” Social means that the individual will buy Toyota
and
here goes shareholder value. You also have the best people because you
want
to have a social standing. Profits and social responsibility are
connected.

Professor C.K. Prahalad put it even clearer: “The Social responsibility
of
business is always profits” the “means” are changing - we are used to
think
that they are maximizing shareholders equity, but the new starting
point is
“the opportunity for value creation” so the “means” are changing, we
still
want profits. So what does all this new reeducation do? We simply learn
better to recognize opportunities. Philanthropy has an agenda, the NGOs
have
an agenda, and now the corporations have their point of view for
looking up
an agenda - it is an opportunity.

Geoff Calvin, Senior editor-at-Large, Fortune Magazine, says that when
students enroll they are motivated towards the public, but schools
eventually were switching them from the public to the private and
delivering
them as 90% mercenaries and 10% missionaries.

A student remarked that there is an alternative for electricity
generation,
“we have to make this kind of work legitimate as an academic work.”

The discussion got more and more interesting, eventually we heard about
revenues and Prahalad started to ask for whom, and pointed out you must
maximize for the community and you gain for being part of the
community.
The company that serves a long range of shareholders will in the long
range
increase shareholder value. the employees and suppliers, among others,
are
also shareholders. Thompson wants to teach leadership - he chaired
leadership boards at Wharton - and knows that a managerial job requires
leadership.

———————————–

Now to the October 20-22 International Law Weekend, for which there
were on
Friday, October 21, two business legal panels. In some way, it is
possible
to see in the panel looking at legal issues in carbon finance and
emission
trading, a panel that believes that the Kyoto protocol mechanisms start
up
in 2005 could lead to a world of legal problems tat have to be dealt
with in
an organized fashion. on the other hand, the second panel on
adjudicative
approaches to climate change, because it seems that climate change may
have
dire implications for human institutions and ecosystems throughout the
world, while the UNFCCC is only moving at what the panel sees as a
“glacial
pace”,they prefer to look at alternative legal setups for the eventual
damages. This is an answer outside the Kyoto protocol negotiations.

The first panel was chaired by Laura Campbell, President of the Climate
Change Legal Foundation. Her panel consisted of Sabine Begg from IFC,
James
Cameron from Climate Change Capital- London, and Ed Zabrocki from
Morgan
Stanley Dean and Witter dealing with Emission Trading Contracts and
Markets.
It was a clearly technical panel.

The second panel was chaired by Wil Burns from Monterey Institute of
International Studies. His panel consisted of Donald Goldberg from the
Center for International Law, Prof. Andrew Strauss from Widener School
of
Law, and Prof. Hari Osofsky from U of Oregon. They tried to figure out
alternative international fora to deal with serious CO2 emitters. The
question is how to get the arm of the law to reach to transboundary
emitters. The problems are clear on solutions things are not so clear
yet
but , after watching the outcome of this year’s Montreal COP11/MOP1 I
may
find compelled to get back to the presenters and fish for possible
alternatives indeed. I regard the topic of high potential interest,
perhaps
even in the case that the KP shows some degree of success.

In the afternoon there was another panel of interest: “Is International
Law
a Threat to Democracy?” chaired by Prof. Andrew Strauss. His panel
included
Professors Richard Falk from U of California at Santa Barbara (the
left
extreme), Carol Gould, George Mason University(the right extreme),
Jeremy
Rabkin (right in Center), and Peter Spiro from U of Georgia.

In context of the trading in CO2 credits, I include here the October 4
presentation by Michael Grubb who worked on IPCCC reports addressing
the
economic, technological and social aspects of limiting GHG emissions
and has
advised a number of governments, companies on climate change. He is
editor-in-chief of the journal Climate Policy and is on the editorial
Board
of Energy Policy. He seems to think that trading in CO2 credits will
not be
sufficient and that eventually storing underground CO2 from new coal
fired
plants will be another option.