No matter what your personal opinion is about climate change, there is no doubt that it is having a profound impact on the marketplace. A huge amount of attention is focused on what companies are doing and whether they are part of the problem or part of the solution.

Today more than 90% of peer-reviewed scientific studies say climate change is real and humans are contributing to it in one form or another.  Images that flash across the Weather Channel compete with the Chiller Channel for sheer horror as tornadoes devastate, rivers rise and flood, heat sears the nation, and cyclones leave thousands homeless or dead.  

All this attention, plus record-breaking energy prices, are motivating consumers across the globe to demand action.  

Billions of dollars are being invested in companies developing alternative energy and other sustainable technologies. Customers, shareholders and employees are pressing companies to reduce their carbon footprints and adopt other sustainability initiatives.  

The risk of inaction overwhelms the benefits of taking action to protect your hard-earned reputation and standing. We live at a time when opinion-driven news and commentary spreads like a virus. What does it say about your company if you don’t say or do something positive and proactive?  Can you afford to sit in silence on the sidelines?  The answer I think is a resounding no.

It is incumbent on every organization to state its actions and intentions. Not with platitudes and hot air, but with substance.  You have to say what you are doing and what you intend to do and state it clearly, precisely and without grandiosity.

Energy company commercials with central casting Granddads teaching their cherubic Grandsons how to fly fish are not going to do it.  We need to hear how much they are investing in alternative sources of energy that will get us off our addiction to foreign oil.  They need to show us that they are not just sucking money out of our pockets, but rather investing profits in a more sustainable future.  We have reached the point where it’s not just polar bears that are endangered, it’s us.

Once again it comes back to our basic premise that meaningful change is beginning to take place because the issue has become personal, not just planetary. With the East Coast boiling, the Mid-West flooding, and the West Coast burning, climate change is no longer something we can just talk about; it’s something we all have to do something about. Buying green, thinking green, talking green and insisting on green may not be the entire answer, but it is a start.

Developing, implementing, and effectively communicating a coherent sustainability strategy will cost real money, but failure to act will cost a lot more. Are there steps you can take now to protect and enhance your reputation?  What actions can you take to enhance your competitive position? Can you grow your business by developing green products that educated consumers will want to buy?  Those are just a few of the questions every business leader has to answer — not someday, but now.

Sustainability is one of those words that you hear repeated over and over again, but strangely enough most companies cannot decide what it really means.  According to The Economist, only 29% of executives surveyed have a coherent sustainability strategy.   Of those that do have a strategy, few communicate it effectively.

A recent commercial for a wind energy company took a predictable and ineffective approach by featuring lofty images, stirring music and a garbled message.  The commercial failed to take into account one of the Ten Commandments of Green Marketing, which is to appeal to the head as well as the heart.  Green consumers are more inquisitive, less trusting, and better informed than the average consumer.  

What really struck me about the commercial was its emphasis on local action, which was delivered by an announcer with an Australian accent.  It shows once again how big companies make big mistakes trying to appeal to green consumers.

Effective green marketing respects the consumer’s intelligence and delivers the message with authenticity and credibility.       

Some might think it is.  I think it’s more a question of accepting reality as it really is.  Our modern world consumes.   That’s a fact of life.   The question is can we accomplish something good for the planet as a whole if we understand and work with that? 

Gary Hirschberg of Stonyfield Yogurt faced just such a dilemma when their company was sold to Groupe Danone.  But he decided he could do more good for everyone concerned when he found a way to bring his product more mainstream and achieve greater distribution.

Visionary and author, Paul Hawken states, “Business is the only mechanism on the planet today powerful enough to produce the changes necessary to reverse global environmental and social degradation.”   Some of that business might include manufacturing green products.

In the perfect world, none of us would consume but that is not a possibility for planet Earth in the 21st century.   Our job and our quickest way to advance the green movement is to convert consumers from products that don’t promote planet health to green products that do.  The more believable and salient the green message, the faster and more effectively we can help accomplish that.  

Imagine if all of us switched to hybrids, non-polluting detergents, non-toxic cleaning supplies, reduced the chemical loads on our lawns and gardens, increased the amount of organics we ate, pressured officials to increase the amount of available alternative energy, went solar, reused, recycled and reduced.  

Wouldn’t that move all of us to a greener, more sustainable future?   Green commerce is not THE answer but is an answer to migrating as many consumers as we can to a better, greener and healthier way. 

That way we all win. 

Irv Weinberg