Waiting and hoping that public companies take action is problematic, not because they are evil or Republican, but because of the nature of the constraints on public companies. Public companies, by law, exist only to maximize return to shareholders. Any action taken by a public company that doesn’t maximize profit opens the management of the company up to the charge of breach of fiduciary duty. The only way to get public companies to do things that don’t directly result in profits is to convince them (by public pressure, e.g.) that the actions will eventually indirectly affect profitability.

So the most reliable ways to get public companies to act are:

1) write laws that take the choice out of their hands

2) write laws that provide incentives and/or penalties that get factored into the profit-maximizing equations.

A useful way to think of public companies is as robots, but this time following laws different from Asimov’s progressively personal laws:

1) maximize profit

2) don’t break the law (a cynic could say “don’t get caught breaking major laws”)

So it’s not surprising that corporations lobby to change laws that affect their ability to maximize profits, and that corporations are not proactive or charitable except where it gets them good PR.

True, it is public companies that engage in mergers which end up rewarding the fat cats profusely while shedding thousands of jobs. But big public companies are could be found to be quite liberal. It’s corporate America that has ushered in domestic partner benefits. My guess is that they are more diverse overall in hiring than small businesses (which tend to be family-run). Pension funds? The big industries are just about ready to have the feds bail them out. And about that big government: bring it on. Big companies feed of the trough of big government, though some of their showboating captains forget that when they run for office (H. Ross Perot, anyone?) With regards to regulation, sure, public companies fight it, but they’re used it by now, and if regulation ties up the little guys, they’re all for it.

On the other hand, it’s the small businessman who seems himself as the very model of the self-made Republican, and the little guy who personally feels the pinch at every tax and every regulations.

So I’d be very curious to read opinion polls comparing the worldviews of small vs. big businessman. If the big businessmen are actually favoring liberal-leaning, precautionary environmental policies (and, all apologies, this shouldn’t be a liberal vs. conservative issue), and those policies are getting no traction in Washington, it would be a bit of a shocker that big business doesn’t have the power that people think it does.

May I now be a broken record (from posts I made a while ago) and urge you to focus on green building? I think it’s misunderstood as more of a sideline issue, but the fact is that buildings account for more energy use than any other, and also for a large chunk of greenhouse gas emissions. And if we’re talking corporate behavior, the real estate industry is one of the biggest (*the* biggest?) in the country and has a huge impact not only economically but obviously on the environmental side.

Anyway, thanks for tonight’s show.

Also, not like it’s come up, but the whole idea of demonizing people for driving SUV’s is silly. When energy gets to be more expensive, you can laugh at those people.

Meanwhile we T-riding, apartment dwellers in the Hub are facing an energy “tax” increase of sorts– NStar has asked the state to raise electric rates by 25% for the coming year.

1) The vast majority of companies aren’t major visible players in the greenhouse gas or energy fields. (Think Wal-Mart, Dell, Proctor and Gamble, e.g., not Exxon and GM).

2) The true societal costs of greenhouse gas production are not imposed on companies (or people) generating them.

So, combining these two points, it is easy to see that it is cheaper for almost everyone to be a free-rider than to take steps to reduce greenhouse gases. The companies that will move first will be those that are most exposed to public pressure on the issue (BP, Ford, etc.). And it is hard to generate public pressure prior to a crisis becoming obvious.

To get ahead of the crisis curve, we have to identify and address greenhouse gas emission at the choke points. This means transportation vehicle makers, heating system makers, electricity generation equipment makers, appliance makers, etc. If we tax or reward those companies based on energy efficiency, the change will be propagated efficiently to the consuming companies and people without having to make the majority of people change their behavior or even be aware of the issue. And we are addressing the behavior of a limited set of companies, so the political effort to make the changes should be reasonable.

Another method is to tax energy consumption in all forms. This would have a large impact quickly, but this approach would face huge political obstacles since it would affect almost everyone.

Not that Exxon-Mobil’s behavior can be excused. Here’s a

list of organizations they’ve funded to counter global warming research.