Want a green-collar job, but can't find one? Create your own

Great list that's going to reach 200 ideas over the next few days: http://greenbizplan.wordpress.com/200-green-businesses/

Greenwashing vs. Green Being

For a while there I just couldn't cope with, much less compete with the flood of green references as Earth Day approached, and even now as it slowly recedes, so I'm rethinking the value of this blog. More specifically, over the next few days while I"m on vacation in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, I'll be letting thoughts come into my mind without pressure. I'm hoping I'll come up with a new distinctive focus, and one hopes, value for it by then.

In the mean time, let's talk about greenwashing. Companies have clearly read the (green) tea leaves, and every media outlet from Advertising Age to Fox Television to The Harvard Business Review has a green glow to it these days.

While the Google Trends (nee zeitgeist) search doesn't yet have enough data to track the term, there are already sites devoted to debunking or at least tracking the claims. I like Greenwashingindex.com for its "advertising academic" approach to ads spotted by readers

, but there are plenty more.

Of course this is important, and I hope companies that are caught are exposed and punished in the marketplace for it, but I also hope it doesn't turn everyone cynical. There's plenty of cynicism as it is. In fact, I think that even greenwashing is on balance a good thing, because it means that companies are aware that's what their customers and prospects want. Naturally, some companies late to the party will try the quick and dirty approach, but I think the movement is real enough to withstand a certain amount of failures, even cynical ones. What do you think?

See you soon!

What shade of green are top CEOs?

Let's see: seasick green. That would be Red (really) Cavaney, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute: "I think there's no question that there is going to be some successor fuel to oil and gas. The issues is that the transition, for which nobody knows the duration, be managed...[Ethanol] is going to play an important role, but it's got to be a longer transition..."

Envy green: "The U.S. ambassador to Sweden is raising money for Swedish companies -- and the U.S. is glad he's doing so." (Okay, so to call it "envy" is cynical; let's make it envoy.)

Forest green: Jim Jungwirth, CEO of Jefferson State Forest Products is the poster boy. "The same movement that drove towns like Hayfork, Calif. to the brink of collapse is now giving them a second chance at life."

And of course, money green: John Doerr, partner in VC firm Kleiner, Perkins: "The internet market, $100 billion or so; the energy market, $6 trillion. This is the mother of all markets."

--From The Wall Street Journal's special section drawn from its Eco-nomics conference.

What time is it? Time to act

Of course it's been time to act for decades, but if you haven't yet, why not start today? That's what I'm doing.

This blog will chart my own learning curve about the things my or any business can do to reduce energy use, reuse, prevent waste -- measure progress, and get others to hop on the anti-global warming bandwagon, both within your company and in your community.

I have questions and huge areas where my knowledge is limited (construction techniques, zoning and permitting regulations, electrical wiring, and well, much much more), but with the Web at our fingertips (yes, we'll look at greening computing, too), I'm hoping we can both learn and make progress.

My first question, in stream-of-consciousness order only: what can we do about the banks of long-tube "sprawling" (opposite of compact?) fluorescent lights that blanket so many office buildings? But first, I think, is to assess your actual energy consumption, CO2 emissions, waste and so on. Open Eco, a joint project of Sun Microsystems and Natural Logic, is a good place to start. (See link at right.) I'll be back soon!