Jacob Gordon interviews green-business guru Joel Makower at Treehugger. Asked about green startups, Makower mentions some but adds,
“I’m less interested in these pure-play green companies than in the greening of big business, helping large, industrial companies, from utilities to plastics companies find their way in the emerging green economy. It’s no pipe dream; it’s starting to ramp nicely: companies as varied as GE, DuPont, Shaw Carpets, and Sharp are creating new products and services that have the potential to be game-changers from a sustainability perspective. What gets me up in the morning is the prospect of seeing these and other companies make radical shifts in their thinking about what they do and how they do it.
“Please understand, it’s not that I don’t care about the smaller, more progressive companies. I think they are our future. But we won’t have a future if we don’t bring old-line industrial companies into the fold.”
Q: If you could wave a magical eco-legislation wand and pass one law, what would it be?
“No question, it would be something that puts a fair price on carbon and other constrained resources. Note that I didn’t utter the ‘T’ word. I don’t believe there’s the political will for carbon or natural resource taxes, at least in the U.S., and there won’t be for some time. But there are other means of incentivizing green behavior on the part of consumers and industry, and in ways that won’t place an undue burden on the economically disadvantaged.”
Read the whole thing, and learn why he drives a BMW convertible (maybe Barack Obama and Dennis Hastert could learn something from his rationale).