This five part YouTube series with now deceased TV newscaster Peter Jennings explores how the food industry spends billions of dollars to sabotage your health. Jennings also takes a critical look at the US government’s agricultural subsidy programmes, and the consequences of misguided government policies on diet and health. For example, sugar and fat receive …
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Self-inflicted terror in America
While we have come around to the notion that peace is an appropriate minimum standard of behaviour for developed countries it has never been an easy argument to make in our world today. The difficulty of fighting minds with armaments George Friedman, eminent strategic analyst, offers a sobering perspective on the fall-out from the American …
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SRI reduced sub-prime exposure
An interesting review of the run-up to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown shows that SR investors started considering the implications of sub-prime business exposure back in 1999 and a number of institutional SR investors adjusted portfolio exposure accordingly. It shows that investors who take a broader view of business (social and environment as well as economic) …
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Corporate attitudes to sustainability around the world
A new study by Harris Interactive explores attitudes toward sustainability among companies around the world. Their summary findings are: Waste reduction is considered the most important environmental issue in the USA; Brazil; Italy; Germany and China. Korea and India place more importance on developing green/environmentally friendly products. Overall, the use of renewable/cleaner energy sources is …
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CSR is growing up
The recent launch of Supercapitalism by Robert Reich which criticises CSR has stimulated debate about its role in private enterprise. You can see The Economist’s take here and an interview with the author by BusinessWeek here. It is naive, even primitive, to argue that corporations have no ethical dimension, rather it is increasingly their role …
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CSR increases profitability
According to a survey of more than 500 business executives by Grant Thornton, executives believe that corporate responsibility programs can positively impact their business and help achieve strategic goals. While commentary by traditionalists might suggest that CSR will be a cost, without benefit, only a quarter of survey respondents agreed that profits need be sacrificed, …
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Ethical guide to US business school programmes available.
Net Impact released Business as UNusual: The 2007 Net Impact Guide to Graduate Business Programs. Their second annual guide, written by students at 56 business schools, it highlights programs in CSR, sustainable management, and other socially responsible practices. Download the guide here.
Seeing how big that company’s footprint is
The September issue of Inside Innovation offers a clutch of interesting articles as usual, but this graphic caught my eye because it so clearly shows the relatively massive impact industry can have on the biosphere. There is a small proviso though: the banks with the small footprints are the organisations that fund the chemical companies …
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Socrates
Know Thyself Observing the world
The data on performance in Iraq is not good
As various reports on progress in Iraq are discussed by the US administration The Economist offered a briefing on Strategy in Iraq. You may browse Waiting for the general (and a miracle) America agonises over the pitfalls of staying in Iraq – and of leaving. This table sums up the dire situation, and, yet again, …
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