New Ways to Work Together : Environmentalists and business need not always be at odds
When the Environmental Defense Fund and McDonald’s reached agreement two years ago to replace the polystyrene “clamshells” in which the fast food giant served its hamburgers and chicken nuggets, EDF’s executive director hailed the compromise as “the beginning of a new era of environmental problem solving.”
Too often such statements heralding the new dawn of this or that are in retrospect notable largely for their hasty naivete. But at this point it appears that the fund’s approach of negotiating with large corporations to find cleaner and greener ways of doing business is paying off. And, amid this tentative indication of success, its approach is being copied by others.
Earlier this month, the New York-based EDF and General Motors announced that they had begun a “technical and policy dialogue” to find new ways to cut air pollution. Their discussions will focus on global warming and ways to reduce auto emissions and to encourage broader use of new automotive technologies, cost-effective vehicle emission standards and fuels. The “dialogue,” underwritten in part by a foundation grant, will likely produce a series of reports and policy recommendations.
Closer to home, a broad coalition of groups have reached agreement on an economic and environmental recovery plan for California. Among them are the Sierra Club; the California Council for Environmental and Economic Balance, a business-labor group, and the Ethnic Coalition, a coalition of local African-American, Latino and Asian-American policy leaders. Their plan consists of two bills currently before the state Legislature and a bond measure that proponents hope will be on the November ballot.
In a nutshell, the package offers a program for financing the construction of roads, sewers, schools, affordable housing and parks and for making available open-space funds for both neglected infrastructure development and conservation. The proposal is noteworthy because it represents the collective effort of groups that have not always seen eye to eye on the state’s long-term needs, particularly where economic and environmental concerns can collide. Passage of this package--with a price tag of up to $1.2 billion--will be difficult, especially in tight economic times.
The agreement for talks between the Environmental Defense Fund and General Motors, along with formulation of the proposal for California’s economic recovery, may signal that an increasing number of companies now view good environmental practices as good business. Such joint efforts, of course, are not an alternative to strong enforcement of existing regulations. But such cooperative efforts are at least hopeful signs of progress.
