Going Green Should Save Money and Environment

Good morning Mr. Trump,
You are on target greed consumes. I think envy, apathy, and bureaucracy are also part of the equation. Greed is what makes people profiting from specific products want to purchase the technology that eliminates demand for those products to be archived. Greed is what makes CEO's design great packages for their own departures instead of reinvesting. Greed motivates many to act in self interest at the expense of the greater good - often the fast buck instead of the long-term benefit. Envy motivates people to sabbotage efforts, programs, or technology, costing time, and energy to overcome. Apathy keeps gifted and talented ideas from ever being born, and bureaucracy can tie knots around creative endeavors before they even get started. For example, in our community, zoning has made it very difficult to start a home business. I think ignorance and fear of change also come to play. Not everyone has the ability to see the whole horizon. I think what makes America really great is freedom, our pioneer spirit, tolerance, and our ability to care for each other through volunteerism. So, now that you've identified the challenge, how do we work around it?

Give the man a cigar.

Finally somebody gets it.

I write about items like this all the time at http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com and I would like to invite all of you to take a look at this site because we need to work together to make America Strong and to stop those that would offshore American jobs and cripple the growth of their town, county, state and country in the pursuit of a better bottom line at all costs.

Virgil
http://www.KeepAmericaAtWork.com

"Finally, if corporations would see the big picture benefit in keeping manufacturing in the U.S..." Unfortunately, leaders in U.S. corporations have become very shortsighted and think only of their bottom line and the elusive "shareholder value" (i.e. - "my CEO bonus"). They forget that they need consumers with income who can afford to purchase their company's products, and the way to insure that is to keep people employed in THIS country. Henry Ford understood this concept, he developed ways to use the products farmers grew (corn, soy, etc.) to use in his cars so that they would have money to in turn buy HIS products. By supporting this country's economy he grew his own company and proliferated the use of the automobile. Simple but effective. Now look at the U.S. auto industry. We say it's caused by "corporate greed" well, lots of people work in corporations but only a few make the big decisions that hurt the overall economy. In my book that makes it personal greed.

If CEOs don't get it then the board of directors of various companies need to, but it doesn't help that the CEOs often serve on each others' boards causing a vicious cycle. Perhaps a grass-roots movement needs to start where shareholders begin to hold these boards accountable. Their decisions have lost the shareholders much money while they give each other huge bonuses.

You are absolutely correct. Unbridled greed is in part what caused the tremendous economic pain we as a people and as a country must now endure. As a residential appraiser I watched for years as the mortgage industry manipulated people into thinking they were getting the best possible interest rate or terms. In fact many people who were less sophisticated didn't realize that the eighth or quarter percent more they had to pay at the closing table was not the result of fluctuating rates but in fact a greedy move by the mortgage brokers or bankers at the most vulnerable time in the mortgage process for a buyer. That fractional increase allowed the mortgage companies to sell those loans for thousands of dollars more. It ultimately cost a buyer tens of thousand of dollars more in interest over the life of the loan.
But the mortgage industry was enabled by Wall Street firms that dealt in mortgage backed securities. The mortgage people were encouraged to come up with more creative, and more risky, mortgage products to allow less qualified buyers to enter the market. This created more loans which allowed more mortgage backed securities to be issued which also contributed to inflated home prices since demand was running ahead of supply. Eventually the bubble burst and the wind from it blew down the house of cards that Wall Street built. I'm not excusing regulators and politicians that dropped the ball, but greed was the energy that drove the engine. I was also totally shocked at former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's testimony before Congress that he believed that deregulation would be good since a free market would take care of all ill's. Incredible!!!! Greed is what allows the free market system to move forward. Morality is the brakes. Obviously we are long on greed and short on morality. I have been a fan of Mr. Greenspan for many years but of all people he should have been the most astute student of the "Great Depression" and the regulation that followed.
Well we are now in the thick of it and we must all work together to get out of this together.
Sorry if this appears to be a diversion from the 'going green' issue but recently when I hear of going green the first thing I think of is the green that the bankers and brokers lined their pockets with over the past 10 years.

Hello to all,

Mi name is Lia and I've been into environmental activities within the last few years, looking forward to stick to this for all my life. So I really found this as a nice surprise.

A vision I have of the future is that recycling will get mainstream. It is a no-brainer the fact that is easier to make new metal out of old metal instead of tossing away mountains, which requires a lot of energy and so on. I think that, for now, the "green" companies will make profit based on consumer's ignorance. Being an advocate for raising public environmental awareness some time ago, I only did an unpaid marketing job for this kind of companies.

Not being from the US, I wonder how things are going in there. (I live in the UK) Because I see a dilemma here -- as a consumer, should I get something "green" and expensive or something "gray" and cheap? If consumers are motivated by saving money, they choose the "gray" alternative. This is not good for the producing companies or the environment. If they are motivated by saving the environment they choose the "green" alternative, this is quite good for the producing companies. The environmentalists do the advertising for them, so they make even MORE money by not advertising too much.

The fact that they do get profits from customers' good intentions and ignorance is not so striking to me. Enterprises are, in my opinion, meant to provide goods and services to people, and making profit. I believe that the consumers aren't getting the shares because they simply don't buy them if they are available. At least in the economical systems I'm used to, if you're a company, make much profit, you grow, get public and have shareholders. Some of the money from customers turned into profits go to shareholders and that is where the money goes. The thing is that most customers who have some ecological awareness don't have financial awareness.

I don't know how much I was right about this, as I come from a different system. I am waiting for feedback, though, as I have much to learn.

Your view point is appropriate. Although I do not think it applies universally. I have a car service and have considered "Going Green" with a Hybrid Vehicle. I am holding off due to the increased costs. First, the gas mileage is not so very different. There are vehicles that get 25 miles highway and to move towards a vehicle that gets 30 is not much of a difference. Even if I believe the reports of 38 miles per gallon, the cost savings in fuel are not great enough. The added cost however comes into view at approximately 100,000 miles of use. At that time the battery will have to be replaced at a cost of approximately $7,000.00. As a car service, I am hoping to do 100,000 miles per year.

In this economy I really can not justify increasing my price to my clients to cover both a new vehicle and to cover the eventual replacement of that battery. My prices would have to increase nearly 70%.

Consumers have to look beyond the media portrayals of what they are trying to make popular. Going Green is good for the planet and is a direction we have to follow, but we have to do it mindfully.

Thank you for your feedback. You are right and I see your point. (I wish I knew your name, though -- member1659787).

i think that we do have to consider a cost-benefit approach if we're in business and we want to stick to the value of protecting the environment. Frankly I am not the biggest fan of this approach, as I do not trust money as the ultimate measure of value (especially these days) but it's the best one I know about. Things are not as they seem in this area of "green" products.

An observation I have to make is bitter, about both the environment and manufacturing. Within the last years the West saw, in many cases, an improvement of the quality of the environment. The London smog lost most of its power and it will become plain history. Some of this improvement in the environment is due to new technologies, some is due to moving manufacturing abroad (Asia) where they have now their share of increasing pollution. I know this from intuition, the press and Chinese friends but I don't know to what extent this is true, as data is hard to get. In my opinion, the environment in the European Union is on the improvement track.

Another bitter observation, as oil gets more expensive and people get poorer, we have less CO2 emissions from transportation. This could make happy the guys who blame CO2 on global warming, but a personal opinion is that a reduction in CO2 won't do too much to make city dwellers feel better with weather. An arid landscape such as a city heats up more rapidly during the day and has a higher average temperature than whatever natural landscape was there before it, even if you don't add extra greenhouse gas. This thing should be of interest to real estate developers as what they do with land influences the local climate, bits and pieces adding up to global effects. But I know no solution to this for now, other than parks in town (efficient buildings, but how? puzzles me). This is one of the reasons I'm here, as here should be some of the top real estate developers. :)

Hello everybody,

I am from Finland and I have noticed that there are same things here in my homecountry as there in USA that are focused right now. They are the financial crisis and Thinking Green. Here in Finland the price of the "Green products" are also little higher than those which have been growed as usual way with artificial fertilisers and with pesticides. We are nowadays researching the right ways to produce pure good food materials with less artificial manners. That have affects to many direction in the production line from fields to table and gives work to many researcher and also gives production alternatives to many company. You must only hope, that companies think that way too also further. So you can see that this Green Thinking can give living to many people and it is work that have impact to climate changing indirectly too. When we get global thinking to spread widely to all around the world it could have enormous effects even to financial crisis and to millions of peoples living. I think there must be some very influential and courageous person who are allowed to go to the conferences where these climate changing operations are handled and they should talk these things globally not only for the profit of they own. The thinking must get started from the bottom to top, from fields to table. The benefits from this operation would be available to everyone and all around the world, from ordinary people to companys.

"Do you also feel that corporate greed is keeping America from being as great as it could be?"

Interesting question and article. Do I feel that corporate greed is keeping America from being as great as it could be...
A certain amount of "greed" is necessary in a corporation I think. My long term goal will include giving a helping hand to those who are working hard to better their lives by finding solutions to their debt problems, getting their debt paid off and getting them into a home. Not in the way that has brought on this mortgage crisis by offering people mortgages to something they really cannot afford at the moment in the first place, but by taking a look at how they got to where they are, and seeing what they actually can afford, rather than what seems to work on paper. Personalized help is what I would like to offer (eventually). In order to do this and help the most amount of people, I would have to make sure I am taken care of first; that my business, my family, myself are all covered first, before I extend a helping hand to others. So if I have to take into account what will keep me and my ideas above the red line so that I can achieve my end goal and help more and more.

If a business spends money in order to go green in either research, or advertising or what not in order to achieve their goal of being able to offer something better for all of us and our world, then it will show up in the end cost. We don't always see all that is involved in bringing something to the shelves. Look at technology. When is it the most expensive? When it first appears on the shelf. Give it some time to pay for itself and the price starts to go down. Take a look at a mortgage. When it is new, the cost is very high. Over time, the mortgage gets paid down, you could (if needed, like in this market) afford to offer it for sale at a lower price than when you first bought it.

There is residential home contractor company here where I live who is just starting to create net zero homes. These homes will basically be off grid here in the city. They will be fully self supporting with solar panelling, geothermal loops which utilize heat from the ground here in Canada, and various other green options to keep the home energy efficient with low to no greenhouse gas emissions (if only they could also pay their own mortgage). This company wants to become fully green, offering 100% of their homes as net zero homes at no additional cost to the purchaser by the year 2015. However for the time being, they do have to offer these homes at a much higher purchase price than regular homes because it costs them so much more to build in this way.

Going green is still somewhat of a new idea. Give it some time. I believe once these new ideas start paying for themselves, they will be able to be offered at a lower price.

Then there is also the possibility that I don't know what the heck I am talking about, but it made sense to me.

The auto makers...

Is their difference in going ethanal to save them in finacial devestation? Maybe, there are ways to win in negotions at the time of the deals. It would be no different in going green.

Would policy dictate back to them for consumer incentives to help them develop better cars or gas?
iNOVATIONS...can be very sharp to win with loyal consumers.

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