Green Counsel

Celebrate Independents Week By Buying Locally and Helping the Environnment!

The American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) is celebrating "Independents Week" by asking people to take the Indie Challenge by purchasing as much as possible from your community's independently-owned businesses July 1-7.

AMIBA points out that buying locally keeps your money circulating in your community three times longer than buying at chains where most of it it leaves the community immediately. Buying locally also helps the environment by reducing supply chains (and corresponding transportation/green house gas emissions). "Locavores" -- a group that promotes eating locally -- publishes a list of "Top Twelve Reasons to Eat Locally" that includes freshness, taste, nutrition, purity, regional economic health, variety, soil stewardship, energy conservation, environmental protection, and cost.

Participants in "Independents Week" include the American Booksellers Association, American Specialty Toy Retailing Association, Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), Association of Retail Travel Agents, Coalition of Independent Music Stores, Council of Independent Restaurants of America, Institute for Local Self-Reliance/New Rules Project, National Grocers Association (NGA) and National Main Streets Center/National Trust for Historic Preservation.

To register your community, go here. For more information on purchasing localy, see AMIBA's "The Benefits of Doing Business Locally."

Tax Exempt Status for Businesses With A Triple Bottom Line

At the conference last week in Burlington, VT, for the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, there was much talk about companies with a Triple Bottom Line. Profits, yes, but also people and planet.

I wonder: what would it mean for our planet if businesses truly had a legally enforceable Triple Bottom Line? What if businesses were legally required, or agreed, to internalize all the costs that many now externalize? What if manufacturers incorporated the true life-cycle costs of their products (production and waste) as part of their business expenses? What if businesses valued their employees as much as they now do their shareholders?

Is it possible?

While it's unlikely -- at the moment, at least ;-) -- that government would legally require businesses to adopt a Triple Bottom Line, there is no legal reason why a business could not voluntarily create such a legally binding commitment in its articles of incorporation and bylaws.

And what should society do for a corporation that puts people and planet on a par with profits? Given the tremendous saving that accrues to society from a business that internalizes its environmental and societal costs, I'd say the business should be given a whopping tax benefit including, at least, tax exempt (or extremely reduced) status for profits, distributions and employee incomes.

To quote Gary Snyder: "We are defending our own space, and we are trying to protect the commons. More than the logic of self-interest inspires this: a true and selfless love of the land is the source of the undaunted spirit of my neighbours."

New Report Says Replacing Indian Point's Nuclear Power is Feasible

A National Academy of Sciences Report released yesterday indicated that there are no insurmountable technological obstacles to closing the Indian Point nuclear reactors in Westchester County, New York, although there are difficult political, regulatory, financial and institutional issues that have to be overcome to compensate for the loss of Indian Point's 2,000 megawatts of power.

Congresswoman Nita Lowey found the report very encouraging. She stated, "To me, the bottom line is, where there's a will there's a way [to close the plant]." Lowey said that the report shows that Indian Point is not necessary for meeting future power needs, despite estimations of a growing need for electricity. "A combination of strategies can replace the power produced by the plants and meet the state's growing need for electricity."

As the report points out, one of the best ways to save energy is through energy efficiency measures. Even the U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman last year indicated that U.S. homes waste about 30% of their energy because of things such as inefficient lighting and appliances, and poor insulation.

The two Indian Point plants will close unless they are relicensed by 2013 and 2015, which provides plenty of time to overcome the political, financial, regulatory and institutional issues.

Interestingly, the headline writers for the two major regional papers spun the report very differently. The headline in the June 7 Journal News, the local Gannett paper, stated: "Scientists Say Indian Point Power Replaceable." By contrast, The New York Times, in its morning June 7 newspaper stated: "U.S. Science Panel Sees Big Problems if Indian Point Reactors Are Closed." But even The Times seemed to waffle, since an earlier headline in the June 6 web edition stated: "N.Y. Grid Could Stand to Lose Reactors, Panel Says."

The National Academy of Sciences report is available for download. Its headline reads "Replacing Indian Point Nuclear Energy Feasible."