Moderator: We launched the good business network two years ago again with the intent of sort of modeling ourselves after the dot.com movement which as some of you may remember was fueled by a lot of social parties. This is our fifth event and we are delighted and grateful to eBay and Gary for hosting us tonight. Please everybody a round of applause for this wonderful stage of hospitality. You know it wasn't too long ago that "It's Not Easy Being Green" was the theme song of the environmental movement. Considered by even some on the left as fringe tree huggers, the reality of global warming has moved environmentalism to beyond the mainstream to the other extreme, with phrases like "Green washing" and "Go green" as Americas new favorite buzz words.
Betsy Rosenberg: Speaking of buzz.
Moderator: Exactly. Our topic tonight, "Silicon Valley's response to the Green movement, can we do more to save
Betsy Rosenberg: the environment?" is moderated by an environmental expert who has reported on it all. Oh Interesting.
Moderator: Betsy Rosenberg is a 25 year veteran of broadcast news, spending much of her career as an award winning reporter and anchor with the CBS radio network. After observing that the environmental news was missing from the daily mix at KCBS radio in San Francisco Betsy launched Trash Talk, waste reduction tips in a green mannered format. As she grew her beat from garbage to global warming over the last decade; Betsy changed the name to EcoTalk, reflecting the broader focus of her features. In 2004, EcoTalk went national in a one hour interview format on the Air America network and in 2006 became the first environmental program to air in a Monday to Friday Prime Time slot. Betsy is also the founder of "Don't Be Fueled! Mothers for Clean and Safe Vehicles", which I love. The first grassroots SUV awareness campaign created at 2002.
Betsy Rosenberg: Grass root exactly.
Moderator: Betsy is a passionate advocate for using mainstream media outlets to raise eco consciousness across America offering sound solutions for a healthier planet and people through public speaking opportunities across America. Please welcome Betsy Rosenberg.
Betsy Rosenberg: It's great to be here. It's always nice to be able to see my audience. It's kind of lonely in the studio. We do most of our interviews over the phone. And I think we have had a few people here on the program Steven Schneider, it's great to meet in person, Ted Smith and who else Alex from Green Office. Can you hear me all right? Its sounds a little echoy to me but okay. First of all I want to thank you for having this event, the good business network and eBay for hosting and sponsoring. It's a fabulous question, it's the right question at the right time and I can't wait to hear what's being done and of course we will have the lively discussion on what more needs to be done because I think we have the two things on our to do list before we become a sustainable nation in planet. I am going to spend just a couple of quick minutes introducing all of our well, less than two minutes, introducing our panelists. Then we will hear from each one of them and then I will ask them some questions and then we will open to your questions. So you will have the chance afterwards to raise your hand and ask whatever you like. So hold your questions till the end if you wouldn't mind. So as you heard Gary Dillabough is our host tonight. He is the Global Citizenship team member at eBay. He has been leading the efforts here to develop a Global Citizenship program. Gary and his team have begun work on developing a strategy and plan for this first of its kind program lot of first taking place now. Previously Gary was the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for eBay. Truly, when I am interviewing people it's always so nice to hear the Director of Environmental Affairs or the Director of Environmental Innovation, these titles, these jobs, didn't exist a couple of years ago. So that alone is a very encouraging sign. Our panelist is Robyn Beavers, who you most of you probably know. She joined Google back in 2004. There is something about Google I don't know, people seem to pay attention for some reason, and when under create the Corporate Environmental Programs teams through Google's internal strategy and business operations group. In this position she develops strategy for Google's investment in renewable energy for internal energy applications, incorporated green building elements into Google's showcase headquarters office including getting solar panels put on and is responsible for the development and implementation of the environmental programs at the company. And our third panelist is Steven Schneider who of course is the famous professor who has so many titles it's so impressive that it took me about 20 seconds to introduce just one title and I a minute later I think got through all of them. So I am going to shorten it a little bit if you don't mind. He is the Melvin and Joan Lane professor for this is the short version, Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies, a professor in the of Biological Sciences and Civil and Environmental Engineering, co-director for the Center for Environmental Science and Policy and a Senior Fellow with the Woods Institute for the Environment. Dr. Schneider focuses on Climate Change Science, integrated assessment of ecological and economic impacts of human-induced climate change you mean what's causing it? And identifying viable climate policies and technological solutions. And last but not least Ted Smith who I have been aware for years as the Toxics maven, he has been doing this I think even longer than I have and that's great to see still smiling. Ted Smith is the Head of course, the founder and Senior Strategist at Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition and he is currently the Senior Strategist as I just mentioned, he is also the co-founder and coordinator of the International Campaign for Responsible Technology, an international network committed to working for the development of sustainable non polluting technologies. So we are going to let them explain what all that is, all these impressive titles and acronyms and we will begin with Gary.
Gary Dillabough: Well. So what do you want to hear?
Betsy Rosenberg: What do we hear first? We would love to hear about eBay's eco awakening. When did you first become aware that this was something you wanted to take on as a corporation?
Gary Dillabough: You know I had we said that I mean, as all the stuff taking place around the environmental issue, one of the questions we asked was, well, let's start with our business, and that no I think we were very fortunate, the business model that was conducive for environmental friendly act. When you think about just our auction platform, certainly we had to reuse the platform every single day, our scale is very impressive, over the last eight or nine years over $100 billion that we used was transfered on the site. Then we started looking at the outline businesses like Skype and when we looked at the traditional telephone company the amount of resources it takes, the energy, the people, the real estate, the technology requests that they place there, Skype doesn't do that. I mean Skype is just an in incremental piece of peoples' computers and so in comparison to a traditional TELCO it's a fairly environmentally friendly platform and the same thing with PayPal. PayPal is you know, basically a paperless financial institution. There is no statements, no checks and when so we look at those things they were very fortunate to start with a green base but can we do more and that's what we have been exploring over a number of months, to figure our how we first understand those, quantify them and then try to build upon them and actually then build some specific programs that address our our corporate footprint, look at our transactional footprint and then look at our employees as well the community people that that we support and trying to figure out how we can build programs in education around all those areas and say, if we can figure this our we call make a big change together. And that's where we are focused on right now.
Betsy Rosenberg: And there is more to do?
Gary Dillabough: Oh there's a lot more to do. I think that you know one of the questions is when does the company become green. I think as we are learning more about companies like Google and Yahoo, how they approach these things that you never have an end state, that this is something that you have to be striving to, to get better and better all the time and that's one thing to that the world is trying to realize that there is no silver bullet, tomorrow we are not going to be green. This is something we build in the fabric of the way we think and hopefully that's where we get our employees too.
Betsy Rosenberg: You will take a lot of buck shot, that one, silver bullet, that's an Al Gore quote in the set up. Robyn?
Robyn Beavers: Well, I guess Google came into its green awakening very early on. I mean everyone from our top management to you know, the new hirers we have every week, many of them are very committed to this from the get go. So when our co-founders were done with the IPO and it was a little bit calmer, it was very clear that that were very excited to have the company engaged more and more in an environmental strategy. And a lot of that's just because they are excited about technology, its Silicon Valley right now is a great area to be learning a lot, being exposed to different option solutions, you know fund risky things and it just was a natural step I think. So just and looking you know and I think just any company that's looking at basic operation that you know, takes to run a company, buildings, people people getting to those buildings, they are all very you know, everyone has to deal with that and sort of highlight those sort of trivial things as very important elements to this you know, this whole subject is also exciting. So there is a lot of different people to think about it and trying out new technologies and new processes or just even you know, just talking about it a lot within the company has been important for us. But its very the more we are talking about it the more excited we get about it and you know, sharing with peers here and hopefully globally too is I don't want it to just be a Silicon Valley bubble thing. But you know, it is a great area here to be exposed you know, to different solutions.
Betsy Rosenberg: The innovating and then take it on the road.
Robyn Beavers: Yeah innovating and just trying things out. Talking about it, learning from it, data testing you know, it's all of those things.
Betsy Rosenberg: And they will want to hear about the Plug-In Hybrid Program that was just announced recently, that's exciting to a lot of people.
Robyn Beavers: Yeah, I mean -
Betsy Rosenberg: In the Bay Area you have been trying to get that started. Felix Kramer with CalCars have been working for
Robyn Beavers: Yeah.
Betsy Rosenberg: - seven years.
Robyn Beavers: I mean the Plug-In Hybrid initiative was exactly it was sort of like this pivotal moment that a lot of people have been waiting for. And I mean, probably many of you were there when they announced it. But that again was a great example of taking a risk on a technology that you can showcase easily, you make it cool, you can integrate it with other parts and other technologies available you know, plugs into the solar panels. You know our engineers worked on the data logging, it was a very you know a lot of different people put their hands in it and made something that worked really well. And I think we are only going to see more of those projects coming out.
Betsy Rosenberg: Okay. Dr. Schneider?
Steven Schneider: Yeah. How many of you know how much the state is committed to cut its green house gas emissions by 2050, thanks to the governor and now the legislature approval? Anybody want to yell out a number? 50 who said 80 give them good one right, bingo right. I remember so I was sitting there at that photo op because a couple of colleagues from Berkley and one from Stanford and I were on the state's Climate Advisory Committee and so our job to help figure out how to do this. So we were invited to this photo op to sit behind the governor and do it and he gets up there and he announces 80 percent and the economist from Berkeley sitting next to me who, unlike many of my economist friends actually thinks these is really good idea, leans over to me and said, "80 percent, my God! Steve I wish he had asked us first". How are we going to do 80 percent? So I mean my comment back and I have to do this when people in the audience ask, that's why I am going to preempt you on this is well supposing we don't supposing we only did 40. Right now we are going up. California is one of the few states in the country whose per capita emissions has been flat for the last several decades which is something which we can be very proud of, with an economy going up have flat emissions and I am going to come to that in a minute, Silicon Valley has something to say about that. That's what we call energy intensity or emissions intensity. But why are we going up, because they are increasing the number of people. Remember emissions is the number of people times the income times the emissions per income. So one of the things that you have to do is you have to ask about all three factors. Well, what's happening in the population, what's happening to the affluence growth rate and your Silicon Valley side, what about technology? The amount of economic product that is produced in the information world by moving electrons around on microchips with computers relative to the amount of economic product by moving logs around in diesel trucks is very different. So because California has been leading in that in that information age and producing the income that people want you are not going to win politically on static growth, that is no growth because then you are going to end up either freezing an equity between the haves and the have nots or having a redistribution without growth. Now you think you want to sell that political, try it. So one of the things that we have to do is invent our way out of this problem, so by becoming more efficient with each unit that we do and producing more, that's the way to help. That's part of a structural change in the economy. On the other hand what you do with the people who use to do that kind of work? So you can't just throw them out in the street because then it become a blocking coalition even if you thought it was ethical. So good governments governance requires two things. It requires a protection of the commons, setting up rules for performance standards efficiency, encouraging discovery and at the same time you also have to in fairness deal with the side payments diluted. Well two acts of good governance is not exactly easy to get these days, its hard enough to get one, and if any if you have spend any time inside of the Beltway you know exactly I mean. And it's getting a little bit better in the state. Finally, so I was in Washington testifying, couple of times in last few months and one of them was Ways and Means committee. That was very good because that's was not the usual suspect like the science and technology, they are little tax guys. So they are now beginning to realize, this is serious and we are going to have to get involved in it. And so one of them asked I mean it was pretty friendly, it was not this this really ugly scene that it had been ever since, probably the early 80s, where they actually invited witnesses with such credentials as that famous professor of Climatology, Professor Crichton and I mean we don't deal with that anymore. Ever since this last selection that stuff has stopped. It's really another place, we have real information. So one of the minority asked a good question, he said okay, we are little jealous, how come you guys in California have a Republican Governor with the strongest policy in the world, a legislature that despites fighting with him a little bit gets along and does that and I reminded, we are in a Mediterranean climate, that means it doesn't rain in the summer. So if you make it hotter, guess what? Water crisis, reduced snow pack, increased fires. And I said there is no such thing as a Democratic wildfire or a Republic drought. And as a result, finally when they both facing, getting kicked in the teeth or lower, they finally start to act together in doing the right thing and it's about time in Washington and we are closer than we have been, since, in the 37 years I have been working on this problem and I would argue four reasons and I will stop with this. We had Katrina which certainly the whole weather event was probably cranked up a little bit by the warmer oceans in the gulf, I mean the intensity. Number two we had Al Gore, who really did a lot to change consciousness. And number three, which is not so visible to the public but it is highly visible to me since I spent about half my time what is it Patricia when I talk to group, more than a half to corporate groups, because if we don't have people who understand risk management, have the capital and have the skills on board and we have them like we did for twenty years hiring attack-dog lobbyists to block everything in Washington. That has changed. That has changed in a big way and what it did is led to the fourth element which had smoked out the moderate Republicans, they actually exist. And they have been really pretty good on this issue and given the popularity of their President, it's a little safer for them to step out of the ideology that he brought to them. But that combination has been in a way a perfect storm for getting somewhere. So we have to continue that co- operative partnership between academics, environmentalists, corporate world and the honest politicians, not always an oxymoron, that starting to forge a coalition that might actually make a difference.
Betsy Rosenberg: We will just chase Arnold; he will be fading off in the sunset in his Hydrogen Hummer.
Steven Schneider: Yeah, I know.
Betsy Rosenberg: You know when he after -.
Steven Schneider: Yeah, I know I know. Somebody has asked me that question. Come on, how do you know that he is for real? I mean okay, we know his wife will kill him if he doesn't do it. But how do we really know? And I said I never judge anybody by what they say. I would judge them by who they hire? And you take a look at the people that he brought in to do it.
Betsy Rosenberg: Terry Tamminen.
Steven Schneider: Well yeah and Linda Adams, Bob Sawyer, the people he reappointed, Art Rosenfeld, who is the father of saving more tons of CO2 and more dollars in efficiency than any body on the planet, by about ten times, and all those people who he brought in. So if he brought those guys in, and I don't mean that he personally did it, probably Terry did it, but he set the tone, bringing in the people who can do it, that tells me he is serious. So what I my whole stick is co-operation. You can't solve a problem where everybody is a piece of it, both the consequences and the solution if you don't have some cooperation. I know that's not everybody, some you can't, but if you get enough, you can start making progress and we are now moving more rapidly than I have seen before unless you think I am a wild optimist, it's way too slow relative to what's needed, but at least it is in the right direction.
Betsy Rosenberg: And I knew he was serious when his staff confirmed that he had in fact gotten rid of six out of seven of his Hummers and the last one was convert into hydrogen. I mean there is something called integrity you know, probably, being in alignment with what you are talking about and even doing.
Steven Schneider: I think he simply didn't know. And then all of a sudden he started to become aware and was sort of stuck in this image.
Betsy Rosenberg: Yeah. But that was -.
Steven Schneider: But I don't know I don't know him personally and neither do his people.
Betsy Rosenberg: And that's that's the good news because once we all know more you know, you can put the genie back in bottle. So if Arnold can do an eco U-turn let's hope for the rest of the country.
Steven Schneider: Pat Robertson?
Betsy Rosenberg: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know about Inhofe, Jim Inhofe, hopeless cause I think.
Steven Schneider: That's the Senate's prevaricated program [0:19:15] ____ come up with him, yeah.
Betsy Rosenberg: And Michael Crichton, yeah. And this guy named Chris Horner who just wrote a book called The Politically Incorrect Guide to Environmentalism and Global Warming. I was on the Sean Hannity Show. He was they were attacking Al Gore and I went on to defend Al Gore's energies in his home and the Zinc, mined Zinc when they were attacking him for inheriting land that his father had formally had a Zinc mine on that was inactive for four years and and when it became Gore is apologist, but these this guy Chris Horner wrote this book and it's just spilling garbage and they have him on a lot they well, people like that I digress, Ted.
Ted Smith: This year Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition is celebrating our 20th anniversary and it has given me some time to think a little bit about what some of the lessons learnt are. I just wanted to start by saying there are some cards in the back, I hope you will pick up about our 25th anniversary celebrations in the October 14th, we hope you can join us and there are latest news that is also out there. In terms of reflecting, I will come up with just a few ideas on trying to talk about how important is to define the the issues broadly or to define the framework of what it is we are dealing with. And I wanted to go through just a few of these things. We started out thinking that the problem was cleaning up the ground water contamination in Silicon Valley. We discovered it in 1982, there was massive ground water contamination and what has led to all the super clean sites here. We have more super clean sites than any place in the country now. We were we were wrong thinking the solution was clean up. I mean as we evolved and we learnt that the solution is actually prevention, and that holds true across the board. It's not just on ground water, it's on everything. So that's a real redefinition of the problem. We also learnt that you have to look at the entire life cycle of a situation and in our case we have to look at the entire life cycle or the electronic production which is what our we focus on. If you don't take into account the mining, the actual production, the use and the end of life and assess all the impacts and try to create solutions that are going to work across the board then you are in danger really of missing the the right solution. We need to address the root causes and the fundamentals of what it is we are dealing with. One of the slides up here is is Moore's law which is the fundamental driving motivation of this whole industry. It's the miracle really that has driven the innovation that Silicon Valley has become known for. But we need to figure out how to de-link innovation from all these lessons on waste and and you know about the growing e-waste crisis. There is a map back here that shows how e-waste is being exported now from the US all around the world. We have done a report called Exporting Harm which documented all that. We have a long way to go to figure out how to de-link the the good parts of Moore's law from the down side. And we have developed a vision statement at Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition; I just want to share with you because again I think in terms of framing where it is we are trying to go this is helpful. So it's we need to envision a toxic free future where each new generation of technical improvements, electronic products includes parallel and proportionate advances in social and environmental justice. Our goal is environmental sustainability and clean production, improved health and democratic decision making in communities and workers most affected by the Hi-tech revolution. So if that's the framework, if that's the vision of where we are trying to go that really helps to figure out what it is we need to address first and have to sequence things. We also realize that that we need to prevent the not only the health and the environmental damage but understanding that it's way too late and too costly to clean it up. Once people have gotten sick working around the chemicals on the job, once people have gotten sick from drinking contaminated water or breathing bad air it's way too late for for that family, for their health and it's way more expensive to have to try to provide healthcare than it is to just prevent things in the first place. So what we have to do is to internalize the cost that we are currently externalizing. Next we need doing better policies. I agree with Steve and others that we are really making some significant progress in global warming and much more than I would have ever imagined five years ago. I can't say the same thing for chemical policy; I can't say the same thing for producer responsibility kinds of legislation and policy initiatives, at least in this country. And in fact my perspective is the US is not only the international outlier, we are falling further behind the rest of the world. The US has not only not signed the Kyoto Treaty, there are some many, many other environmental treaties that the US has not signed including the Basel Convention which is the treaty that prohibits the export of hazardous wastes and US is the only major country to not sign that and endorse it Basel BAN. So my perspective is that we are losing ground we are we are following Europe, we are trying to follow Europe which is where most of the innovations coming from in the policy arena with the new laws to promote producer responsibility for the full life cycle of products. Promoting restriction on hazardous substances, requiring the phase out of some of the worst chemicals, again we are playing catch up to that, we are trying to do that in the US. Congress is not ready for that at all but we are making progress at various states. I also think we need to link human rights with environmental protection. It's not good enough to just protect the environment. We need to build a base of people who were the most affected by the implications of what's going on right now. If we can do that we can then win politically. And if we can't we are not only missing the boat politically but we are also allowing injustice to go on. If people are going to be swamped on the island communities in this world from global warming, it's also true that people making iPods and the iPhones right now often times work under sweatshop conditions. If we don't understand that and create policies and initiatives that take that into account in our activities then I think we are again we are missing the boat. And then I think we need to use our purchasing power of a lot more effectively, individually as well as in terms of our institutions. We were involved in a campus campaign at the University of California this past year where we got the University to actually establish purchasing requirements now for newly electronic equipment. They are the most innovative around the world. It's really helping to drive greener production in terms of computer technology. We think that that's an approach that they can really make a lot of difference as is the Socially Responsible Investment Movement. And then I think that we need to reward good behavior and expose bad behavior. We have taken a n approach of trying to focus on leaders and laggards and I think we need a lot more effort in terms of, kind of a report card approach, and we need to figure out how do we agree on, what are the criteria for defining what we think is green? I think these are some of the challenges that we are going to be facing over the next 25 years. And we have to be able to distinguish what's really green from green washing, it was mentioned before. And I think again this is going to be one of the real key issues as we move forward. And then finally as individuals what can people do working within the Silicon Valley companies? There is an awful lot and I know people here in this room are probably representative of what people are doing. You can volunteer in the community, you can join environmental groups, you can contribute, you can get involved politically. eBay has been able to use their website with a thing they call Rethink which is actually allows people to help find environmentally responsible recyclers when they are getting rid of old computers. So to be able to use the actual facilities that are actually the business of some of these groups, I think can be really helpful. And as we move forward in the next 25 years I think these are some of the issues that we are going to be be facing and are going to be our challenges. We have tried to document a lot of these stories in a book that was published this past year called "Challenging the chip" and if anybody is interested in looking at that more there is a lot of information on what people all around the world are doing to try to help bring about a much more sustainable industry.
Betsy Rosenberg: Okay. I think one of the most shocking things I heard in the course of my ten years doing the Green Minutes on KCBS, and it was real wakeup call for me, was that Hewlett Packard was actually building computers for export to Europe in a different way than the ones to South America, that they were recycle friendly, designed for disassembly, why, because there was demand, there was a mandate for that in Germany and other forward thinking European nations when we hadn't thought to ask or don't care enough to ask. And has that changed?
Ted Smith: Yeah and in fact HP has been one of the real leaders in trying to push that whole thing. And it has been changed priorly because of the laws coming out of Europe and then one of the laws there simply says, if you wanted to do business in Europe, you have to follow our rules. That's a very powerful law. We don't have any kind of global rule making body that can do that but when you can tie it to sales and the ability of companies itself that the companies really listen to that. But HP has certainly been one of the real leaders in terms of the global rethinking of producer responsibility; we work with them quite closely on policy issues at this point.
Betsy Rosenberg: Okay. My next question is addressed to all of you. And you can respond as you like. Silicon Valley, the heart of where we are sitting is of course the land of innovation, technological revolution and a lot of incredible products and ideas. Should Silicon Valley be a leader when it comes to clean technology and really lead the way in terms of environmental stewardship? Is that realistic given, what we just heard from Ted is sort of the ugly side in technology and is it something because this is the place where you know, can do is is a part of the daily mantra. Is that realistic and not pie in the sky in your view. Do you really see things taking hold in terms of leadership role? Clearly you have talked about some of the great green examples but do you expect other companies to follow close behind you? Has there finally emerged a competitive edge, a sense that, hey we are Sun Microsystems; we have this new technology that calls our servers in a much more efficient way. Is anyone here from Sun Microsystem? Well I thank you for sponsoring EcoTalk really proud of that technology and you know that's example exactly where it needs to go. And I know other companies I think other companies are starting to use that technology or create their own. You know, well we will see more of that.
Gary Dillabough: Oh oh, yeah just a few words. I mean, I think that a when people ask me about what's special about Silicon Valley, it not the office buildings and it's just not the land we have. I think it's mindset that people come here with and it's that they can change the world. And also there there is a lot of profit to be made as you changed the world. So I think that Steven's right when he talked about, you got to innovate your way out of this issue. And I think to innovate they have to be sustainable and profitable models that are generated from some of these opportunities. I think the greater thing about the Silicon Valley is we have a framework, that's how we address problems. But I think it's one of these issues that that can't be just addressed in one area. We can certainly be thought leaders and help push the agenda. But I think the biggest thing we could bring in the party is, here is that what we think, there is lots of money to be made, there are lots of opportunities and you really got to get outside the box and it can't be incremental technology. Some of this stuff has to truly revolutionary to change to address the scale they were faced with.
Robyn Beavers: I was going to say the same thing. I think. Silicon Valley really knows how to scale like great technologies to a broad range of people around the world in a very cool way and I think at least some part of the Green movement need a sort of follow that model. And you know, I agree, everyone should be staying competitive competitive on it as well and and that's why I one of the questions was you know, how much should companies be disclosing and how you know, where are these report cards, what you you know, and I just think that to keep it competitive there should be a little mystery behind you know, how people go to and do and make these will be green changes happen, similar you know, to just another strategic project that a company does.
Betsy Rosenberg: Are you saying that you should keep some things quiet, sort of almost -
Robyn Beavers: Well I think they should make -.
Betsy Rosenberg: - proprietary?
Robyn Beavers: Well I think they should make choices that still would keep them on the competitive edge so that there is still a lot of people working really hard to do better or to over or to beat them or to overcome them. I mean Silicon Valley is great in you know hugs and flip flops and Hawaiian shirts as we are. You know, we are cut throat too, so. I mean it should stay the same way, I think, with the lot of aspects so the green stuff as well.
Betsy Rosenberg: You mention that report cards, so if I can just bring up sort of the bad news and it's not really bad news at all, its all just you know, gris for the mill did any of hear or read about the Climate Counts Report that Stonyfield Farm sponsored and I was surprised to see you don't want to ever insult your host, but see and this is certainly not anything I am saying, but they came up with rankings that put eBay and Google, instead of near the top, near the bottom, I am very aware about Google's Green initiatives have been, somewhat aware about eBay's have been and always thought you by definition were very green, just truly, intrinsically. And and there was some criticism about report because apparently it was some conducted by interns and it was only based on what was publically available on these company's websites which raises the question about what to reveal. But I think it also is a function of a time lapse because look what's happened in the last year and I don't know exactly when that snapshot was taken but I suspect there are lot of initiatives that were not reflected in that report and it's a good thing to, again have you know, these rankings because that gets people going competitive about it, this is America after all. But I think you have to be careful because if you we have to keep the credibility there. And if you are going to be you know, saying that you are assessing this and you are you know, part of the vanguard of really being you know, about taking the big picture view, looking down on who is doing what and getting a little bit you know, judgmental you have to be really careful that you use the proper standard. And I just wanted to give you a chance to comment on that.
Gary Dillabough: Oh well. And we were certainly disappointed by our ranking which was pretty poor. I think we got two out of a hundred, at least it weren't zero.
Betsy Rosenberg: And did they know about this event. And that this has something to do with that you know. This was this was planned long before.
Gary Dillabough: No and I think if you look at the way, the way the I understand the test was gauges of the publicly available documents. And they might have been correct, I am not sure. And unfortunately we stood that we have been able to talk about some of things that we were planning to do and you know, our perspective on the world these days as well as our business models and the programs we are developing, so. As much as we are disappointed by it we don't think its reflection of where we were at. Overtime I think your reputation, your brand is going to be somewhat reflected or these reports can influence that, but we are not ready to have the discussion yet until we really understand what we are going to do. And I think Robyn is correct, I think there is going to be some areas we have to have a lack of transparency, but there is others where I would say we also are looking at a solar power. And we called Robyn up and it was you know our companies compete on a numerous areas. But this is one of those areas where the gloves did come off and it was like she was actually trying to help us, learn about how we do this correctly and that's why I think it's really encouraging to me is that we were all seeing this as issue that's not just focused on a certain industry or sector. It's something we all have to address is that the corporations and employees and we are not going to able to address these issues by ourselves. We really have to come together. And that's where the true solutions are going to come from. So you know, despite what the rank in the report we feel really excited about the things what are in front of us and then some of the opportunities of partnering with some of the that the folks in the valley.
Betsy Rosenberg: And somehow Stonyfield Farm farms came in the top five. But they did acknowledge that found some deficiencies in their own practices, so good for them. Did you want to comment?
Steven Schneider: Yeah I just wanted to say anytime we are dealing with these beauty contest you have be careful whether it's wine, cars, who you rank, schools you know, all that kind of stuff that devils deeply in the details about how you did it. If you look at absolute amount of energy you might have somebody looks very bad but then if you did energy per you know, income, it might be very good. And that's what it takes to build an economy, it has low emissions. So it one would have to look at that carefully. I was going to also try to deal with your questions you said, should Silicon Valley do it, of course my my answer is if not here then where. And my second one is, I am not going to speak for them because I don't come from a progressive technology company. I come from the monastic place that still only considers people's promotion based upon how well they fit into disciplinary silos. So I mean we have a long way to go on innovation in that regard. But the point is that you ask what the valley can do and of course the innovation and the mix of incentives and and you know, what's the right balance? That's a legitimate question to debate. But some of you may remember, back in the Older's day where I remember Hazel Henderson bumper sticker right, "think globally act locally", you could say well that's all right, that's true, Silicon Valley is doing that. But that's not even remotely enough. Because sometimes you can't act locally when it is not cost affected and you can't sell that your bankers and you can't sell it to your stock holders or the other people who do deal with your your access to cash on the bottom line. What you really have to do is think locally, what can I do and then act globally to get the rules changed at the national and planetary scale so that everybody has an incentive to get on board in that discovery process, to come up with the increments and the sea change technologies. So it really requires a mix and what I hope Silicon Valley will do and it has actually done it fairly well, as an observer, but do more is while it keeps it's own internal house in order it also has to work with political coalitions to put intense pressure upstream, back at the area so we get a reasonably homogenous set of rules set up so that every body has to participate by having incentives. And I think Silicon Valley, given the scale of the economy that it has produced, it can probably be pretty clout full like it really mean that word, in that area. So there is more to do than just invent. One also have to can't run away from that coalition of people that has to try to change the politics in the national and international scale.
Ted Smith: I agree with that. Now I have a very different view now than I did 25 years ago when I thought that the industry was really significantly more part of the problem than part of the solution. Recently I have seen that change significantly. I think it has to do with the changing nature of the Valley. I mean we were not polluting the ground water here anymore because we are not making the stuff here anymore. It's all happening elsewhere. Yeah I mean it's happening but just not here. But the companies that are here right now, I think they are positioned to be much more part of the solution. I think it really need to be. And I am actually encouraged considerably by what I see going on. But I think the question and I also think that report card is actually a good thing because I think if we can encourage competition between companies to see who can be greener, if they care about that in terms of who wants to purchase their stuff or brand royalty that can be really important. So I think that is. But I think the real question comes back to this this thing about Moore's Law. Are we doing enough, well, no. Can we ever have a a logarithmic improvement in environmental protection that keeps pace with the logarithmic change in the industry? To me that's an enormous challenge and that's the discussion that I am hoping that we are going to be able to have together as we go forward on this to try to figure out how do we ever get out ahead of the curve rather than playing catch up. And I think that's a huge challenge.
Gary Dillabough: You know, from our perspective, again I mean, we don't dislocate carbon offsets; I think that's a very solid way of thinking. I think there is lot of validity to our carbon offsets and despite some of the the news you hear these days I think it's it's a right step. But as everyone typically says is are you reducing your footprint? Are you trying to build your own alternative energy that that's clean energy? And also I mean one just to start to couple that in a bigger picture, it makes sense. But if you are trying to do it just to put the PR values up, I don't think it makes a lot of sense. And sometimes it can be more of I think detrimental than you know, building a strong long lasting program that's going to hopefully you know, last not just two or three new cycles, but that's going to you know, five or 10 or 15 year campaign that you are really focused on.
Betsy Rosenberg: Sean Hannity called carbon offsets a crock and I said, no they are a start. They are not the end points. It's like recycling you know we have to start there and if we they don't have that down yet, oh dear, heaven help us but you know, we it's facing consciousness you know, instead of you know, what's your horoscope sign, what's your cholesterol amount, what's your carbon you know, footprints. Either if you want to comment on -.
Robyn Beavers: Well I just think, again it's another like trial thing that Silicon Valley and the rest of the world can be engaging in and we have examples of market that co-exist, we have emerging markets and for people who want or for companies that are excited to test out as many solutions or many ideas as possible it's a great step on if we do with a lot of other things too. So and there is a lot of by having more people engaged in the market, then you can learn more about that market as well but there has you know, it's just can't be the only thing that one chooses to do.
Steven Schneider: Yeah, what I will argue is that we can never let the perfect crate out the good. It's what I said before. So if we don't get to 80 and we get to 40, that's a heck of a lot better than going up. So the whole key to climate policy is sequencing. You have got to do what's acceptable first and what's most acceptable, the things with the highest pay back, so you start with performance standard which is building codes, machine performance standards, tailpipe emission standards which we are just about they have in California and may be even the country. And those are the first step because of the amount of extra incremental investment usually pays back in more than the mortgage interest rate. You get better than 7 percent return. There is only one way to do it, required by law, mandatory. And somebody said, but we are not a culture of mandatory. I said, if you are not a culture of mandatory you are not a culture of sustainability, their income answer it. You can start with voluntarism; it's not going to take you very far. But what you make mandatory you have to show has some cost effectiveness and if there are losers we have to deal with them. So offsets are in that early phase. The problem is you know want to buy a pig and a poke you know, you are protecting a forest in Nicaragua, great, but then nobody is monitoring to find out that two hectares you protected, they just got six down behind. So it's hard to know unless we have some barefoot tailpipe inspectors out there that it's real. On the other hand if you are building a gas power plant in India where they would have built the coal, nobody in any stage is going to tell you that was in real terms. So you start that way. But in the end when everybody starts doing it at home there won't be any offsets because everybody will need it for their own work and the price starts to go up and the only offsets will be the carbon market price for which the most innovative who can cut at the lowest price are going to get very rich. And that's again where it comes back to Silicon Valley and the innovators because by inventing how to do with cheaper, when people finally get on board politically because everything we are doing now is nibbling around the edge of not tripling CO2. That's the direction that we are headed on now. And the best scenario out there is doubling and that's not nearly good enough. So if we are going to really do better than that we are going to have really major sea change along the line of the California rules and that's going to take a whole bunch of things. So don't put offsets down in the short term, make sure they are A: real and that they are part of a sequence stage which in the end has to have a suer fee, if you don't charge people for dumping their waste in the atmosphere you will never solve the problem at the stage of staying under doubling CO2.
Betsy Rosenberg: Or the seas will change, rise, most likely. Did you also have something you want to say, Ted?
Ted Smith: I just want to say, in long term I think we got to a build a political consensus to tax the bad's rather than subsidize the bad's. We will need to subsidize to good's and tax the bad's. And the Montreal Protocol was to me the example of how you can make this work when back in terms of getting rid of the chlorofluorocarbons that were destroying the ozone layer. They put an incremental tax on the production of CFCs and that then was a big driver, I mean we got to get there, we are not there yet but we will get there.
Betsy Rosenberg: And you said one of you, I think it was Ted or no Steven, if not here, where? And one of my rhetorical question has always been, if not now, when? Given the, you know .
Steven Schneider: 25 years ago We knew about this stuff that we were talking about - in front of the US Congress in the late 70s.
Betsy Rosenberg: Thank you for that perspective. And you know even though we are hearing talk, I mean one of my favorite bumper stickers is "may be if we ignore the environment long enough it will just go away". We are not ignoring it anymore, thanks to Katrina, Wilma, Rita, Oprah. But there is a lot of talk and there is some action, absolutely. And mainstream media is starting to cover this more. But as the glaciers melt there is still a bit of a green bubble. I say I will know climate change consciousness has really penetrated the mainstream when the women in the locker room at my health club are talking about climate change, when I am not the only one talking about when are going to have hybrid mini vans which I say really loudly if someone is interested enough to ask me about the Don't Be Fueled campaign. You know in someway it feels like, yes there has been an incredible sea change in terms of consciousness and mainstream media coverage in the last year and at the same time the glaciers are melting and we haven't really turned that corner yet in light of that urgency and in light of the forecast that we have from 2 to 10 years to turn things around and they have been saying that for 2 years now. The scientist, you know, the preponderants of the credible scientist say, Jim Hanson from NASA, that it's urgent. Do you feel there is an emergency being reflected by corporations overall and do corporations have an obligation to educate their customers and their vendors to join them in this effort? You can take any part of that you want or ignore it all, that's okay. That's one of my you know -.
Gary Dillabough: I would go back to what Steven said about sustainability. I mean as we started to introduce more green concepts eBay and we are talking to our CFO, he really needed to see an RoI. Because if I am going to invest in this thing, how we understand is this three months, is this three years, is this 30 years, but he really had to understand that. And for us, I think it would be the very short-lived for us to watch a few programs that didn't have the financial backing that it needs. So we are trying to make sure that whatever we do it's some thing that's going to be for the long term, it has the right financial matrix behind it. But I think once those start to come into place and we can show that whether it's alternative energy or different types of program that they really are environmentally friendly, that they work for us a corporation, they should make sense to the consumers. And then it might be coming coming upon us to help them understand the process that we went through, why we made this decision, why we think it could be good for them, but that's that's a long cycle. And it's some thing that you have to be very thoughtful on how plan it out but ultimately I think we have an opportunity to engage with customers about some of these opportunities.
Robyn Beavers: I mean I think there is definitely a demand for that now. And I mean Google as an information company, we are always looking for ways to provide new information and different and effective ways, so all our geo services are probably the most success you know our maps and our Google earth are probably the most successful communication tool we have had so far in terms of communicating you know, the climate change issues or making it very visible for our users and and that I mean I mean I think that's very important to keep people really excited and engaged and you know keeping our users engaged that way. But I guess and also just to comment on the urgency thing. That it's definitely a very you know we need to be working on this now but I also think it's so worth as to consider what the trickle down or what the future effect of Silicon Valley incorporations you know, making a difference now and trying to get involved in this now and think ahead there. So this might be too farfetched, but you know friends and I think we need to make a petroleum engineering really sexy or get the energy sector to be really awesome and like every graduating engineer from every university wants to go and work in that industry, just like computer scientists now are trying to come here. And if there is some way about like, all of our work today and 10 or 15 years and I think that's even happening now, 10 or 15 years can help move it to the industries that are actually you know, out there digging the coal and burning it. And just I think that is also a very important thing for us to think about and not just freak out about today, but also consider the future because we will keep needing to have people engaged and not just our users or ad words suppliers but also you know people whom we would never even think about would be affected by us.
Betsy Rosenberg: Speaking about academics, I just have to ask you Steven if you have notice the palpable difference in the interest level on the part of Stanford students in sustainability or sustainable business courses which I know Stanford has recently started offering?
Steven Schneider: Oh dramatically. It's really of course the trouble is that I only get the coir because the ones who come to my classes and my colleague's classes volunteer. So we don't know what the rest of the community is thinking. But the size of the group that's coming to us collectively is much larger and the support from the administration and the Alumni in terms of in terms of Gibbs to help support this stuff that has been really good. I want to go back to your other one, not because I am going to answer if the Silicon valley but I just wanted to add one drop of caution in that two to 10 year frame because it makes me nervous when we do that. My own personal belief is that we are 10 to 20 years too late to prevent some dangerous climate change. We didn't make Katrina but we made the Gulf a little warmer which made Katrina a little stronger, was it three inches or three feet of the storm surge, we don't know and we will never know. But we know that there is vastly more category four and five hurricanes over warmer waters in both Atlantic and Pacific, so it's not an internal variability issue as the administration has claimed. It is a mixture of nature and us. The second thing, the Euro heat wave, factor of for increasing fires in the West. But if we don't do the right thing in 10 years the world doesn't stop. You know the EU said, we can't go above two degrees above pre industrial warming and we will hit the danger wall. Not true we have already had dangerous change. And pre industrial it's 0.75 Celsius warmer than that now, that's 1.25 more. I give about a 90 percent chance we are not going to make that no matter what we do. We would be lucky to keep it to two degrees. At 1.8 the world is not okay and at 2.2 it doesn't turn into a climatic pumpkin, it's really a dangerous frame because when you frame it that way what happens if we haven't done as much as we should have done in 10 years. And then we would turn around and say we have got 10 more years to do it and I will say, but you said that ten years ago. What we ought to say is it's already too late to prevent some damage and the more we add, each time we had an increment it gets not additionally worse but exponentially worse, like the kids skate board run right, you start on it, it looks like that and pretty soon its like that. So, we got to just do everything we can, as fast as we can and not get hung up on a date after which it's too late, otherwise you get with what I call the on the beach syndrome, the member of the old naval shoot thing, the radio actually, there was a nuclear war in the North, the radio act that cloud is going to Australia. Everybody is going to die a horrible death in three months and they go out and kill each other in car crashes and other things. Because what the hell, it not that story. It's that three degrees is really bad; but six degrees is really catastrophic. So we have to keep fighting it as much as we can fight and not get hung up on tipping points and on 10 years because we will come to regret that when we haven't accomplished much as we want 10 years later. And people go back on Google, look up what we said and stick it back in your face.
Betsy Rosenberg: Just asked you colleague Paul Ehrlich - - who was the ahead of his time with the calculation.
Steven Schneider: I all right. We have argued this one over many good bottle of wine.
Betsy Rosenberg: I bet, okay. We are going to open up to questions even though I have one more brooding, well, may be I can work on it later.
Ted Smith: - what more can companies do? I just want to say, this is Information Valley now. It's no longer Silicon Valley. We have the most powerful information companies in the world, the history of the world, right here. They can do an enormous amount to help, inform and activate the masses of people that we need to activate if we are going to turn things around. And I think the companies are going to be doing a lot more. They are doing some good stuff but I think it's just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, you think about the way that people who the millions of people who come to the Google, eBay, Yahoo websites everyday. If you had little buttons that people could click on to, they would get them the right to information that can empower them, I mean you are starting to do some of that, there is an enormous more you can do on that. I have suggested to both Dell and HP and you could do the same things. You could put a little icon of a polar bear on a melting icecap all over your website. And people would look at that, they would click on it and then you could give them then suggestions on what they can do. And it could be as much as how do you do the power saving on your own computer or it could be how do you get involved in a petition to Congress or whatever be. But I mean, thinking of those icons that people would really be engaging, you are going to win over more converts and fans I think and it's also going to help save the world.
Steven Schneider: And the worst who are, the smaller the ice sheet gets in and in the end it's splashing?
Ted Smith: Yeah. You can do all kinds of cruel things right there, yeah.
Betsy Rosenberg: Okay, we are going to open it up for questions if you have any.
