In a short time, they nearly wrecked the planet. That's a difficult question to answer in general terms since we face so many different challenges. I do have a simple philosophy for living successfully with our neighbors. I subscribe to that motto. It recognizes that people should believe whatever they please to believe and have the freedom to carry out their beliefs providing they do not simultaneously push other people around.
Industry holds the key to the solution.
But it is industry's customers that can entice companies to realize that it is good business to believe in and practice sustainable development. The challenge we all face is to help make development that is sustainable financially rewarding. Many companies are now finding that sustainable development can be good business. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times on April 1, William K. Reilly, who headed the Environmental Protection Agency in the first Bush administration, noted that 11 major companies, eight of them American, have committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by a total that exceeds the reductions required of Britain under Kyoto, that United Technologies, IBM, Baxter, Polaroid and others have committed to improve energy efficiency, or to cut carbon dioxide by at least 25 percent and that DuPont, the nation's largest chemical company, has already reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent and promises to cut them by 65 percent by 2010. That's great and those companies should be commended for what they have done.