Marc Gunther

"This economic crisis doesn't represent a cycle. It represents a reset," Jeff Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, said today. "It's an emotional, social, economic reset."

And the biggest impact of this "reset" will be greater government involvement in the economy, and in the affairs of business, for better or worse.

"People who understand that will prosper," Immelt said. "Those who don't will be left behind."

Immelt spoke to the annual conference of Business for Social Responsibility, an association of about 250 companies that are looking for more sustainable ways to do business. About 1,200 people from companies, NGOs, consulting firms, PR shops and government...

   (0)

What an extraordinary night for America! Here's a brief dispatch from the streets of Washington, D.C., before getting to today's column: The U Street neighborhood was known as "Black Broadway" in the 1920s–Duke Ellington grew up nearby, jazz clubs thrived, theaters were built and a black-middle class grew there for years. It remained the cultural hub of black D.C. until 1968, when it was all but burned down after the assassination of Martin Luther King. After a period of blight, U Street was reborn as a vibrant neighborhoo in the 1990s, as restaurants, clubs and condos sprung up. Last night, it was the site of a spontaneous street party, with blacks and whites, mostly young...

   (0)

One of the irritating cliches of the climate change conversation is that there is no silver bullet that will solve the problem, only silver buckshot. Like most cliches, though, it's true. Today's Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com is about one of those buckshot solutions -- hydrogen fuel cells, which have been in development for nearly half a century but only lately have become a real business.

There's been lots of work done for years around fuel cells -- for cars, buses and small-scale applications like cell phones -- but the fuel cells that are selling, to real customers, in real markets, are those used to generate power for buildings like supermarkets,...

   (0)

Because many of us are captivated by the extraordinary goings-on in Washington, on Wall Street and in the presidential campaign, it’s easy to overlook everything else that’s happening in the world of business. But an unusual bi-coastal alliance between GE and Google caught my attention last week, and so it is the topic of my latest Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com.

GE and Google don’t have a lot in common, but the industrial giant and the Internet powerhouse share an interest in renewable energy. So they have come together to lobby for a so-called smart electricity grid and to collaborate, albeit in an unspecified way, in research into geothermal...

   (0)

Since returning from the Beijing Olympics last month, Hank Paulson has been a nonstop crisis manager. (I don’t think he’s had a day off.) But when we spoke back in August, and again a couple of weeks ago, we spent some time talking about a couple of his long-term passions: China and climate change.

Paulson’s take on China and climate are the topic of today’s Sustainability column. These issues will matter when Wall Street settles down—as it will one day, although probably not anytime soon. Here’s how the column begins:

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has careened from crisis to crisis lately, backing the Bear Stearns rescue, engineering the government takeover...

   (0)

I’m writing this post on my Apple PowerBook G4, which ordinarily does very well what I need it to do—except that right now it is sitting on my lap and giving off enough heat to keep me warm on a cool day.

That might be welcome if today were a February day in Denver. But it’s August.

I’m in the mile-high city where the sun always seems to shine to moderate a discussion on sustainability for Coca Cola Enterprises, the big bottling company; to attend a bunch of events on the environment and energy; and to soak up the atmosphere as the Democrats and thousands of hangers-on here to nominate Barack Obama.

The Coke discussion went well, I thought—participants...

   (2)

While carbon offsets are controversial and always will be, they have enormous potential to promote an elusive goal: sustainable development. At their best, carbon offsets are a low-cost way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, transfer clean technology to poor countries and help people out of poverty.

Which brings us to JPMorgan Chase and cook stoves.

The global Wall Street investment bank has begun subsidizing the production and distribution of efficient cooking stoves in Africa, an effort that could expand to India and southeast Asia as well. The project is the topic of today’s Sustainability column on fortune.com and cnnmoney.com. Here’s how it begins:

By any...

   (0)

Carbon neutral, you may remember, was the word of the year back in 2006, but as my friend Joel Makower (executive editor of greenbiz.com, aka the guru of green business) has written, no one knows exactly what it means or even how to define a company’s carbon footprint.

So when Dell announced today that the company had become carbon neutral, I decided to take a closer look in my Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com. Here’s how the column begins:

Dell is announcing Wednesday that it has become carbon neutral by turning out the lights in its offices, buying wind power and protecting endangered forests in Madagascar.

It’s all part of CEO Michael Dell’s commitment...

   (0)