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  • September 21, 2011
  • Carbon Survey Calls Salesforce Leader in Carbon Abatement

    Marc Benioff’s Facebook page says that Salesforce.com is a rising leader in the effort to get carbon out of business.  I didn’t know there was such a survey or report but I am glad there is.

    Getting carbon out of your business processes is hugely important.  While most people will view this as an anti-pollution idea and good corporate citizenship — and it is — it has an even more serious driver and consequence.  As important as carbon abatement and climate change limitation is, it is secondary to the idea that the planet is running out of fossil fuels like petroleum and coal.  Why secondary?  Because without the affordable fuel to grow food and bring it to market (just to name one idea) you’ll die in a food riot long before the planet heats up enough to threaten your grandkids existence.

    You might like to think that the earth has a limitless supply of fossil fuels but for that to be true the earth itself would need to be limitless.  Of course nothing is limitless though some things are so big that they appear to be.  In fact, the earth was endowed by about 2.5 trillion barrels of crude oil which we began tapping in earnest in the 1850’s at Titusvill, PA to be precise.  Since then we’ve discovered all kinds of uses for petroleum as fuel and as raw material for numerous materials from rubber and plastic to paint and pharmaceuticals.

    But we’re running out of the stuff.  Estimates from petroleum geologists and others in the industry are that the planet now contains about 910 billion barrels of crude and it’s in harder to reach places of extreme weather or ocean depths.  Oil and therefor transportation will never be as cheap again as they are today.  Check that, transportation that is not tied to fossil fuel has a chance of being this cheap again but that will require a massive investment in infrastructure and I doubt anyone has the stomach for that — yet.

    So that leaves it to the business community to fend for itself.  Taking carbon out of your business processes is not simply good environmentalism but smart business.  If you can find ways to visit customers over an IP connection or replace the visit with a video you are taking carbon out of that process.  That’s where this report fits in and why it’s so important.  The tech sector is about to be called on to pull our collective chestnuts out of a big fire and those who lead this process stand to make a lot of money.  Google, Cisco and Salesforce are all at the top of this stack and your company ought to be trying too.

    Published: 13 years ago


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