One of our favorite historian-scientists here at ComingAnarchy has some unorthodox thinking on environmental issues. Below, an abridged excerpt from a last week’s Financial Times.

The Green Lobby: Scientist and author Jared Diamond believes businesses can help to solve the world’s environmental problems

By FIONA HARVEY 1088 words 10 February 2006 Financial Times London Ed1 Page 12

Jared Diamond says he is booed by environmentalists when he talks about business: “They call me a sell-out, say I’m corrupt and that I’ve taken the money and leapt into bed with big business.” But, he shrugs: “It doesn’t bother me.”

The biologist, thinker and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer has aroused the ire of some sections of the green movement by co-operating with large companies—and insisting that business has a role to play in remedying environmental problems.

Pollution, desertification and stress on water supplies, he believes, could potentially cause the collapse of modern life, in much the same way that the overuse of resources and external environmental changes have caused the demise of earlier civilisations.

But Prof Diamond sticks to his arguments: businesses play such a large role in modern life that it could be difficult to imagine progress on key environmental issues without the co-operation of the corporations.

Moreover, he says, an awareness of environmental issues in business thinking is a good discipline for managers, and can even save companies money. This is because taking into account environmental considerations—such as how to clean up pollution or minimise use of resources—requires managers to consider vital business issues such as waste and inefficiencies, and relationships with employees and consumers.

He says: “If you want to cut down on the amount of resources you need to bring into an area, that saves money. If you reduce the amount of waste you produce, that saves money. Using less energy saves money too. And if you make the water dirty, that could be a health problem for your employees. If you alienate the local community, and you are operating in a democracy, you may get thrown out, or you may get people trying to disrupt your business.”

Reputational risk also plays a role, although a lesser one. Bad environmental and social practices can attract negative publicity, even boycotts, that can lose sales. Employees can feel demoralised if they think they are working for an organisation that is harming people.

For these reasons, building an environmental awareness into management thinking from the start, rather than seeing such an awareness as a burden or an afterthought, makes for better management throughout a project.

Prof Diamond recounts an experience that convinced him of how valuable a role large businesses could play in preserving the earth’s natural resources, as well as exploiting them. A few years ago he went to Papua New Guinea with WWF, the conservation group, to look at some oil works. “I went expecting to see the usual oil company mess,” he says.

“It shocked me when I arrived there to find that the oilfield had been managed more scrupulously than most national parks. If you want to see tree kangaroos by daylight in Papua New Guinea, go to the Chevron oilfield. You’ll find the shyest and most beautiful animals there.”

Chevron’s part in preserving the local flora and fauna was born not of altruism, but of business sense, Prof Diamond says. “They want to make money. And they discovered that they could make more money by being clean than by making messes.”

Once businesses have realised it generally costs little more, and can often end up costing less, to behave in a responsible manner, those practices propagate through the company and into the corporate world.

In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive, Prof Diamond sets out 12 of the most serious problems the world faces, arguing that any one of them could result in catastrophe. These include deforestation and the loss of habitats, soil erosion and degradation, water shortages, toxic pollution and climate change.

Prof Diamond can come up with plenty of examples of bad practice to warn businesses of the danger of ignoring environmental problems. He cites the case of Rio Tinto, which had a copper mine in Papua New Guinea where local people complained that their fishing waters were being polluted. Prof Diamond says: “Eventually, this led to a civil war on the whole island for 10 years.” That was bad for business and cost the company money, he notes drily. Rio Tinto now employs environmental consultants who work to prevent problems occurring.

However, Prof Diamond is optimistic that business people will respond to the need to tackle the planet’s ills. This may be driven much more by self-interest—there will be no one to sell to in a world broken apart by wars over environmental resources—than by concern for the disappearance of animals or plants, but that is not the only factor in play.

Another is the simple fact that business people are as subject as anyone else to concern for the planet’s and their children’s well-being.

Prof Diamond notes: “If a chief executive is finding that his children come home and say I heard that your company is making a mess, why are you doing that, that has a big effect.

“Children learn a lot about these things, they are very interested (in environmental issues). If (business people) are seeing their children come home upset and angry, saying I’m ashamed about you, that really shakes them up.”

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