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 energy. Here’s how the column begins: When companies as savvy and as important as General Electric and

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 of Fannie Mae, refusing to commit taxpayer money to save Lehman Brothers, and Friday announcing a massive

What an incredible time on Wall Street. I’m no expert on the markets, so please don’t ask me how and when the tumult will end. But I’ve spent some time lately with treasury secretary Hank Paulson, and some of his key people, so I can offer some insight into how the former Goldman Sachs CEO is approaching the toughest challenge of his career. The cover story in the current issue of FORTUNE is my profile of Paulson, called The Power of Paulson. You will hear debate about whether Paulson has made the right moves this year—brokering the sale of Bear Stearns, taking over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, refusing to bailout Lehman Brothers. It all seems ad hoc and in a sense it is—there is no formula for dealing with a crisis like this one. But I came away from my time with Paulson

So Dell, which is getting more gung-ho about the environment all the time, has built an elaborate  website called Regeneration.org, all about saving the planet. I can’t quite figure out what Dell is hoping to accomplish, to be honest–there’s no clear explanation on the site–or even how a company got an “.org” address. The most striking thing about the site is a cool (if kind of pointless) wall of graffiti where you can write an answer to the question “What Does Green Mean to You?” and see it show up on an interactive, ever-changing display, so long as you agree to register for the site. Anyway, there’s a blog on the site, videos, “green” tips, inspirational stories and the like. Dell says, rather grandly: “The ReGeneration is a global movement—a group of

Gold mining is a dirty business, for many reasons. In poor countries, where most of the world’s gold is mined, regulations are lax, cyanide is commonly (and carelessly) used to separate gold from waste rock, and children work under unsafe conditions, literally scratching out a living from the earth. These problems have been well-documented by NGOS and by reporters for the New York Times, which did a great series on gold in 2005, and more recently in this fine investigative article by the Associated Press. But corporate America is responding with an ambitious effort to reform the mining industry, led by Tiffany & Co., Wal-Mart, independent jewelers and NGOS. Forward-thinking mining companies like Rio Tinto are on board, too. My new feature story, Green Gold, which appears in the

You won’t hear much about gay marriage this week at the Republican convention, but it remains a hotly-contested political issue, particularly in California, where a fall ballot initiative would overturn the state Supreme Court decision giving same-sex couples the right to wed. John McCain supports the ballot Proposition 8 while Barack Obama and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger oppose it. A recent poll shows that most Californians side with their governor, Obama and gay rights groups like Equality for All. Should gay marriage win at the ballot box in the nation’s most populous state, that would be big news. A political win for same-sex marriage would also reflect the fact that in corporate America, support for gay marriage – or at least workplace policies that treat same-sex

What book best explains the today’s world of business — the credit crunch, housing bust, diving dollar, etc.? That’s the question that reporter Frank Ahrens of The Washington Post put to some biz luminaries, resulting in a lively story in today’s paper. Interestingly, my friend Nell Minow (of The Corporate Library and movie mom fame) and my former college classmate Henry Louis “Skip” Gates Jr. recommended the same book, David Copperfield, and cited the same quote, the advice given by Mr. Micawber to David: ‘Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.’ Following that advice will protect you from the worst of economic

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 included the major of Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, who talked about the drought and water conservation, Majority Leader

The other day, John McCain visited an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico to call for more offshore drilling. The massive Chevron rig produces 10,000 barrels of oil a day. Meanwhile, I just filled up my new Honda Fit with gas for the first time. After driving 282 miles, I bought 9.47 gallons at $3.62 a gallon. So I’m getting 29.6 mpg, mostly in the city. What’s the connection? The actions of millions of Americans like me—as we trade big cars for smaller ones, drive less, or do both—are going to have a whole lot more impact on oil prices, more quickly, than drilling for more oil. In fact, they already are. Gas prices have been falling by more than a penny per day and the price of oil has dropped from about $147 a barrel to about $115 a barrel in the last couple of months for

Not only is the world flat, it is amazingly interconnected. Who would have thought that Oreos or Cheez-Its could contribute to deforestation and global warming? Today’s Sustainability column at fortune.com and cnnmoney.com looks at palm oil, the commodity that connects hundreds of products on supermarket shelves to the disappearing tropical forests of Malaysia and Indonesia. Enviros who take a confrontational approach (Rainforest Action Network) as well as those who prefer to consult or collaborate (Conservation International, WWF) are attacking the palm oil problem. So are big agribusiness companies like ADM, Bunge and Cargill, although they’re not moving fast enough or far enough to satisfy the activists at RAN. Interestingly, the palm oil story appears to be following a