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Managing Green Issues

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Managing Green Issues

Palgrave Macmillan,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

To keep environmental advocates from causing trouble, involve citizens in your planning from the beginning.

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Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

The new, environmentally conscious marketplace rewards sincerity and ethical behavior, so these days companies must become authentically socially responsible. They must also publicize their positive contributions. Tom Curtin outlines a strategy for communicating to the public about green issues, providing sensible guidelines for analyzing your business and preparing for potential eco-crises. Curtin is an environmental skeptic. He doesn’t believe in global warming and he considers green organizations to be gathering places for hysterics. He doesn’t seem to be aware that preserving the environment is a major concern for people around the world; it’s not just a hobby for tree huggers in the West. Still, you’ll have to agree with him that the best defense is a good offense. His suggestions can help you handle potentially volatile ecological problems with competence. getAbstract recommends this book to corporate communicators who want to be prepared to respond to environmental advocates.

Summary

Not All Green Is Good

While people in the developing world struggle with basic survival issues, those in economically successful countries are becoming concerned about the needs of the planet and human survival. Unfortunately, in wealthy countries, people often express their concern about the environment by buying something organic or recyclable rather than by reducing their consumption of resources. Ironically, now that industrialized countries have discovered green issues, they are trying to tell poor countries to cease development. Predictably, the poor countries want to achieve the same economic success Western countries now enjoy. And Western countries’ attempts to impose their environmental goals on everyone else has had some devastating effects. For example, since the widespread outcry against DDT, use of the pesticide has decreased – with the unintended consequence of a global increase in malaria, caused by mosquitoes that DDT effectively controls.

Westerners have lost perspective. Countries in the European Union spend billions to remove minute amounts of harmless chemicals from groundwater, while more than 2.5 billion people in other parts of the world drink...

About the Author

Tom Curtin is the founder of a consulting company that helps businesses communicate about environmental issues.


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