Thanks to growing awareness regarding the environment, corporation are also hopping onto the bandwagon. The reason is simple. It’s good for business. By becoming more efficient in the use of raw materials and energy, corporations reap the benefits on their bottom line and top line. Cutting wastes and becoming more energy efficient means more money is saved, adding to profitability. Following pro-environmental practices also helps with promoting a positive image to your markets. People will have no qualms about buying the company’s goods and services.

Wal-Mart is incorporating eco-friendly practices in its operations and stores. Pepsi is in an agreement to use renewable energy. Toyota, banking on its green image thanks to its hybrid cars, have surpassed GM as the world’s biggest automaker. By getting on the Environmental Protection Agency’s coveted quarterly list of 25 of the greenest energy users, corporations can take advantage of its green image by generating more sales. In the latest EPA list, Pepsi was considered the most greenest. The cost to Pepsi for the renewable energy arrangement was just $2 million. In terms of free publicity and marketing benefits, the pay-offs run into the millions.

In the current environment, being green means profit. As long as there is money to be made from going green, businesses and entrepreneurs will figure it out. Government initiatives alone won’t be able to effectively tackle the issue. The private sector needs to be involved. The desire for profit is just as if not stronger than the desire to clean up the environment.

Every time Exxon Mobil Corp., the world’s biggest oil company, releases their profit reports, the usual gang of politicians, social groups and tree huggers start whining that oil companies are ripping off the public and should be forced to pay special taxes. The reality is we need Exxon to continue making gobs of money. Whether we like it or not, the U.S. economy is built on the premise of cheap and plentiful gasoline. We like our big house out in the burbs and like the safety that a SUV offers.

If we want to continue living a comfortable life, Exxon better continue being profitable. The days of cheap oil are over. To find and produce oil in today’s environment requires massive amounts of dollars. Energy companies need to go to hostile environments to find new sources of energy. Capping these companies’ profits or the prices they charge for their products will only limit the availability of supply. Just look at California with the rolling blackouts under former Governor Davis. Because the prices for electricity were capped, there were no incentives to produce more power, resulting in power shortages.

Exxon is an American success story. Its annual revenue exceeds the GDP of many nations, including Argentina and Norway. This energy company generates tax revenue for the U.S. government and creates thousands of well paying jobs for Americans. Our quality of life depends on companies such as Exxon.

It wasn’t that long ago that social activists and some politicians were deriding Wal-Mart as a destroyer of neighborhoods and a destroyer of American jobs. These same people were also accusing Wal-Mart of exploiting workers in developing countries. Now what do these same people have to say about Wal-Mart now given their recent initiatives. The biggest company in the United States in terms of market capitalization are tackling issues that are on the forefront of the American public: spiraling health care costs and the environment.

Despite all the rhetoric that Wal-Mart is sending American jobs abroad, there is no denying that they are making goods affordable for the working American. Now they are taking steps to deal with the high costs of medical care. The biggest retailer in the world announced they plan to open as many as 400 in-store health clinics over the next two to three years and could elevate the total to 2,000 in seven years. The goal is to provide limited basic health services at a lower cost than emergency rooms or doctors’ offices. This on top of the retailer’s $4 generic drug prescription program.

Wal-Mart is doing its part to lessen its impact on the environment. Their initiatives include increasing fuel efficiency in their truck fleet by 25 percent over three years and doubling it within 10 years; reducing greenhouse gases by 20 percent in seven years; reducing energy use at stores by 30 percent; and cutting solid waste from U.S. stores by 25 percent in three years.

Wal-Mart’s image among the U.S. public started to change for the better due to their actions in helping victims of Hurricane Katrina. They along with other major retailers such as Home Depot delivered aid to hurricane victims faster than the government could. These businesses have demonstrated that a free market system can effectively address some of the problems better than the government.

Yesterday, people of all stripes across the globe celebrated Earth Day. For those complaining about the high costs of gasoline when filling up their SUVs, Earth Day is a day of global observance of the environment. It is basically a day where anybody who cares about the environment expresses their love and concern for Mother Earth. It is also a day where so called celebrity environmentalists re-iterate calls for more stringent cuts in greenhouse emissions.

Lead by Al Gore and his posse of high living celebrities, they want us to make sacrifices in order to save the earth from ourselves. There are two things wrong with this scenario. Despite their arguments that carbon dioxide emission is changing the Earth’s atmosphere, there is no conclusive scientific evidence of this. Through out the Earth’s history, climate change was always with us. Before wasting trillion of dollars on capping emissions, the more immediate threats to our quality of life are air and water pollution. Without clean air and clean water, there is no promising future.

The second hole in Al Gore and company’s argument is they simply do not drink their own Kool-Aid. They expect us to take public transportation, lower our thermostats and decrease our consumption of all resources. Meanwhile, these elitists continue to travel extensively in private jets and SUVs. They use valuable fossil fuels to make their various mansions comfortable. To this day, Al Gore refuses to sign a now carbon footprint agreement. Talk about hot air emissions!!!!

Once a gallon of gasoline reaches or even goes over $3 a gallon, the usual suspects will do their predictable dog and pony show. Politicians will call for an inquiry to determine if the oil companies are ripping off the American consumer. Anti Poverty groups will call for a special tax on oil companies. Environmentalists will call for more money to spent on clean energy. The reality is that we are responsible for the price of gasoline going higher. After all, the price of gasoline is determined by supply and demand.

U.S. demand for gasoline are at record highs. We are driving more. We still insist on driving large vehicles. We are not ready to sacrifice comfort and power by switching to smaller and more fuel efficient vehicles. Despite the growth in demand for gasoline, hardly any new refineries were built in the last 30 years. No town or city wants a dirty, polluting oil refinery built in their backyard. Because of environmental regulations, high material and labor costs, building a new refinery will run into billions of dollars. Given the tight margins in gasoline during the last few decades, oil companies are reluctant to build new refineries.

If we really want to tackle the issue of expensive gasoline, we will have to decrease consumption and allow for more new refineries to be built. There are hard decisions that need to be made. The day of $1 gallon of gasoline is pretty much over. We are competing with China and India for oil to run our economy.

I’m sure you have heard it too many times, eat your fruits and vegetables. Since you were a kid, whether it’s your mom or your doctor, you’re told to eat more fruits and vegetables. It’s good for you, whether it’s for your skin or helps lower your cholesterol level. So why am I writing this now since everybody knows of the benefits but don’t always follow through on it? The latest studies show that increasing consumption by just one serving of fruit or vegetables per 1000 calories per day was associated with a six percent reduction in head and neck cancer risk. These types of cancer tend to have a high mortality rate.

If you look at it from a bigger picture, our health costs are soaring through the roof. Whether it’s hospital bills or drugs, we’re paying through the nose. Worst, a lot of our children are suffering from diabetes and high cholesterol, diseases once associated with middle age. For the first time ever, the life expectancy of our kids will be less than ours. Frightening indeed!!!

Learning to eat healthy is one way to combat high medical costs and improve our kids’ quality of life. In the age of tight schedules and availability of fast foods, changing our dietary habits won’t be easy. It can be done. One of the best approach to eating is following the Mediterranean diet. This way of eating puts the emphasize on simple natural foods such as whole grains, fish, chicken, fruits and vegetables. Besides being healthy, this cuisine is also very rich in flavor.

Whether you’re on the left or on the right, everybody is jumping onto the Green Movement bandwagon. One of the popular policies to combat global warming and decrease our reliance on unstable energy supplies particularly from the Middle East is biofuel. Biofuel are produced from agricultural goods such as sugar cane and corn. The argument is that since biofuel is derived from farm products, it is renewable and environmentally friendly. Nothing can be further from the truth. Here are some points to consider.

It takes a lot of energy to produce biofuel: When you factor in the energy used to farm the product, transportation and processing of the fuel, it takes at least one barrel of oil to produce one barrel of biofuel.

Food Inflation: The corn and soybean that was used to feed livestock is now being used to produce fuel. Because of new demand, prices of agricultural goods will and are going up. People might be able to swallow higher energy costs but not higher food costs. Governments are bought down if they cannot properly feed their people.

Deforestation: Thanks to higher prices for farm products, more forests will be razed for farmland. There will be less trees to absorb carbon dioxide.

Does not address consumption: Just because there is another source of fuel does not mean people should continue driving their SUVs. How people live will need to change.This means switching to smaller more fuel efficient vehicles and taking public transportation.

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. bought a 10.9 percent stake in Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. to become the largest shareholder at a time when rail stocks were hovering close to their all-time highs. Burlington Northern focuses on intermodal transportation, in which products travel from ships and trucks to railroads. As one of the two main Western U.S. railroads, it transports Asian imports that arrive at the California ports. It also ships grain and coal, which helped elevate its fourth-quarter profit 21 percent in 2006.

The Oracle of Omaha is a buy and hold investor. For him to buy rail stocks at this point of the economic cycle means he does not expect a major recession in the United States. He also expects to see trade with Asia to continue expanding. For short term investors looking to cash in from the Oracle’s move, it’s probably too late. For the long term investor, the opportunity to purchase Burlington stock is when it retreats. This latest move Warren Buffet indicates he remains optimistic on the United States and global trade.

The world is being over run by political correct lunatics. No wonder the terrorists view the West as being weak. Instead of worrying about how we are going to fight the people that threaten our very existence, we get scrutinized for how we are treating them. Now we have to worry about how we’re treating geese and ducks. The city of Chicago issued its first foie gras fine to a hot dog seller, Hot Doug’s, accusing it of violating a Chicago ban by lacing its specialty dogs with the duck liver delicacy.Doug Sohn, who runs Hot Doug’s “The Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium,” agreed to pay $250 Thursday for the first-time offense. Sohn had been openly serving foie gras-laced hot dogs since the ordinance came in force since August. He says he knew about the rule when he received a warning letter from the city, he had it framed and placed on his counter.

If the same people who oppose foie gras should also ban basically all animal products. Domestic animals such as chicken, pigs and cows are no better treated. They are locked up in tight cages and forced fed so they can quickly be sold. Off course they won’t because of the powerful lobby groups. No wonder we’re being perceived by our enemies as soft and vulnerable.

The recent pet food crisis is traced to wheat gluten manufactured by a Chinese company. The U.S. investigation has found traces of melamine in this food byproduct. Menu Foods, which has used this product, had to recall 60 million containers of its pet food products. So far, 1 dog and 15 cats have died from eating the contaminated foods. Del Monte is now the latest to recall their pet food.
Unlike the developed nations, nations such as China do not always follow rigid checks and systems to ensure that the risks of food contamination are minimized. Just look at the cases of mad cow disease in Canada. The moment it was discovered that a cow suffered from the disease, it was quickly traced to which processing plant the cow went to and where the finished products ended up. A recall of these products was quickly carried out.

Sure everybody wants the lowest price but at what costs? It’s one thing to pay the lowest price possible for clothing but our food? We need to balance out the risks to our health and particularly our kids. In the end, we cannot assume that developing nations follow the same high standards we do. We might put our lives at risk.