About Those Tree Huggers

Turns out - and this is not really a surprise - that there's money to be made in tree hugging. The lead story in Sunday's Milwaukee JS highlights a major greening effort by Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls (Johnson Controls Inc. en). Major? Five beeel-yun dollars major. Here's the link: Businesses seize green initiative

Johnson Controls is planning to retrofit old buildings in 16 major cities around the globe as part of the Clinton Global Initiative. The idea is to make money by going green. Double greening, if you will.

Part of the challenge is adjusting our thinking. Mayor Kahl recently said that he was evaluating some potential solar panels for city facilities - and he added, 'but that was for economic reasons'. We need to change that 'but' to an 'and'.

The story included a to do list for companies that could be the first recommendations from Monona's sustainability committee:

• Conduct an energy audit of your building.
• Replace conventional lights with energy-saving bulbs and fixtures.
• Replace inefficient HVAC systems.
• Install setback thermostats and other controls.
• Review the energy use patterns in the building regularly to make modifications for other changes in the business, such as a change in hours of operation or fewer people working in a particular department.


Capitalism is a tremendous engine for change and is probably the best hope for arresting global heating, although it will likely require governmental action to get the ball rolling. Fortunately, the rest of the industrial world has already agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5% below 1990 levels by 2012 (that's the simple nub of the mysterious Kyoto Protocol).