Tuck News and Events - Business Sustainability Initiative 2005

Students Support Business Sustainability

The third annual student-organized Business Sustainability Initiative conference drew a capacity crowd to the Tuck School on February 25, 2005. Participants discussed how today's companies face an expanding scope of accountability-for financial results, environmental performance, and their impact on the communities in which they do business.

Executive and academic speakers and panelists-including Walter Freese T'79, CEO of Ben & Jerry's, who gave the keynote address-drew nearly 250 students from Tuck, Dartmouth, Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, and Vermont Law School (VLS) to the event. Tuck, Thayer and VLS cooperated to present the conference, titled "Changing the Corporate Culture," with assistance from Tuck's Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship. Approximately 50 people from businesses and other schools also attended.

"Students initiated this conference from the get-go," Tuck's Dean Paul Danos commented in his introductory remarks. He recalled Paul Ligon T'03, "pounding the table, passionate about this issue," when promoting the first conference on business sustainability.

Ligon, now a business development manager with Waste Management's In-Plant Services Division, said the conference gets better every year. "The first year we did it on a wing and a prayer, but the level of sophistication has gone up and up, from planning to execution." Ligon represented Waste Management as a member of the panel "Managing for Sustainability: An Insider's Perspective."

Co-chair Alice Tsui T'05 said that more students than ever are involved in the event. Tsui, who came to Tuck from Hong Kong, said business sustainability is seldom discussed there. However, she plans to urge companies to address the issue when she goes to work as a management consultant.

Students organizing this year's conference observed that firms today are responsible for their impact on the environments and communities in which they operate. They asked speakers to explain how companies respond to these concerns and to discuss what works and what does not.

Several presenters noted that the government has so far refused to face environmental issues like greenhouse gas emissions. "Climate change is happening," declared Henry Lee, director of the environment and natural resources program at the Belfer Center at Harvard, noting that ice roads used by oil drillers in Alaska used to freeze in October, but now are liquid until January. Businesses that opposed a carbon cap-and-trade system are now pushing for a federal response, he said, and he predicted the U.S. will have such a system by 2010.

Rob Frederick, manager of corporate responsibility at Ford Motor Company, expects a substantial carbon production tax. "It is coming; it is just a matter of time," he said, adding that Ford would prefer any such tax to be imposed at the wellhead for maximum efficiency.

Michael C. Lynch, president of strategic energy and economic research at MIT's Center for International Studies, declared that oil won't run out in the foreseeable future, though he conceded that restraints on oil consumption might be needed for environmental reasons. Speaking at a panel titled "Beyond the Oil Economy," Lynch said the density of oil wells worldwide is only three percent of the density that prevailed in the U.S. in the 1970s, when our production peaked.

Eric Israel, moderator of the panel "Managing for Sustainability," said measurement is critical to managing risks to sustainability, and companies need new measurement tools. Israel is managing director of KPMG Forensic, which "helps companies manage risk with respect to irresponsible behavior."

In addition to opening remarks, a keynote address, and networking opportunities, the day's events included panel discussions on Product Design; The Pharmaceutical Industry and Global Health (moderated by Tuck Professor Donald Conway); Managing for Sustainability: An Insider's Perspective; The Financial Services Sector; Beyond the Oil Economy; and Resource-Intensive Development in China (moderated by Tuck Professor Joseph Massey).

As the conference events wrapped up, Patricia Palmiotto, director of Tuck's Allwin Initiative, noted, "The outstanding quality of the conference reflects the quality of today's Tuck students. They want to hear how practitioners are wrestling with these issues, and they feel it is important to have that experience as part of their business education."

For more information on the conference and to see a full list of panelists, visit the Business Sustainability Initiative website at www.tuckbsi.org.