Bare Naked Ladies. Six bare-breasted women -- one astride a horse, a la Lady Godiva -- and 30 fully clothed people protested in Vancouver, B.C., over a company’s plan to log old growth on Salt Spring Island. The protesters stopped traffic for more than an hour at the headquarters of the company, Texada Land Corp., and drew considerable media attention, prompting protester Briony Penn to remark, "I’ve got a PhD and no one listens. I take my clothes off, and here you all are." Texada, which began logging the island in November 1999, is the first company to be fined for violating the province’s new forest practices regulation. The Save Salt Spring Campaign has been raising money to buy Texada’s land through publication of a nude calendar.

Green business is smart business. New research has proved additional evidence of a positive correlation between environmental stewardship and its financial performance. Several studies conducted by Innovest, a New York-based environmental rating firm, and investigators, Michael Russo and Paul Fouts, of the University of Oregons’ Lunquist School of Management, each using somewhat different yardsticks of the term "environmental stewardship" showed agreement in demonstrating a significant positive correlation. Robert Repetto and Duncan Austin of the World Resources Institute have shown how environmental issues can be integrated into financial analysis.

Although the Securities & Exchange Commission requires the financial reporting of environmental liabilities, this has not been done adequately by many corporations, especially those which can gain more in financial stock by hiding adverse environmental effects.

General Electric Corporation instead of complying with the Federal Superfund Law to clean up the PCB’s it disposed of in the Hudson River is refusing to admit culpability and is suing to have the Superfund Law declared unconstitutional. This is likely to impact GE’s earnings and reputation over both the short and long term.

From "Calvert Impact," the newsletter of social investors, winter 2001.