With climate-change legislation headed toward the Senate floor in a couple of weeks, it’s time to take a closer look at the arguments that are sure to unfold. Today’s Sustainability column looks at a big issue—the question of whether to auction or allocate the permits that companies will need to emit greenhouse gases under any cap-and-trade scheme. Yes, it’s inevitably wonky, but the stakes couldn’t be higher. The permits will be worth roughly $150 billion during the first year the bill takes effect; over time (that is, between now and 2050), their value will likely exceed $3 trillion. As you would imagine, there are lots of ideas about how to spend that money. The Lieberman Warner bill spreads the wealth around—giving some to utilities, others to forestry and agricultural

Yet another lively week in the world of green business brought these headlines—Climate Counts ranks consumer companies (again) on global warming practices, the trucking industry slows down and Goldman Sachs banker Mark Tercek takes the helm of The Nature Conservancy. My reactions: Climate Counts: I’ve been a skeptic when it comes to Climate Counts, a nonprofit funded by Stonyfield Farm that aims to mobilize consumers to reward companies with good climate-change policies and avoid those that have failed to address global warming. But I’m coming around to the belief that this little NGO could have an impact. Wood Turner, who runs Climate Counts for Stonyfield “CE-Yo” Gary Hirshberg, tells me that companies are paying attention to their Climate Counts ranking—much as they seek to

As a reporter covering business and the environment, I don’t want to let the perfect become the enemy of the good. We should cheer, or at least politely applaud, the small changes that companies make to lighten their environmental footprint. But we ought not to fool ourselves into believing that incremental change is adequate to the tasks ahead—of slowing down climate change, dealing with water issues, or eventually making our economy sustainable.   Today’s Sustainability column looks at changes made by Taco Bell and Fiji Water. You’ll see that I’m unimpressed by what’s happening at Taco Bell. By contrast, Fiji deserves praise for looking deeply and systematically at its environmental impact—but its business model of shipping water across an ocean or two is flawed,

CEO Neville Isdell is an environmentalist, but making The Coca-Cola Co. sustainable is harder than it looks.