When I returned from the library last Sunday night, a debate was raging, per usual, in the living room of my tiny house on the edge of campus. Adam, our hard-headed econ major, had his iPhone out and was furiously fact-checking as he gesticulated at Jared, a sociology major. The topic wasn’t the merit of a Skyfall or the don’t-go-to-law-school argument that occurs weekly as we get closer to graduation—it was global warming. “I just think this is the defining problem of our generation, and we’re messing it up,” sighed Jared. Adam rolled his eyes. “Well, obviously. I’ll agree with you on that point.”

"Ours is a world in which a flood in Thailand can cut off global supplies of computer disk drives for the better part of a year; where a record-low Mississippi River can choke the flow of commerce; where an unprecedented hurricane (or “superstorm”) can upend one of the world’s financial centers for weeks. In that context, how should a company view climate change, renewable energy, and resource efficiency?"

Microsoft has implemented a companywide system to charge each of their departments for the carbon emissions associated with their data centers, software development labs, offices, and employee travel.

On January 20, environmental journalist and 350.org founder Bill McKibben concluded his national college divestment tour in the Old Chapel of Middlebury College, the school where McKibben and many other founders began discussing and organizing around the issue of global climate change. Backdropped by the chapel’s bronze organ pipes and with a howling Vermont wind beating on the windows, McKibben spoke to a crowd of students, faculty, activists, and skeptics.

The annual LOHAS conference is one that I look forward to. LOHAS is an acronym for lifestyles of health and sustainability. It refers to the substantial market for products and services, ethically delivered, for consumers especially concerned about wellness and corporate responsibility. It is the market at “the Intersection of Personal and Planetary Heath,” as Gwynne Rogers of the Natural Marketing Institute put it.