Led by Unilever, Astra Zeneca and Nike, consumer brands are taking climate change more seriously than ever, says a new report from Climate Counts, a nonprofit that rates some of the world’s largest companies on their climate impact.

Big companies are reporting emissions, committing to targets and becoming more vocal in the policy arena, according to the report.

“There’s evidence to suggest we have reached a remarkable tipping point,” says Mike Bellamente, project director of Climate Counts. “Global corporations are increasingly acknowledging climate change as reality and are adopting measures to reduce their emissions and environmental impact.”

This is the fifth report from Climate Counts, which is the brainchild of Stonyfield Farms CE-Yo Gary Hirshberg. The ratings are intended to make consumers more aware of leaders and laggards on climate — the term of art for this is “rank ‘em and spank ‘em — as well as to spur companies to do better. or whatever reason, companies are improving: Bellamente told me over the phone the other day that the average score for the 136 companies rated this year is up by an impressive 54% from the initial set of ratings.

This is nice to hear but the news comes with a big caveat. If there’s one thing we’ve learned from this past decade of growth in both “green” talk and carbon emissions,  it’s this: Voluntary corporate behavior won’t produce an adequate response to the climate crisis. Indeed, it has not: Greenhouse gas emissions rose by record levels last year. “We haven’t made (climate) progress as a society,” Mike acknowledges. Only climate policy will bring meaningful progress.

The trouble is, even companies that have adopted their own sustainability programs are not as active as they need to be in the policy and political arena. Climate Counts reports that 30 of the big companies it ranks expressed  strong support for federal level climate policy, but 82 companies (or 60%) remained silent or in opposition of such efforts. The companies in the survey don’t include stalwart opponents of climate regulation–the coal, utility and oil companies–and so it actually overestimates the degree to which business supports climate action.

Still, as more companies  acknowledge the reality of climate change and reduce their own emissions, this will help set the stage for better policy.

“Many companies are performing well,” Mike told me. “Sustainability is integrated as a philosophy across their business.” Prominent examples include Unilever, this year’s No. 1 company with a score of 88 out of 100, and Nike, with a score of 85, which topped the list last year. (See my blogposts, Unilever CEO: Don’t stay on the sidelines and Nike: Running towards sustainable consumption.)

Other companies that led their industry sectors, with scores in parentheses, include Southwest Airlines (55), Anheuser-Busch/InBev (57), Bank of America (82), UPS (83), Starbucks (70), Herman Miller and Masco (63), Marriott (73), L’Oreal (78), AB Electrolux (80), Microsoft (68), GE (77), AstraZeneca (86) and Hasbro (52).

Some other highlights:

Amazon and Apple are among the laggards in the Climate Counts ratings. That may surprise you because both are innovative companies, and tech companies generally score well on green behavior, but it shouldn’t. Amazon is all but invisible on the climate  issue, scoring a meager 11. “There is little evidence to suggest that Amazon has a management plan in place to account for emissions, reduce their overall environmental impact or report on their progress,” Mike told me. (Not coincidentally, my friends in Seattle tell me that the company plays a minimal role in the sustainability conversations and civil life of the city, in contrast to Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco, REI, etc.) I emailed Amazon for a reaction, and haven’t heard back.

Apple does far better, scoring 60 out of 100, but it still places last in the electronics sector, behind leaders Siemens, HP, IBM, Nokia and Sony. “Unlike corporations of similar size, they fail to disclose a formal company-wide emissions reduction target,” Mike says. Nor does Apply publish a sustainability report.

Rising up the charts were Wyndham Hotels and Resorts, Amgen and VF Corp. Wyndham Hotels surged 30 points  to 57 by launching a green initiative, topping Starwood (48), Hyatt (36) and Hilton (22). Pharmaceutical company Amgen rose 29 points to achieve a score of 57, and VF Corporation, which owns such brands as Nautica and Wrangler, gained 13 points to lift its score to 34.

The “footprint” graphic below reflects the fact that Climate Counts divides companies into three groups. Those that score 50-100 are “striding” towards a low carbon future and identified in green, those that score 13 to 49 are “starting” to address their climate impact and marked in yellow, and those that score 12 or less are “stuck” and colored red.

Despite policy gridlock (or worse) in Washington, despite cheap abundant natural gas (which threatens the development of renewable energy), despite Solyndra (which highlights the risks of crony capitalism), there is good news in the world of business and sustainability.

Innovation is alive and well in companies big and small.

That’s my takeaway after spending the last 36 hours at the GreenBiz Innovation Forum in San Francisco. I’m a senior writer at GreenBiz and let me tell you, it’s been great to get outside the Beltway bubble this week (and not merely because the weather here in SF is spectacular). Here’s are four reasons why:

Nike goes for gold: While she was tantalizingly skimpy on details, the always dynamic Hannah Jones of Nike made clear that the company’s drive to become more sustainable is causing people inside the company to ask ever bolder questions–including how to generate sales without necessarily making and selling more shoes and apparel.

“How do you think about the world of sport and the athlete and human potential in terms of services?” Jones asked. “Could one create revenue streams that are decoupled from any material?”

“Our mission statement isn’t ‘make lots of stuff,” she said. “It’s ‘inspire and innovate on behalf of the athlete.”

For now, Nike is trying to develop different materials that “regenerative, recyclable, and reusable” but don’t compromise performance. One example? World Cup uniforms made entirely out of recycled plastic bottles. This year (as the sign at right says), Nike will turn 440 million plastic bottles into high-performance gear.

Nike is one of the few companies that manages to make sustainability fun, hip and stylish. If you doubt it, check out Nike Better World.

GE doubles down on EcoMagination: GE’s head of EcoMagination, Mark Vachon, told me that absence of energy policy from the U.S. isn’t stopping from GE from continuing to invest in wind, solar and smart grid businesses. The company has committed $10 billion to investments in EcoMagination products and services over the next five years, twice what it spent during the program’s first phase.

“The U.S. (clean energy) market will slow down,” Vachon said. “Is the reaction, let’s put our pencils down and quit? That’s not in our DNA. Our policy is action.” GE expects the growth of its sprawling EcoMagination portfolio to be greater outside the US, in places like China, Australia and Brazil, than it is here. “China couldn’t be more clear about where they are going,” he said.

GE’s approach to innovation is both to draw upon the 1,500 scientists in its research labs and to open itself to new ideas from outside the company. The company’s EcoMagination Challenge, a crowdsourcing platform, attracted more than 5,000 ideas, and led to investments or other partnerships with more than a dozen companies.

Up on the roof: Innovation requires breaking down barriers. Dow, the world’s largest chemical company, had to collaborate across silos and invite in partners to develop the Dow Powerhouse solar shingle, which integrates solar PV panels into rooftop shingles that protect your home and deliver clean renewable energy.

“We want to redefine the rooftop,” said Kirk Thompson of Dow Solar. “Your rooftop will no longer be a depreciating asset. It will be an asset that delivers value to the homeowner.”

To develop the solar shingle, Dow brought together its expertise in materials science, its building construction business and its manufacturing capability. It will make the solar panels at a new facility in Midland, MI, where it is headquartered. Dow got a $12.8 million U.S. Department of Energy grant in September to support the project.

Privahini Bradoo

Turning waste into gold: Privahini Bradoo, the co-founder of a startup now called Biomine, delivered the most intriguing presentation at the GreenBiz event, although she was purposefully vague about her company, which aims to extract value from the more than 40 million tons (!) of electronic waste discarded annually around the world.  As she noted wryly, waste is a byproduct of the fast-changing electronics business where computers, phones and TVs are outdated almost as soon as they exit the store.

“As you have accelerating innovation, you have accelerating obsolescence,” Bradoo said. “This is the dark side of Moore’s law.”

Roughly 80% of the US consumer’s e-waste goes to landfill, and most of the rest gets shipped to India or China for “recycling” under conditions that should appall. Her company aims to turn this “humanitarian disaster” into an economic opportunity.

The economics sound promising. “A single ton of circuit boards creates the same amounts of high value precious metals as 150 tons of commercial grade ore,” Bradoo said. Depending on commodity prices, those circuit boards could generate up to $26,000 of value.

To capture that value, Biomine will have to find a way to collect enough feedstock and efficiently separate metals like gold and copper and rare earth elements from the rest. Here, Bradoo was vague, explaining, “We’re not able to say very much because we’re in the process of patenting.” An inkling of what she’s up to comes from this account of how Biomine and Bradoo, a 2008 graduate of Harvard Business School, won HBS’s Alumni New Venture contest last spring.

Born in India and raised in Oman, Bradoo has a PhD in neuroscience from the University of Auckland in New Zealand and was a Fulbright scholar at Harvard. She cautioned me after her talk that the company is still “very much in the incubation stage” and in semi-stealth mode. It doesn’t have a website and is in the process of rebranding itself, possibly as “GreenOre.” So why pay attention? The firm’s investors  include Silicon Valley venture firm Kleiner Perkins, where the firm’s three employees are now housed. That suggests that Bradoo and her colleagues may be onto something.

Aron Cramer

Today, I’m pleased to publish the second in a series of guest posts about redefining leadership from Aron Cramer, the president and CEO of BSR. BSR (formerly Business for Social Responsibility) works with its 250 member companies to promote a more just and sustainable world, through research, consulting and industry collaborations. Aron, who’s a longtime colleague and friend, has worked all over the world on business issues ranging from labor rights in global supply chains to Internet freedoms in China to the meaning of “sustainable consumption.” Here, he writes about the importance of listening to and learning from voices at the margins.

When I was researching my book Sustainable Excellence, Nike CEO Mark Parker told me that he manages by the principle that “there are a lot of smart people in the world, and most of them don’t work for me.” And while Parker is duly proud of the people he does have at Nike, he points to a central truth: Valuable insight and knowledge is now held in more hands than at any other time in human history.

As we consider how leadership is changing, it is clear that today’s most effective leaders have the ability—and willingness—to listen to weak voices they would have considered irrelevant to their business a generation ago. Indeed, these leaders are able to see across multiple disciplines, perspectives, and geographies.

Historically, leadership used to be exercised by people (usually men) who  had a corner on information, and who would speak with unshakeable authority. They were expected to have all the answers. Today, those who lead do so through their ability to find  all the answers. As Stewart Brand famously said, “information wants to be free.” In a world which is drowning in data, no own can monopolize knowledge; but smart leaders can win by listening to voices that others ignore and by mining the data  for fresh insights.

More recently, corporate leaders  tried to understand the world through different eyes by focusing on “engagement” with NGOs. That, too, is changing. Today, NGOs are no longer the gatekeepers of public opinion, any more than daily newspapers are the gatekeepers of information.

In this context, the resilience of business strategies depends on the degree to which company leaders look in unfamiliar places for insights, answers, and technical expertise.

A case in point is the consumer products sector, which is struggling to balance sluggish economies, consumers empowered by technology as never before, and the need to achieve greater sustainability.. Next week, the World Economic Forum will publish a paper I co-drafted on the “weak signals” that have the potential to change this industry in the next several years. But topics like the quantified self, collaborative consumption, and the “internet of things” are not widely known and are part of only a few business strategies today. Understanding where things go next is a form of social R&D that will allow consumer products companies to see risks they don’t appreciate currently.

It’s often the case with sustainability, as with many things, that changes seem inevitable only in hindsight. More than 10 years ago, I spoke with Human Rights Watch about the importance of protecting free expression on the Internet. But it was not until several years later that the topic erupted into public view, taking many by surprise.

Similarly, over the next several years, issues like privacy and bioethics will become more important and complex. And the ongoing search for energy and natural resources will lead us into even more environmentally and politically sensitive areas, from the Arctic to Afghanistan. This will likely play out in the context of frayed social contracts in developed economies, with economic stagnation magnifying generational conflict between aging baby boomers seeking to preserve their future and 20-somethings looking to get out of the starting gate.

But that’s not to say that these changes can’t be predicted. With the right networks, and by asking the right questions, leaders can avoid being caught off guard. The question, then, is how to identify tomorrow’s voices.

Aron Cramer

Today, I’m pleased to publish the first in a series of guest posts from Aron Cramer, the president and CEO of BSR. BSR (formerly Business for Social Responsibility) works with its 250 member companies to promote a more just and sustainable world, through research, consulting and industry collaborations. Aron, who’s a longtime colleague and friend, has worked all over the world on business issues ranging from labor rights in global supply chains to Internet freedoms in China to the meaning of “sustainable consumption.” Here, looking ahead to BSR’s 2011 conference in San Francisco, he writes about the need for business leaders to step outside the boundaries of their companies to re-energize the sustainability agenda.

Most years, people are reluctant to see summer fade into fall. But the summer of 2011 was a bit of a bummer, bringing hurricanes and earthquakes in the American Northeast; ongoing political stagnation in the United States, Europe, and Japan; and signs that the world’s mature economies are stuck in neutral—and may remain that way for some time. Leaving this summer behind feels like a relief.

It’s up to business to turn things around. That’s why BSR has made redefining leadership as the theme of the BSR Conference 2011.

We view this opportunity as having four dimensions, which we outlined in our most recent annual report. In this series of blog posts, I want to elaborate on each one, beginning with the need for business leaders to invest in the infrastructure required for sustainability.

Building the infrastructure for sustainability goes far beyond green buildings. It means advocating for systemic solutions that create the right incentives for business to make progress on crucial issues like human rights and climate change. Making this happen requires a different kind of engagement in public policy.

These solutions fall into three categories: changing the rules that guide companies, reorienting governments to embrace a sustainability agenda and galvanizing the public. This is not the usual checklist for business. But with policymakers paralyzed by the current economic crisis, both the public and business need to help change the policy agenda.

How to change the rules to reward companies that take sustainability seriously? We can start by supporting stock-exchange listing requirements that make medium- and long-term questions as an explicit part of fiduciary duty. Efforts like this are underway from South Africa, where companies are required to report on their sustainability work, to Sacramento, where California’s legislature is considering a “flexible purpose corporation,” which explicitly enables companies to consider long-term impacts. Globally, the work of the International Integrated Reporting Committee (on which I serve), which is developing a model that brings sustainability into financial reporting, holds out the prospect of further mainstreaming.

Second, we should do what we can to ensure that, within the existing rules, governments advance a sustainable growth agenda. The highest-profile vehicle for this is the Rio+20 summit next June. Many governments, including the United States, have grown very timid on climate action since Copenhagen. This makes it even more important for business to work through groups such as Business Action for Sustainable Development to push and prod government to limit climate change and promote a green growth agenda. Companies like Nike are taking this responsibility seriously. The company has been a strong advocate for public policies that shift our energy system to a lower-carbon model, through BICEP and other entities. Nike has also demonstrated its commitment by creating a unit within its sustainability team that is dedicated to “mobilizing” other actors to realize its vision.

Third, business should exercise its voice, which is too often muted or expressed through trade associations’ efforts to block policies that embrace social and environmental progress. Just this week, the White House, allegedly responding to business pressure, withdrew implementation of new air pollution regulations. Pressure is intensifying to take other steps like this, in the name of restarting a stalled economy.

Starbucks’ Howard Schultz is an example of a chief executive who is taking a different approach, and aiming to be a statesman. His recent effort to halt contributions to political candidates, while not explicitly tied to sustainability, demonstrates how business leaders can influence public debates. Other business executives, like Jim Rogers of Duke Energy and Lars Josefsson of Vattenfall, have also spoken out about the need for governments to act to promote clean energy. With public support for sustainability flagging amid severe economic doldrums, business leaders have the obligation to argue on behalf of environmental protection. The bully pulpit is not just for presidents and prime ministers.

In times of economic difficulty, it’s tempting to put off investments in a sustainable future. Our times require business leaders to think not only about their own performance, but also about the robustness of the systems in which they operate. Those systems are sputtering right now. We as business must reshape the rules, reorient the system, and rebuild public support for sustainability.

A  company’s journey to sustainability is always going to be — cliche alert! — a marathon and not a sprint.

Just ask Nike. The company is a leader in environmental design, and yet it has a long way to go to reach its sustainability goals.

At least Nike knows where it’s headed. It has a bold  long term called the North Star. A key tool is known as Considered Design, where the goal is to

design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials and designed for easy disassembly, while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life.

This is a big, radical, inspiring idea. Here’s a cool video, just a minute long, about Considered Design:

I run marathons, so I know that you need to take a lot of steps to reach your goal. Recently, I saw down with Lorrie Vogel, the general manager of Considered Design, to learn more about what steps Nike has taken, and what’s left to do, after hearing her excellent presentation at the State of Green Business Forum in Chicago.

The good news? Nike’s vision is not only bold, but well thought-out and comprehensive. Nike’s Considered Design index rewards designers who reduce waste, solvents and energy, and employ environmentally friendly materials.

“Our designers are the innovators in the company,” Lorrie says. “They can have the largest impact downstream.” She’s a former designer and, like most people who work at Nike, an athlete. “The competition is fierce” among design groups to achieve gold, silver and bronze scores that depend on their environmental performance, she says.

What’s more, unlike some companies, Nike isn’t designing one line of  products to be sustainable or green, and then leaving the rest alone. It’s applying a single set of design metrics to shoes, apparel and equipment and measuring its progress.

” We don’t want to do ‘less bad,’ ” Lorrie says. “We want to concentrate on, what does ‘good’ look like.

“For us,” she says, “it’s about creating close loop products.”

Some of these closed loop products have generated lots of attention. Nine Nike-sponsored teams in last year’s World Cup wore these shirts, which are made from recycled plastic bottles.

Other Considered products are released quietly. A Nike running shoe called the Dart VII uses “recycled materials throughout,” according to Nike’s Considered website, but you have to look hard to discover that.

Sustainability is almost never part of Nike’s marketing. Instead, the company talks about performance and innovation–which, obviously, matter more to its customers.

What this means, though, is that the company is missing opportunities to let consumers either (a) express a preference for “greener” product, unlikely as that may be or (b) recycle their old shoes, which is more likely. (People who love sports tend to care about the outdoors.)

Without changing consumer behavior–i.e., getting people to recycle, rather than throw away old shoes–Nike has no hope of making its closed-look vision a reality.

For now, it’s impossible to know what percentage of the company’s shoes are being recycled. Nike takes back defective returns, counterfeits and post-consumer shoes and turns them  into Nike Grind, a material used to resurface playing fields. It says here in Nike’s  2009 sustainability report hat

Since Reuse-A-Shoe was established in 1990, we have recycled more than 23 million pairs of shoes and contributed to 320 sport surfaces.

That sounds impressive until you realize that Nike, which generated nearly $20 billion in revenue last year, must sell, at  minimum, tens of millions shoes every year. I’m guessing because Nike won’t offer even a rough estimate of how many shoes it sells. So we don’t know if 1 or 2 or 5 percent of the shoes are coming back to be made into something else.

Just for fun, I went to Nike’s Reuse A Shoe website to find out where I could bring back my old running shoes. My best option is a Nike store that’s 22 miles away in Leesburg, Va. Maybe Nike could get together with other shoe companies and major retailers to encourage and sponsor recycling wherever running shoes are sold. Better yet, runners who brought back their shoes could be rewarded with a premium–like a $1 gel or a $1 off a pair of socks.

To be fair, the sustainability report says:

We are seeking ways to improve the viability of recycling used and defective shoes. The volume of processing is limited and the cost of collection and shipping can be high. We are exploring new partnerships and technologies that will make the process more efficient.

But I don’t see any evidence of new approaches, and Nike spokeswoman wouldn’t elaborate.

AIncremental changes won’t get us where we need to go, as Nike well knows. A bold vision needs to be backed with with bold action.

What’s that slogan again?

Oh yeah.

Just do it.

Last week was a terrific week for corporate sustainability. Unilever unveiled a bold plan to reduce its environmental impact and Chevrolet — Chevrolet! — announced $40 million of carbon reduction projects. Forestry giant Georgia Pacific–owned by the Koch brothers, of all people–signed an agreement to protect endangered forests in the southern U.S., winning praise from the Dogwood Alliance and NRDC. Greenbuild, the world’s largest convention on environmentally-friendly buildings, attracted 1,000 exhibitors and 27,000 people to Chicago. Wow.

None of this will surprise readers of  Sustainable Excellence: The Future of Business in a Fast-Changing World (Rodale, $25.99) by Aron Cramer and Zachary Karabell, a smart, readable and provocative book that argues that business success in the long run will be earned by companies that “integrate consideration of society and the environment into their DNA.”  As CEO of Business for Social Responsibility since 2004, Aron has had a front-row seat (actually, a place on the field) from which to track changes in how business is being done, while Zachary is an accomplished journalist and scholar who also did a stint as a Wall Street money manager. Together, they have provided a map of the ever-evolving  business landscape, along with valuable guidance to executives who must deal with a range of sometimes competing pressures on companies to do good and to do well.

What’s the business case for sustainable excellence? They write:

What has made sustainable excellence necessary is the simple imperative of maintaining profitability in a world altered by a trio of interlocking challenges: the financial crisis that hobbled the economy, the rise of the emerging world and the increased urgency to decouple economic growth from natural resource consumption.

In short, the drive to integrate sustainability into business is a function of thousands of companies recognizing that now and in the future, this is the only viable path forward.

Aron and Zachary tell stories about GE, Google, DuPont, Shell, Levi-Strauss, BP, PepsiCo, Starbucks and Coca-Cola, among others–companies that, to varying degrees, are redefining themselves to deal with the long-term trends they’ve identified, and to meet the rising expectations of business that come from their employees, their customers, communities and NGOs.

Nike, for example, which was once “a defensive symbol of corporate irresponsibility,” has turned around to make “sustainability an important foundation of its future growth”–by not only protecting the rights of workers in its supply chains, but also be redesigning products, sharing its intellectual property with others to have a greater impact and speaking up in Washington for climate regulation.

Walmart, too, is a remarkable turnaround story. Formerly a lightning rod for criticism, particularly over its labor practices, Walmart “has changed dramatically, and rapidly,” Aron and Zachary argue. Its “supply chain efforts have made Bentonville, Arkansas, the unlikely epicenter of sustainable excellence.” These days, they write, “some observers believe that Walmart has more influence on the business environment than the US government and other regulators.”

That’s a provocative point, and it raises a question: Has business overstepped its role? Walmart (not EPA) sets standards for packaging. Clothing makers like Gap and Timberland enforce labor standards in China which are properly the province of state authorities. Big companies are doing what governments once did, without the democratic controls we have, at least in theory, over governments. (I wrote a FORTUNE story about this idea back in 2005, headlined Cops of the Global Village.)

I called Aron to ask him about this, and about a few other issues raised by the book. He acknowledged that lines have blurred between the responsibility of government and business, particularly when government inaction creates vacuums. In the U.S., dozens of big companies have set carbon reduction goals even though the government has not. In China, he said,  “there has been a de facto outsourcing of labor enforcement from governments.” The same goes for environmental rules in China where Walmart, among others, is delving into the environmental practices of its suppliers.

Underlying the whole idea of sustainable excellence, in fact, is the notion that companies need to take an expansive view of their role in the world, one that goes way beyond obeying the law and making money. You might think that in the absence of government rules, big companies might fell less need to worry about climate or global poverty, but Aron says no: Government inaction “increases the imperative on business to pursue sustainable excellence,” he said.

Pressures on companies are growing from other sources, he notes including NGOs or self-organizing publics. Using Facebook, thousands of people organized a boycott of Whole Foods Market, he said, after founder John Mackey publicly opposed  President Obama’s health care plan.

“In the Web 2.0 world, you have shifting coalitions of interests that can self-organize in the way it would have taken a Greenpeace or an Amnesty International to organize decades ago,” Aron says.

I’ve got a couple of quibbles and one significant beef with Sustainable Excellence. In an otherwise superb chapter on leadership, the authors are too kind to Sir John Browne, the former chairman of BP, who they praise as the first major oil company CEO to acknowledge the threat of climate change in a speech in 2007. While they note that BP’s subsequent safety record was terrible, they write:

Still, the disconnect between words and actions at BP does not to diminish the signal importance of Browne’s “man bites dog” moment, which transformed forever the way companies viewed the crucial question of energy and climate.

Uh, no. I see the BP story not as a “disconnect between words and action,” but as one where the words were emptied of all significance by the company’s actions. BP has lost its voice because of its operational woes. Meanwhile, the authors are too tough on Bill Ford, also around the question of words and actions: While it’s true that the Ford company chairman has failed to deliver on his grandiose claim in 1999 “to preside over the demise of the internal combustion engine” (and that the grass roof on a Ford factory in Dearborn was a misplaced prorioty), Bill Ford’s  legacy will be that of a leader who consistently pursued environmental responsibility, recruited a strong CEO in Alan Mullaly to help him, helped his company survive without a government bailout and will, in the future, become the “green” leader among U.S. automakers.

This leads me to my more significant beef. Like all books about corporate responsibility or sustainability (including my own), Sustainable Excellence has a tendency to ascribe too much power to business. Ford can’t sell small cars unless consumers want to buy them. BP can’t go beyond petroleum without global controls over carbon pollution. Sales of organic food by Walmart and everyone else slow down during a recession. Business, in other words, isn’t all-powerful, and it doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It’s constrained by a competitive economy, a culture, an ecosystem of expectations and regulations shaped by all of us.

Aron and Zachary are very smart, so of course they know this. When I called Aron, I asked him whether Sustainable Excellence — which is at heart a hopeful book — left him believing that forward-thinking companies can solve global environmental and social problems on their own, without government action. Of course not, he said: “Business can’t do it alone. Smart policy is essential.” But this book gives us reason for optimism, as well as a framework to understand the dramatic changes reshaping the corporate world.

In a world where it’s so hot or dry that no one wants to hike, bike, run or climb, outdoorsy companies like Nike, Patagonia, REI and Timberland will be in deep trouble.

So it makes sense—and it’s certainly about time—for the companies that sell outdoor apparel and equipment to come up with common standards to measure the environmental impact of their products.

This week, an industry group called the Outdoor Industry Alliance announced that its members have spent several years doing just that. The companies unveiled “a ground breaking environmental assessment tool” that they call an Eco Index, saying:

It provides companies throughout the supply chain a way to benchmark and measure their environmental footprint, allowing them to identify areas for improvement and make informed sourcing and product life cycle decisions.

It sounds good, doesn’t it? The trouble is, the group says it will take a long time for the industry to develop and agree on standards that are simple, reliable and meaningful enough to present them to consumers. In fact, there’s no commitment to turn the index into a shopper-friendly tool, the industry says:

The current focus of the index is to be an internal/supply chain facing tool and not a consumer-facing label. This focus could be revisited in future years.

That’s disappointing. It’s particularly disappointing because one company—Timberland—has demonstrated that it’s possible to measure and report on the impact of its products. As it happens, Timberland today (Aug. 3) convened a conference call to talk about its own Green Index and how it fits into the new industry-wide initiative.

Jeff Swartz, the CEO of Timberland and a leader of the corporate-responsibility movement, said he wants to play nicely with competitors and other retailers, as the industry tries to settle on common metrics. “We can’t afford a Betamax-VHS debate,” he said. “Harmonization is an imperative.”

At the same time, Swartz made clear that he’s frustrated by the slow pace of the industry initiative.

Without labels or online data that enable consumers to compare, say, a boot from Timberland with one from Steve Madden or UGG, companies that do the right thing—whether by eliminating harmful chemicals from their products, using more recycled materials, or putting solar power on the roof of a store—will struggle to get rewarded for their efforts, which frequently add costs.

This isn’t a problem only for Timberland. Patagonia, Nike, Levi’s and REI have all undertaken meaningful sustainability efforts.

“Consumers need information that helps them discriminate between brands,” Swartz said.

The challenge is especially acute for brands that distribute through mainstream retailers because sales people there are less likely than those in specialty stores to know, or care, about sustainability issues.

Said Swartz: “It’s very hard for me at Nordstrom or Macy’s or places like that to present outdoor product, thoughtfully made, and have the consumer value it.”

None of this is meant to suggest the rating products is simple. David Labistour, the CEO of a Canadian retailer called Mountain Equipment Co-op, who joined Swartz on the call, said even a seemingly simple question–is a garment made of organic cotton?–can be complicated by such variables as the amount of water needed to grow the cotton, the labor standards on the farm, or the lifecycle impact of using cotton versus polyester, which needs less time in the dryer.

Labistour pointed out that it’s been impossible, so far, to get the industry to agree on performance standards for products, for which there’s presumably greater consumer demand.

“What is the difference between a Patagonia waterproof jacket and a North Face waterproof jacket?” he asked. Which sleeping bag is warmest? Right now, there’s no way for a consumer to know.

Still, Timberland’s Green Index shows what can be done. Introduced in 2007, it measures a variety of product impacts–the greenhouse gases generated through production, the presence of hazardous chemicals in the products and the use of recycled, organic or renewable materials–and uses a formula to come up with a single score for each product. (You can read more about the methods here and download a 16-page 2009 report on the Index from Timberland’s information-packed website.) Here’s a sample label:

How’s Timberland doing? That’s hard to say because its performance can’t be compared to industry norms. During the second quarter of this year, the company’s average score was 6.91 on a scale of zero to 10, where lower scores mean a lighter footprint. “It ain’t so good, and it’s slightly worse than it was this time a year ago,” he said. Partly that’s because fall and winter products, which are heavier and therefore have a greater impact, are shipping earlier this year. Not until the end of next year will Timberland reach the point where it can apply the Green Index to all of its footwear. “It’s very perplexing if you’re a consumer,” Swartz.

Even more discouraging, there’s not much evidence that most consumers care all that much about the environmental impact of the things they buy. I’m at the beach in Delaware this week and, I swear, 80% of the vehicles here are minivans or SUVs, EPA mileage ratings notwithstanding.

“I don’t think we can rely on consumers,” said Labistour.

And yet–there are reasons to be encouraged as the outdoor industry, along with others, stumbles gradually towards standards and metrics.

Most consumers may not care, but a growing number of young shoppers do. So do the people who work at companies like Timberland and REI. Other pressures are coming from major retailers like Wal-Mart, with its sustainability consortium, and from the new initiative from UL Environment and Greener World Media. (See The Business of Rating Business.) Good Guide is another step in the right direction.

Bottom line: We’re closer than ever to the point where shoppers have access to simple, meaningful and reliable information about the sustainability of the things they buy. That’s got to be a good thing.

Here’s an interesting use of social media by a group called Climate Interactive. It’s an attempt to track progress being made at the Copenhagen climate negotiations. Climate Interactive (“vigorous sharing of user-friendly simulations”) grew out of modeling done at MIT, and has support from universities, nonprofits and business (Citi, Morgan Stanley, Nike, Schlumberger). Given the unavoidable uncertainties of climate science, these projections should be understood as best estimates. But the organization is admirably transparent about its methods and assumptions, as best as this non-scientist can tell.

Here’s a short video explaining the scorecard.

The question is, can organizing tools like this one motivate people to care about the impact of our actions today on generations to come?

If climate regulation will burden businesses or increase costs,  then why are so many companies strengthening their voluntary response to the climate crisis in the midst of an economic downturn?

The reason is, there’s a race to the top when it comes to sustainability, particularly among consumer companies. No one wants to be seen as a laggard by  customers, workers, NGOs, government or the press.

Reputation matters. Ignoring the climate emergency is no longer an option for a big consumer brand.

That, as far as I can tell, is why so many companies are surging ahead in the third annual corporate climate scorecard put together by the nonprofit group Climate Counts. Gary Hirshberg, the CE-yo and “main moover” behind of Stonyfield Farms (yum) put up the money to start Climate Counts, and Wood Turner is its able executive director.

“We see a real competition ensuing, as companies race to the top,” Turner told me the other day, as the new ratings came out. “Companies are preparing their businesses and their brands for the future.”Once again, Nike (83 points out of 100) and topped the Climate Counts list. Bringing up the rear are Jones Apparel Group (7), VF Corporation (6), Viacom (3), Burger King (10), Wendy’s-Arby’s Group (2), PNC Financial Services (3), SunTrust (2), Regions (1), ExpressJet (7), AirTran (5) and SkyWest Air (0).

In the argot of the NGO world, this is known as “rank ‘em and spank ‘em.” And it seems to work.

According to Turner, whenever an updated list comes out, his phone begins to ring. And we are seeing companies start to boast about their rankings. UPS, which ranked No. 1 in the shipping category, loves to outperform archrival FedEx, so the company issued a press release today to call attention to its ranking.

So long as we’re keeping score, let’s also note that Coca-Cola beat PepsiCo, Microsoft outperformed Google, HP nosed out IBM and Marriott crushed Starwood in the 2009 Climate Count rankings.

More meaningful is the fact that many companies made dramatic improvements to their scores. Among the big gainers were Levi Strauss, eBay, Disney, Nokia, PepsiCo, Yum! Brands, Darden Restaurants and US Airways. (Thanks to Mother Nature Network blogger Shea Gunther for pointing this out and, no, we’re not related, at least as far as we know.) The entire electronics sector scored above 50, Turner noted, as did consumer shipping.

One last thought about this list–it’s signal that “green products” by themselves aren’t enough to signal a company’s sustainability commitment. Clorox, for example, has its GreenWorks line of products, but it ranks last in the household products category, far behind P&G. Green companies Method and Seventh Generation aren’t rated but it’s a safe bet they would do well. Climate Counts plans to come out with an iPhone app soon to help environmentally conscious shoppers.

The bottom line: Smart companies aren’t just making “green products.” They’re taking a deep look at their sustainability practices–thanks to groups like Climate Counts.

This may come under the category of Too Much Information, but I relieved myself the other day into a waterless urinal near the summit of the Park City Mountain Resort. A plaque informed me that each environmentally-friendly urinal at the ski resort saves about 40,000 gallons of fresh water a year.

This is part of what the Park City calls its “Environmental Commitment.” Right on every trail map, the resort says it “recognizes that the environment is one of our most valuable assets.” Now there’s a bold statement. It might be more attention-grabbing to say that  if we don’t do something about global warming soon, Park City will have the climate of, say, Phoenix, before too many decades go by.

But what does it mean for the ski industry to make an environmental commitment? Skiing requires chopping down big trees on beautiful mountains to make way for ski runs and slope-side second homes. It’s an utterly unnecessary pursuit that usually takes place far from population centers, requiring air travel or long car trips. It’s energy-intensive, too. Think of artificial snow-making, and all those steaming hot tubs.

Still, I love to ski. Just being in the mountains makes me happy. And skiing has been a great way for me to spend time over the years with my brothers and my daughters (that’s my older daughter, Sarah, who came with me this time.)

As a tree-hugging (not literally) skier hoping for insight into this conundrum, I have been reading an advance copy of Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Front Lines of the Sustainability Revolution, by Auden Schendler. Schendler is executive director of community and environmental responsibility at Aspen Skiing Company, a business known for its sustainability efforts.

I’m halfway through the book, and I’m enjoying it a great deal. Right up front, Schendler takes on those who tell him that the best thing that the Aspen ski resort and, for the matter, the entire town of Aspen could do for sustainability would be to shut down:

Certainly Aspen’s lifestyle is lavish. But then, so is the entire U.S. lifestyle. You’ve heard the stations before: we’re 5 percent of the world’s population, and we use 25 percent of the planet’s resources. Americans burn more fossil fuel per capita than any nation on earth…

So what do we do? Close down Aspen, then close down the United States? The U.S. is hugely wasteful compared to Europe…and actually, Europe is pretty bad compared to India…Do we shut down Paris?

In short there’s no way to draw the moral energy line in the sand showing which activities are OK and which are not.

Fair enough. So the more reasonable question for Aspen, Park City and every other business is: Are you doing as much as you can to be environmentally responsible?

Park City’s record is mixed in that regard. The resort says that it offsets 100% of its power consumption from renewable energy sources—a claim that is hard to verify, without knowing more detail, but let’s assume that it’s true. The resort’s fleet of snowcats is “powered entirely by biodiesel fuel.” One of the best things about staying in Park City area is the free, well-run public bus system which shuttles people around resorts, lodging and restaurants. Then there are those waterless urinals. You can read more at www.saveoursnow.net.

But much of this appears to be for show. On the mountain, you can eat chili in a paper bowl that is 100% compostable, but the bowls get thrown in with other trash, making the claim worthless. There’s lots of self-congratulation on the website, but no mention (that I could find) of the resort’s overall carbon footprint, or its goals.

And, as Schendler argues in his book, the most important measures of a company’s environmental commitment may be well its actions in the policy arena, because that’s where the climate change problem will be solved, or not. He writes:

Before businesses can effectively lobby for government action on climate, they need to have done something themselves or they lose their credibility and appear to be hypocrites. This may be the single most important reason businesses and individuals should implement policy reductions: so that their political case-making has more power and credibility.

This is a great point. Aspen measures up well in this regard—it filed an amicus brief before the U.S. Supreme Court in a lawsuit requiring EPA to regulate GHG emissions. It also joined a Greenpeace campaign against Kimberly Clark, the forest products firm. I’ve never heard of Park City doing anything like that.

More to the point, why don’t we hear more from the entire ski industry on the climate-change issue? They have databases of skiers—why not enlist their customers to support federal action? The same could be said for the travel industry. It’s not just ski areas, but beaches that are threatened by climate disruptions. Where are Marriott, Hilton, Starwood and the airlines when it comes to global warming policy? Actually, I know where the airlines are—they don’t want their emissions to be regulated. Marriott, by contrast, is taking steps to help preserve rainforests.

Unfortunately, only a handful of progressive companies, including Nike and Starbucks, have taken bold positions on the climate change issue. They’re part of a coalition called Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy, or BICEP.) Only when a lot more companies join them will the odds get better than we can truly save our snow.