Tundra is the coldest of all the biomes. Tundra comes from the Finnish word tunturi, meaning treeless plain. It is noted for its frost-molded landscapes, extremely low temperatures, little precipitation, poor nutrients, and short growing seasons. Dead organic material functions as a nutrient pool. The two major nutrients are nitrogen and phosphorus. Nitrogen is created by biological fixation, and phosphorus is created by precipitation.
In many respects, the scientific debate is irrelevant. For the business community, climate change represents an impending market shift – one that will both alter existing markets and create new ones. It will not be unlike shifts that have occurred in the past, when consumer needs changed, or technology advanced, and some companies declined while others rose to take their place. In the 1980s alone, computers eliminated the typewriter industry, compact discs replaced phonograph records, and the Bell System’s demise wrought structural changes in telecommunications. New competitive environments produce both risks and opportunities, as well as winners and losers.
This market shift will create new supply and demand for emission-reducing technologies, new financial instruments for emissions trading, new mechanisms for transferring technologies globally (i.e. Joint Implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism), and new pressures to retire historic sources of greenhouse gases (GHG). The shift will affect all companies to varying degrees, and all have a managerial and fiduciary obligation to assess their business exposure and decide whether action is prudent. In short, as the market shift of climate change looms on the business horizon, the argument against action is increasingly harder to make.
For many within the business community, the future is a carbon-constrained world and the time for action is now. Companies with this perspective already have engaged in GHG reductions. Yet other companies (particularly in the United States) continue to resist and deride their proactive competitors with labels such as ‘carbon cartel’ or ‘Kyoto capitalists.’ Such resistance is a very risky strategy, however, in the face of the coming market shift.
The debate is thus strategic (not scientific) and companies taking voluntary climate action are not practicing philanthropy or pure social responsibility (although many couch their activities in the language of ‘doing the right thing’). In fact, many companies are agnostic about the science of climate change. They engage the climate-change issue as a way to protect their strategic investments and to search for business opportunities in a changing market landscape.
This article seeks to explain the current business phenomenon at three different yet closely related levels of response. First, we look at the early warning signs that suggest a market shift is coming. Second, we identify the various business frameworks that can be and are being used to link climate change to business interests. Third, we describe some specific ways in which companies synergistically integrate climate change and business strategy to contribute to the bottom line.
Transpiration is the term used to describe the transport of water through an actual, vegetated plant into the atmosphere. Transpiration is an important part of the evapotranspiration process, and a major mechanism of the water cycle in the atmosphere. Transpiration may also refer to the rate of the water vapor transport through the whole vegetative canopy (that is, through the group of plants).
Just as you release water vapor when you breathe, plants do, too—although the term “transpire” is more appropriate than “breath.” During this process individual water molecules are released from the surface of the plant body through tiny structures called stomata. There are many more individual water vapor molecules inside the air spaces between the tissues of a plant than in the air surrounding the plant body. Consequently water vapor will always exit the plant along a concentration gradient. As more water vapor molecules exit the plant, the remaining water molecules tug on each other and will pull an entire column of water throughout the plant body through special tissues called xylem during the process of transpiration. One way to visualize transpiration is to put a plastic bag around some plant leaves. As Figure 1 shows, transpired water will condense on the inside of the bag. If the bag had been wrapped around the soil below it, too, then even more water vapor would have been released, as water also evaporates from the soil. During a growing season, a leaf will transpire many times more water than its own weight. An acre of corn gives off about 3,000-4,000 gallons (11,400-15,100 liters) of water each day, and a large oak tree can transpire 40,000 gallons (151,000 liters) per year.