U.S. Cap and Trade Bill and IBM On-Demand Services

Green marketing is no longer an appeal to conscious. With the passage of the Cap and Trade Bill, it will become an appeal to wallet also. Waxman and Markey's bill (2009, pp 652-672) put a cap on carbon footprint and will dictate an allowance to each business. All companies will be required to purchase an "Emissions Permit" and over time this allowance will continuously get smaller to squeeze companies to further reduce carbon footprint. The "trade" aspect enables good-boy companies with an allowance greater than their footprint to sell credits to bad-boys at whatever the market will bear. IBM On-Demand services reduces server and glass-house carbon footprint. We can take it a step further as well. With On-Demand services, you really may not need an office building- they are just big filing cabinets. People can access On-Demand services from anywhere they have Internet access.

So On-Demand services can help companies with a quick reduction in glass-house carbon and later with smaller building carbon savings. Teleworking becomes a more feasible option. This is considered by both the Heritage Foundation and the Brookings Institute as one of the most sweeping pieces of legislation ever contrived. Heritage is opposed. Brookings is keeping distance. Plausable deniablity is a good ploy with something that can go really wrong. Although not yet signed into the law of the land, it is expected to be so before the Copenhagen World Environmental Summit. Obama wants to showcase it there. The expectation is that it will reduce global temperature by 1/10 of a degree to 2/10 of a degree.

References
Waxman and Markey (2009). H.R. 2454, aka The Cap and Trade Bill. U.S. House of Representatives. Retrieved on September 18, 2009 from http://www.heritage.org/Research/EnergyandEnvironment/upload/hr2454-text.pdf