New Bottom Line

Welcome to the New Bottom Line, a periodic e-letter offering strategic perspectives on business and environment. Formerly distributed internationally by the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, New Bottom Line is now available exclusively from Natural Logic and its licensees.

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Reader Comments

“Fascinating, highly readable and thought-provoking.”
Gerald Millward-Oliver, GObp / business communications, Bradford on Avon, England

“Brilliant and powerful.”
Don Stone, Professor of Accounting, University of Massachusetts

“I really appreciate the clarity and creativeness and generousness of your messages.”
Tony Gwilliam, Buckminster Fuller Institute

“I have long appreciated your articles. They work to not only educate, but to show that there are others who are taking a proactive role in reducing environmental impacts.”
David Burdick, Underwriters Laboratories

“You’ve obviously done enough thinking to convey this incredibly complex idea in relatively simple terms.”
Rob Watson, Natural Resources Defense Council

“Sensible, optimistic and inspirational.”
Kevin D Brown, Site Manager, Haig-Brown House Education Centre

“A breath of fresh air and a clarity of thinking in an otherwise often fuzzy field. Thanks for continuing to send me your NBL musings—it is my favorite enviro reading, along with Dana Meadow’s columns.”
Steven H. Goldfinger, Ph.D

“Great column that I’m already quoting. Keep up the insightful work.”
Ed Cohen-Rosenthal, Cornell University

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Past Issues

• New Bottom Line Volume 16 – 2007
  • New Bottom Line Volume 16.1 – No more coal?
• New Bottom Line Volume 15 – 2006
  • New Bottom Line Volume 15.1 – Houston: 'We've got a problem'
  • New Bottom Line Volume 15.2 – Sustainability – At the tipping point?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 15.3 – Building the Change: The 2030 Climate Challenge
  • New Bottom Line Volume 15.4 – Generative Feedback: Changing How We Think About Change
• New Bottom Line Volume 14 – 2005
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.1 – More on the Cost of Green: Why Green Building is Good Business
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.2 – CSR reporting and company performance: How closely are they correlated?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.3 – CSR Reporting: Current Practices and Future Trends
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.3.a – CSR Reporting Survey: Details
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.4 – Sustainable products, sustainable companies
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.5 – Eye of the Beholder
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.6 – Urban Futures: A Tale of New Cities
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.7 – Avoiding the Next Train Wreck
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.8 – Social Investment, Social Capital and Social Action
  • New Bottom Line Volume 14.9 – Real Time Regulation – A New Business and Policy Frontier
• New Bottom Line Volume 13 – 2004
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.1 – Key Sustainability KPIs: the simple, the sobering, the significant
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.2 – Teams in motion: Engineering grace, management elegance
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.3 – How High the Moon – The challenge of ‘sufficient’ goals
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.4 – Sustainable business – Declaration of Leadership
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.5 – What is it about 'zero waste'?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.6 – Risk, CFOs, and the Sustainability Business Case
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.7 – The Long and the Short of It
  • New Bottom Line Volume 13.8 – It Began With a Dot: Product Regulation and Future Markets
• New Bottom Line Volume 10 – 2001
  • New Bottom Line Volume 10.1 – Cheney's Energy Policy… More or Less
  • New Bottom Line Volume 10.2 – A Letter to Members of the Senate Energy Committee
• New Bottom Line Volume 9 – 2000
  • New Bottom Line Volume 9.1 – What Silicon Valley Should Learn From San Diego About Our Electricity Future
• New Bottom Line Volume 8 – 1999
  • New Bottom Line Volume 8.1 – Entropy: A Parable
• New Bottom Line Volume 7 – 1998
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.1 – A Sustainability Cookbook
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.2 – A Simple Business Model. A Profound Business Challenge.
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.3 – Strategic Sustainability (6): Driving a Larger Vehicle
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.4 – The Laws of Nature: Sorry, no referendum available, no amendments possible
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.5 – The Story of O
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.6 – When the best just isn't good enough
  • New Bottom Line Volume 7.7 – Surprise! The world works exactly as we know it does
• New Bottom Line Volume 6 – 1997
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.1 – Pick Your Progress: Regulatory Reform? Or Regulatory Insulation?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.2 – Strategic SustainabilityTM (1): Dragged kicking and screaming to where we really want to go
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.3 – From Sources to Sinks: The Myth of Resource Depletion
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.4 – Green Scissors: Cutting the Fat From Left and Right
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.5 – What you see is what you get: DNA, Supersheep and the Patterns of Life
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.6 – Strategic Sustainability (2): It's in the way that you move it
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.7 – Nature's Services: Our invisible bank account comes into focus
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.8 – Strategic Sustainability (3): WASA to ya?!
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.9 – An Economic Approach to Slowing Global Climate Change
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.10 – Income Energy and Local Economies: The White Lightening Solution
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.11 – MAI: Globalization and the Tragedy of the All Too Common
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.12 – The Parable of the Trades: Anthropology, Cell Biology and the WTO
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.13 – Strategic Sustainability (4): Less is more in Swedish forest
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.14 – On a Clear Day You Can Deja Vu All Over Again
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.15 – What's New? Nothing
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.16 – Everything I Ever Needed to Know About Management I Learned 369 Years Ago at the Launch — and Sinking — of the Wasa Ship
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.17 – Stranded Assets: Why Can't You Ever Find a Capitalist Around When You Need One?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.18 – Affluenza: Might As Well Face It…
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.19 – Regional Metabolism Analysis: A Tool for "Reality-based" Economic Development
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.20 – Strategic Sustainability (5): Facing the Facts at Interface
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.21 – Bioneers: Plant Wisdom and Corporate Futures, Together Again for the Very First Time
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.22 – Biomimicry: Secrets Hiding in Plain Sight
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.23 – Compromise or Breakthrough? Kyoto, Climate Change and Factor Four Efficiencies
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.24 – The Business of Climate Change: From Kyoto to Money in the Bank
  • New Bottom Line Volume 6.25 – Some Food for Thought. Please Chew Thoroughly.
• New Bottom Line Volume 5 – 1996
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.1 – Business and Environment on the World Wide Web (1)
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.2 – Business and Environment on the World Wide Web (2)
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.3 – From Life Cycle Assessment to Life Cycle Thinking
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.4 – Ecomimesis: Copying ecosystems for fun and profit
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.5 – Zero Ecological Footprint: How Lightly Can We Tread?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.6 – A Cyclical Materials Economy: What goes around comes around…or does it?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.7 – Shooting the Rapids: Time and the Logic of Wall Street
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.8 – Minding Your Own Business? Watch Its Metabolism
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.9 – Endocrine Disrupters: It's Not Nice to Fool Mother Nature
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.10 – Decentralization, Preemption and Ideological Consistency
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.11 Requisite Variety: If a Corporation "Is" a Person, Where Is Its Head?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.12 – Tunneling Through the Efficiency "Barrier": The Hits Just Keep on Coming
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.13 – Life Cycle Analysis: Only as Good as the Data
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.14 – Rating Your Company's EQE: A Design for Environment Checklist
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.15 – Weather or not: Risk and the physics of climate change
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.16 – Making Sense of Garbage: They Recycle Arguments, Don't They?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.17 – The Cost of Environmental Quality and Efficiency: Straw into Gold
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.18 – The Real Eurostyle: Sustainable Development and Competitive Advantage
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.19 – Trick or Treat: Surprises on the Environmental Landscape
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.20 – Industries in Transition: A new business landscape
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.21 – Carbon Taxes Revisited: It's Still the Economy, Stupid
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.22 – Evaluating Corporate Environmental Performance
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.23 – Here Comes the Sun: The Unrealized Promise of Photovoltaics
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.24 – The Greening of Yellowstone
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.25 – Doing more with less: What your next car will learn from a luggage cart
  • New Bottom Line Volume 5.26 – Year End Musings on the Whole Enchilada
• New Bottom Line Volume 4 – 1995
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.1 – The Other Carbon Crisis: Trading Soil for Oil
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.2 – Banking on Green: The Financial Industry and the Environment
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.3 – Business Process Re-Engineering Comes to Regulatory Reform
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.4 -Rating your company's EQE
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.5 – Contract with America: Taking Out a Contract on America's Environment
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.6 – Eco-Efficiency: A Winning Investment Strategy
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.7 – Eco-Efficiency: A Winning Investment Strategy (2)
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.8 – Only Five More Earth Days Until the Millennium
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.9 – Ecological Tax Reform: Composting the Gridlock
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.10 – Rating Your Company's EQE: An Energy Checklist
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.11 – Want to Cut Energy Waste? Send This Column to Congress.
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.12 – The More Things Change: "Production" and Transformation
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.13 – Rating Your Company's EQE: A Water Efficiency Checklist
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.14 – Who Knows What Business You're Really In? The Dump Heap Knows.
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.15 – Cities and Global Warming: Key to a New Renaissance?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.16 – Doing it Right: Business Leadership, Environmental Management… and The Grateful Dead?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.17 – Do We Suffer From Too Much Progress? Or Not Enough?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.18 – The Trap of Binary Thinking
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.19 – ISO 14000: The Next Horizon in Environmental Management
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.20 – Upstream, Downstream
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.21 – Industrial Ecology in Motion (1)
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.22 – Industrial Ecology in Motion (2): Heavy Industry
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.23 – Industrial Ecology in Motion (3): Eco-Industrial Parks
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.24 – Ecological Design: Living in the Material World
  • New Bottom Line Volume 4.25 – Strategic Environmental Management Publications
• New Bottom Line Volume 3 – 1994
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.1 – Out of the Mud: Disaster Recovery and Sustainable Re-Development
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.2 – Designing for the REAL World… and the Real WORLD
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.3 – Light Bulbs, Trade Wars and Shareholder Suits
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.4 – Price and Cost: The Next Environmental Frontier
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.5 – Re-Engineering Regulations: (Who's the Customer? What's the Product?)
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.6 – Keeping up with the Joneses: Business and Environment Newsletters
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.7 – EcoAudits: Giving Your Company an Environmental Check-Up
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.8 – Building an Environmental Economy: A Municipal Strategy
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.9 – Industrial Ecosystems: World Without Waste, Amen?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.10 – Free Trade, "Negastuff" and Sustainable Economies
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.11 – The End of Ownership? Leasing, Licensing and Environmental Quality
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.12 – The Natural Step (1): From Linear to Cyclical Economy
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.13 – The Natural Step (2): An Industrialized Country Learns Common Sense
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.14 – Voluntary Government Programs Support Business Environmental Efficiency
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.15 – More Voluntary Government Programs Support Business Environmental Efficiency
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.16 – "Takings" Liberties: None Dare Call It Reason
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.17 – Risky Business: Who Accounts for Regulations?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.18 – How Can You Have Your Cake and Eat It Too When You're Talking Out of Both Sides of Your Mouth?
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.19 – The Recycling Economy: Just the Tip of the Iceberg
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.20 – Green Procurement
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.21 – The Environmental Management Payoff at Church and Dwight
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.22 – The Global Energy Economy: Turning the Corner
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.23 – Two Benefits for the Price of One
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.24 – Recommended Readings on Environmental Quality and Efficiency
  • New Bottom Line Volume 3.25 – Environmental Management in the New Newtonian Age
• New Bottom Line Volume 2 – 1993
  • New Bottom Line Volume 2.1 – Environmental Regulatory "Reform"
  • New Bottom Line Volume 2.2 – Actions and Consequences: Where the Free Market Lies
  • New Bottom Line Volume 2.3 – Total Quality Environmental Management
• New Bottom Line, Volume 1 – 1992
  • New Bottom Line Volume 1.1 – Environment vs. Economy
  • New Bottom Line Volume 1.2 – Assessing Environmental Performance
  • New Bottom Line Volume 1.3 – Environmental Industry: The Bigger Picture
  • New Bottom Line Volume 1.4 – Couldn't Do That. Wouldn't Be Prudent.
  • New Bottom Line, Volume 1.5 – Competitiveness, Jobs and Environment
  • New Bottom Line, Volume 1.6 – Words. Words. Words.
  • New Bottom Line, Volume 1.7 – Environmental Efficiency: An Engine of Economic Recovery