All businesses - from tourism to insurers must embrace environmental strategies if they are to survive and be profitable in the long term. There are all kinds of opportunities.

We would like to challenge businesses to expand their thinking of how environmental responsibility is tied to profits.

Rick Ridgeway, of Patagonia, speaking to the non-profit Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society recently said: Patagonia's sales are about $280 million and growing at about 5 percent a year and that each environmental decision the company has made has been positive, though often challenging.

The bottom line: Executives today underestimate the role of environmental and social responsibility in a customer's purchasing decision at their peril. Your suppliers, customers and business partners are going green.

"All the major changes in our society, the ones that really count, have come from the people themselves," Mr. Ridgeway states.

We have developed a simple, inexpensive way to offset the climate change and other environmental impacts of your organization's energy use. Your purchase of cooler skies carbon offsets, will help develop new supplies of non-polluting renewable energy, displacing carbon dioxide and other emissions that contribute to air pollution and climate change.

It's the environmental ethic that makes emission-contral gasoline, water-saving appliances, phosphate-free laundry detergent, and mercury free and rechargeable batteries, the leaders in their markets. Green companies and green products are growing.