I've got to confess: I don't drink Coke or diet Coke or, for that matter, Pepsi. I've never been a fan of soda. (Or "pop," for those of you Midwestern blogreaders.) But I've become an admirer of The Coca-Cola Co. as I've learned about the company's sustainability work. Led by chief executive Neville Isdell, the global beverage giant is making a thoughtful and sustained effort to lighten its environmental footprint.

But that's only part of the Coke story. To succeed in becoming a more environmentally-friendly company, Coca-Cola needs to bring along its bottlers, its retailers and its customers. That's proving difficult. I decided to write about Coke to examine the gap between good intentions and meaningful results that is frequently created when companies try to...

Carbon finance may be the most interesting business that I've ever written about, and it is surely the most important. It is also incredibly complicated and hard to turn into a compelling story. I've spent the last few months trying to understand the business, and my first major story about carbon finance appears in the current issue of FORTUNE (cover date: April 28, cover boy: Warren Buffett), which includes a special section on The Business of Green. The story was posted on fortune.com today and you can read it here.

There were many challenges in putting this story together, not the least of which was trying to explain the industry to...

Oklahoma is not San Francisco. But when an Oklahoma state representative named Sally Kern made anti-gay comments, she ran into trouble not just with gay-rights groups, but with business leaders as well. This shows, as I've argued before, that corporate America is ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to equal rights for all.

Here's the story, as reported in the local papers. Back in March, Kern said that gay people were a threat to America, "even more so than terrorism or Islam." Her remarks were recorded and shown on YouTube.

"Not everybody's lifestyle...

If you take the threat of global warming seriously, all potential solutions-nuclear power, so-called clean coal, even geoengineering-need to be on the table. That's why today's Sustainability column at fortune.com looks at the intriguing, albeit controversial, idea of ocean iron fertilization.

The question: Should we try to pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere by sprinkling massive amounts of iron dust on the ocean? Dan Whaley is the founder and CEO of a startup company called Climos that wants to do just that. Here's how the column...

Sometimes business is personal. A promising new effort by Marriott International to curb deforestation in a corner of the Amazon took root, improbably, at a Super Bowl Party in Bethesda, Md., early in 2007.

The host was Mark London, a lawyer with a passion for the Amazon that dates back to the early 1980s when he visited Brazil and wrote his first book about the world's most important rainforest. (Mark's most recent book is called The Last Forest.) One guest was Arne Sorenson, another lawyer, now CFO of Marriott, whose headquarters are in Bethesda. Another was Gov. Eduardo Braga of Amazonas, a progressive leader who is looking for ways to get western help to preserve the Amazon without compromising local sovereignty,...

So is the Bank of America an environmental hero? A villain? Both? Or neither?

Those questions buzzed around my head when a pair of emails zipped into my mailbox, literally within a few hours of one another.

Here's the first, a press release, edited slightly, from the activist Rainforest Action Network:

Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis Named Fossil Fool of the Year

Thousands Participate in Online Contest to Determine Year's Biggest Fossil Fools

SAN FRANCISCO - Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis has been voted 2008's Fossil Fool of the Year in an online contest sponsored by Rainforest Action Network...

I think it's a safe bet that E. Neville Isdell of The Coca-Cola Co. is the only chief executive officer of a FORTUNE 500 company who is a vegan. It's also likely that he is also the only FORTUNE 500 CEO who grew up in Africa. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) He is certainly one of the most interesting CEOs I've met, which is why I went last week to a ceremony during which the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) recognized Coca-Cola with its 2007 Alliance of the Year award. The event was dull, as expected, but Isdell did not disappoint.

Together, USAID and Coca-Cola have spent about $14 million in 17 countries as part of an ambitious partnership to...

Take me out to the ballgame and buy me some sustainably-raised peanuts and a soy dog. OK, I’m kidding about the soy dog. But I do love baseball and so I was delighted to learn recently that big league teams are trying to reduce their environmental impact. Closer to home, I can’t wait to see the new Washington Nationals stadium this Sunday—it will be the first LEED-certified major league park.

Today’s Sustainability column is about baseball. I met with Susan Klumpp of HOK, one of the stadium architects for the...

You don't have to be a Latin scholar to know that Pax means peace. So why, with the United States bogged down in an unpopular war that claimed its 4,000th casualty a few days ago, is the Pax World family of mutual funds investing in a defense contractor with thousands of employees deployed in the Persian Gulf?

Pax World, a socially-responsible fund group, is designed for investors who want to align their money and their values. It dates back to 1971, when the United States was bogged down in an even more unpopular war. Founders Luther Tyson and Jack Corbett, who had worked on peace, housing and employment issues for the United Methodist Church, opposed America's intervention in Vietnam and did not want to see their investment dollars supporting companies that were part of the...