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Yale Prof: Green Is Here To Stay; Ignore It At Your Own Peril

Is all this talk about sustainability just a fad created by pointy- heads that eventually will join the likes of soda-tax proposals in the dustbin of impractical do-goodism? Kai Ryssdal chats with Dan Esty, a professor of environmental law at Yale Law School, who has written that sustainability is, in fact, a "mega-trend" like the IT revolution that businesses ignore it at their own peril.

"A leading set of big companies are really finding this as an important element of strategy ... ," he says. "What you use in the way of resources, how much waste and scrap you have in production are aspects of what can give you a leading-edge position in the marketplace."

Like who? Like Allen Mulally and Ford, who know they need to produce cars that are cutting edge, fuel efficient and less polluting. And companies that don't understand how big the issue is -- and Esty says you'd be surprised how many there are -- could face a fate similar to Kodak and Polaroid, who failed to adapt to the megatrend of digital technology.

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