From Joel Makower and his crew at Greenbiz.com, find the annual summary of green business here for download.  This useful progress report highlights the ups and downs over the past year, as well as speculates on where the issues may take industries in the year ahead. 

From the introduction:

"Last year, when we launched the inaugural State of Green Business
report, we set out to measure the environmental impacts of the growing
green economy. We were sobered and encouraged by what we found.
Our efforts to measure, for the first time ever, whether and how companies
were reducing their environmental impacts revealed mixed results:
More companies were doing more things, but moving the needle of
environmental progress only slightly, if at all.

This year’s update is a similar mixed bag of encouraging and discouraging
news. But on balance, despite a growing chorus of corporate commitments
and actions, we’re less optimistic that these activities, in aggregate, are
addressing planetary problems at sufficient scale and speed.

Consider: Absolute greenhouse gas emissions grew 1.4 percent in 2007 over
2006 but shrank 0.6 percent per unit of GDP — the smallest annual decrease
since 2002. Or consider electronic waste: Despite widespread discussions
in boardrooms and legislatures about the dangers of e-waste, we recycled
only a tiny fraction more e-waste in 2007 than the year before, even as the
amount of e-waste entering the waste stream grew substantially.

Still, there is reason for optimism. Green building is on the rise, spurring
new technologies that save energy and money while creating more healthful
workplaces. There is a green race taking place in the automobile industry,
with every major manufacturer planning to introduce electric vehicles. The
leading consumer product makers and retailers are starting to rigorously
assess the environmental impact of their products using sophisticated
metrics, sending signals up the supply chain that tomorrow’s products will
need to hew to higher levels of environmental responsibility.

Of course, all this is taking place during a time of staggering turbulence in
the economy, and at the dawn of a new political era in the United States,
the combination of which is causing both uncertainty and excitement
over the notion of a green economy as a means of national economic and
environmental security. As this report is being published, we stand on the
cusp of a potential explosion of new ideas, inventions, and initiatives, but
face great questions about whether there will be sufficient resources to bring
them to fruition.

At the end of the day, the questions remain: Are we moving far enough,
fast enough? Does the ever-growing green activity in the business world
represent a true transformation, one capable of adequately addressing
pressing issues like climate change, air quality, the loss of species, and the
looming water crisis? Or is it merely nibbling at the edges of the problems?
Reasonable minds can justifiably argue both sides.

The coming year will be a critical one for the future of green business and,
by extension, the future of the planet.

— Joel Makower, Executive Editor, Greener World Media, Inc."