Risky Business

The current "going green" craze is pushing some people to move out of the suburbs, buy more expensive hybrid cars, or give up their cars altogether. But this demand for lower carbon footprints is pushing entrepreneurs to develop ways to reduce emissions without altering one's whole lifestyle.

Out of Livingston County, Mich., comes entrepreneur Kyle Schwulst, whose company ElectroJet fits motorcycles with a special fuel injection system that reduces carbon emissions. His company has been so successful that Schwulst traveled to Beijing to fit police and medical motorcycles there with his system, and manufacturers seem to jumping on board, to the tune of a projected $500 million in sales for ElectroJet. So pretty soon you might not have to feel bad about buying that motorcycle, a vehicle that tends to be emission-heavy.

File this one as another example of how the free market is finding solutions to the problem of global warming.

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So, where does Obama's vice presidential pick stand when it comes to small-business issues? It's definitely known that Senator Biden supports the controversial card check for labor union elections and a higher minimum wage, but here's something less known.

Last April, some Senate Republicans, led by Jim DeMint of South Carolina, tried to insert an amendment into a math and science bill that would amend the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley legislation to exempt smaller businesses from some of its regulations. The "Sarbox" bill, you'll remember, was passed to reform corporate governance in the wake of the Enron collapse. But many in Congress who supported the bill initially thought that several of its provisions went too far—such as Section 404, which requires companies to produce massively expensive "internal control reports." So, DeMint and others wanted to give smaller companies a break from Section 404, but Biden and 61 other senators disagreed, shooting down the amendment.

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Market watchers are debating whether the recent spurts of rampant inflation mean prices are at a peak. Meanwhile, small-business owners are feeling the pain from inflation: The NFIB's survey for July found optimism and profit levels at depressingly low levels. Even if inflation has peaked, we are clearly in an economy quite different from that of recent decades when inflation hasn't been much of an issue.

This is a new world for many small-business owners, so I think there needs to be a discussion on the blog about what exactly can be done about it from the individual perspective. Obviously, one business owner can't alter the macroeconomy, but there are steps to keep the business healthy. Let me kick the discussion off with a few examples:

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When you think about the great cinematic depictions of a dystopian, apocalyptic future you think of Planet of the Apes, The Road Warrior, Dark City, The Matrix, and now...WALL-E. Yeah, that one kind of sticks out, but that's what so many moviegoers saw this summer in Pixar's cute-little-robot movie: a deeply cynical view of human nature. In the future according to WALL -E, everyone lets technology exploit their laziest appetites and turn them into Jabba the Hutts. Why get up off your seat when your computer can do it for you?

Well, the alarmist in me wants to say this news brings us a step closer to that view of the future:

Like to shop, but can't get to the stores until after hours? Love the mall, but can't stand the traffic?

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