The UN Climate Change Conference took place last month in Poznań, Poland. The hope for these talks is to build momentum toward a negotiated greenhouse gas reduction target at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009. While a global agreement is essential, there is no reason that concerned corporate leaders can’t take steps now.

The average corporate CEO could easily rhyme off his or her firm’s revenue, head count, office locations and other standard business metrics. Those are standard expectations. I believe the time has come for a new metric to be added to every CEO’s vocabulary – their company’s carbon output.

CEOs should be as conversant about carbon output as they are about revenue and profit projections. In the future, I believe it will be unacceptable for a business leader not to know their organization’s own carbon footprint and have a corresponding plan for reductions. That’s what I have done.

This philosophy guided our firm as we embarked on a carbon audit and reduction initiative in 2007 and achieved a carbon neutral status by June of 2008. Our plans also include reductions in carbon by at least 30 per cent during 2008. The 237 tons of carbon we created in 2007 will never be reached again.

Business leaders should also recognize that operating in a sustainable manner is an increasing expectation of employees. In a survey of new colleagues at our company, 25 per cent said our green practices were an important factor in deciding to join the firm and 56 per cent said green practices are important to ongoing satisfaction.

This is an important note for policy makers, and government is also now expected to lead in this area. One idea could be to require mandatory carbon audits for all businesses with more than 50 employees – or at least tax incentives to do this.

Once you measure it, you can start to reduce it. Even a small business like ours that doesn’t produce physical products can significantly reduce its footprint; and North America is powered by small businesses that could do the same.

A year or two of economic recession will not be easy, but the environmental train has left the station. All company CEOs better make sure that they don’t fall behind.