Shock treatment - will the BP disaster hasten the move to clean tech leadership?

Things are afoot. Chris Huhne wants us all to think more about where we buy our power from (with an emphasis on buy less, or it will cost you more in the long term) and BP's Top Cat is having to run away to Russia (or so it would seem), even after trying to put right the wrongs.

I was talking to my 8 year old daughter Millie about these two things today to get her perspective. She asked whether all the MPs in the Houses of Parliament have solar panels and windmills (turbines) on their roofs and seemed more concerned about the oily birds than the fat cats.

The first point I suppose is an obvious one about setting an example - something important to children - and the second is evidence that children do in fact have a capacity for empathy with the victims, rather than the instant seeking of retribution against the perpetrators of a crime.

Millie's 15 year old brother has just told us a joke that a car has been invented that can run on water - the only problem is that the water has to come from the Gulf of Mexico...

So has BP set the sustainability agenda back or actually accelerated the need for corporates to take CSR more seriously? Some would say (including the London Evening Standard) that BP has demonstrated that CSR needs to be more than PR and pretty green logos.

Chris Blackhurst of the Standard describes Tony Hayward's demise as creating the "need to herald a return to real leadership, not just chasing profits and pleasing investors". For leadership read "setting an example". Millie has it right.

The sad thing of course is that the number of sea birds that BP's "worst environmental disaster in history" as Mr Obama puts it, stands at under 4,500, although the Exxon Valdez managed to affect over 50 times that many when it ran aground in Alaska.

Despite BP's best efforts, they are unlikely to recover their reputation for a long time. The company has been accused of putting profit before all else. Someone somewhere has forgotten to say the old CSR prayer when going to bed - "People, Planet, Profit".

So Millie has it right when she asks why MPs and other grown ups don't demonstrate green leadership. Not only do we need civic leadership when it comes to environmental issues, (give us all a free solar panel Mr Huhne) but we need business leadership too. BP may well have accelerated the appearance of CSOs (Chief Sustainability Officers) in our Board Rooms. These people won't be yes men, or PR people, but act as the corporate conscience, challenging the operation of business to ensure that decisions are made for the good of all stakeholders.

Will there be more environmental disasters before Millie is old enough to be a CSO? I think, unfortunately, we know the answer to that one.

Marcus Jamieson-Pond is a corporate social responsibility manager at Addleshaw Goddard LLP.