Exxon seemed satisfied with what they had accomplished. Bill McInturff, senior researcher at the Wirthlin Group, a polling firm with close Republican ties, blames Exxon not for the accident but for its response: ''It was a disservice to American industry the way the pullout last fall was handled.
Not long after the March accident in Valdez, Alaska, 41% of Americans were angry enough to say they'd seriously consider boycotting the company. Exxon provides the obvious if inadvertent example of the bitter costs of seeming unconcerned about the environment. Mere corporate ecobabble intended to placate the latest group of special-interest loonies? Any company that thinks that way will probably regret it. ''The 1990s will be the decade of the environment.'' That's not the chief druid of Greenpeace talking, but rather the new president of the Petroleum Marketers Association of America in a November speech. Pacific Gas & Electric teams up with environmental groups - some of them outfits it used to fight - to do joint projects, such as a $10 million study of energy efficiency. Procter & Gamble and other smart marketers are moving to cast their products in an environmentally friendly light (see box). 3M is investing in myriad pollution controls for its manufacturing facilities beyond what the law requires. McDonald's, which produces hundreds of millions of pounds of paper and plastic waste annually, has become a crusading proponent of recycling, and aims to become one of America's leading educators about environmental issues. Consider: - Du Pont is pulling out of a $750-million-a-year business because it may - just may - harm the earth's atmosphere. Louis: ''In the Nineties environmentalism will be the cutting edge of social reform and absolutely the most important issue for business.'' Futurist Edith Weiner of the Manhattan management consulting firm Weiner Edrich Brown concurs: ''Environmentalism will be the next major political idea, just as conservatism and liberalism have been in the past.'' The smartest companies are not just facing this thunderous music, they're singing along. How massive? Listen to Gary Miller, a public policy expert at Washington University in St. (FORTUNE Magazine) – TREND SPOTTERS and forward thinkers agree that the Nineties will be the Earth Decade and that environmentalism will be a movement of massive worldwide force.
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