• Eco-minded business students can take Wal-Mart 101
  Business schools are putting Wal-Mart's sustainability and responsibility practices under the microscope in order to train the next generation of responsible business leaders. Students take a clear-eyed look both at Wal-Mart's green-business successes and ethical missteps, says David Hyatt of the Walton College of Business in Arkansas. "We are not presuming that Wal-Mart is setting best practices," he says. "The important questions become, 'How would students have gone about doing this?' and How do you begin to measure progress?' " Bloomberg Businessweek/Getting In blog (1/11)      

• GSA's Green Proving Ground program pushes energy efficiency
  The General Services Administration manages a federal buildings portfolio of almost 10,000 assets, and the agency sees technological advances as key to energy efficiency and cost savings. For this reason, the Green Proving Ground program was developed, and it "leverages GSA's own real estate portfolio as a test bed to evaluate the viability of emerging building technologies and practices to save energy, water and reduce operational costs," said Eleni Reed, chief greening officer at GSA. AOL Government (1/9)      

• Ruling on grouse status could affect wind projects in 5 states
  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's ruling this year on whether to classify the lesser prairie chicken as a threatened species could affect wind projects in Texas and other places where the birds are found. "Clearly, if there was some sort of moratorium on development, that would be catastrophic," said Jeff Clark, executive director of the Wind Coalition. The governors of Texas, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Oklahoma issued a joint statement this month opposing the listing of the bird as a threatened species. TexasTribune.org (Austin)/The Texas Tribune (1/12)      

• Green marketing isn't the only way to burnish your brand
  Brands need to look beyond conventional CSR and green marketing to cement their appeal to ethical, socially conscious consumers, says Jonah Bloom, chief strategy officer of Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners. Taking on issues such as joblessness, education or health care will get a branding boost marketers can only dream of, Bloom says. "Drive progress in one of these areas and a brand cannot only profit in the short term but become a category leader for decades," he says. FastCoCreate (1/8)      

• Leaders find CSR follows its own fuzzy logic
  In the absence of clear regulations, there's no bright line to help business leaders determine what's fair or ethical, Roger Cowe writes. That doesn't mean CEOs can make things up as they go along, as their actions will still be judged in the court of public opinion. "Companies must be alert to the shifting sands of public opinion by keeping eyes and ears open, and understanding what's fair today may be gone tomorrow," Cowe writes. The Guardian (London)/Social Impact Hub (1/11)      

• Wind industry waits for federal guidance on tax credit
  The wind energy industry is awaiting guidance from federal tax experts on the interpretation of amended language in the extension of the Production Tax Credit. Developers are hoping that the experts would follow the Department of the Treasury's guidance for its Section 1603 program, which allows companies to qualify for the program once they have put in 5% of a project's total cost. Politico (Washington, D.C.) (1/11)      

Top five news stories selected by SmartBrief on Sustainability readers in the past week.

• Say goodbye to Oreos, says Whole Foods CEO (Texas Monthly)

• How Wal-Mart helps its workers go green (GreenBiz.com)

• Climate battle is more important than ever, Prince Charles says (BusinessGreen (U.K.))

• Tech companies tackle the water crisis (FastCoExist)

• Genetically modified foods are fine by me, says former protester (The New York Times (tiered subscription model))

• Results based on number of times each story was clicked by readers.

• How to make your workers hate you
  Want to make yourself massively unpopular? David Gebler suggests surprising your team with sudden schedule changes, holding them to a different set of standards than the one you work by, and dragging your heels when it comes to making key decisions. "Nothing frustrates employees more than having critical matters sit undecided because a leader ... hasn't gotten around to making a decision," Gebler writes. SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Leadership (1/11)      

By putting a price on carbon, we can break our unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels." --Mary D. Nichols, chairman of the California Air Resources Board, as quoted in The New York Times