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The pressing call for sustaining our living world is finally grabbing the attention of mainstream TV. Bravo!

Perhaps the network executives are reading their marketing surveys showing the vast majority of us are no longer buying the poly-presidential-style, stay-the-course obfuscation on climate change or other blur-the-truth episodes.

The channels that trained America to consume are now selling planetary consciousness. It's a refreshing and essential flip of their dials.

Many Americans and business leaders do comprehend the seriousness of our global plight despite denials by politicians and fat cats who want their heydays to stay just the way they are.

Certainly audiences like Net Impact, a global network of professionals and MBA students from top business schools, understand the time-critical sustainability challenge. These young leaders represent a cultural sea change in business views on climate change.

Nicole Nasser, UCLA Anderson's Net Impact chapter co-leader, for one, epitomizes this leadership transformation. She and many of her MBA peers are looking to work for active nonprofit causes, perhaps not the most lucrative paths but often more meaningful and rewarding.

Indeed, the wave of environmentally and socially conscious youth is crashing upon America's shores, whether the skaters or the business suits. Slow but savvy TV programmers are catching this new tide.

This past week, NBC ran Green Week, a green-a-thon of epic proportions, with unprecedented topical coverage across the full network schedule.

Brides-to-be can catch a "Days of Our Lives" how-to video on NBC.com. The video offers tips for planning green weddings with Sammy, a "Days" actress, greening up her 10th soap opera betrothal.

The "Today Show" team, on a much more serious wavelength, aired segments on a "Ends of The Earth" special. The show shared alarming images and stories of the devastating effects of climate change, otherwise known as global warming.

Ann Curry reported from the South Pole, one of only 7,000 humans ever to venture there. Antarctica holds 90 percent of the Earth's ice and cools global temperatures. Matt Lauer reported from Greenland and the North Pole, while Al Roker beamed in from the Ecuadorean rain forest.

Watching massive islands of ancient polar ice breaking and melting away with alarming regularity is particularly sobering.

I recently traveled to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., for Net Impact's (netimpact.org) international conference. Others in attendance were several MBA Net Impact members from the University of New Mexico chapter: Lucie Wang, Michelle Watkins and Amanda Redmond-Neal.

UNM Anderson Schools of Management ranks exceptionally high internationally, 18th, in the Aspen Institute's Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking of business schools. The achievement is in part related to Anderson's sustainable works. Much of this success is attributable to Jeanne Logsdon, the long-standing faculty adviser and champion of Net Impact and corporate social responsibility.

In Nashville, we heard frankly sung climate change gospel inside the Grand Ole Opry. The choir directors were CEOs, including the inspired and creative pessimist Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia and Chad Holliday, the well-spoken superstar CEO at DuPont and chairman of the Council on Competitiveness.

These men have excelled in their lives by being pragmatic. Though their delivery styles are quite different, the substance of their message is the same: "Climate change is real and very, very serious."

They were clear that if business people don't continuously improve their ways of doing business in the globally warming world, they will be out of business sooner than later. "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem." This concept has never been truer.

The human footprint is rapidly changing the seen and unseen. I came away inspired by the palpable changes in mind-sets that I saw at Vanderbilt.

As American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead once said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

Burge is president of the New Mexico IT & Software Association and a principal at Proactive Teams.