Reprint: F0710A
Climate change will affect everything businesses do, as government efforts to mitigate carbon emissions cause their prices to rise steeply. This month’s Forethought takes a hard-nosed look at the risks and opportunities of climate change.
A Strategic Approach to Climate
Michael E. Porter and Forest L. Reinhardt
The effects of climate change on companies’ operations are now so tangible and certain that the issue is best addressed with the tools of the strategist, not the philanthropist.
Investing in Global Security
Peter Schwartz
Climate change could devastate the economies of vulnerable regions. By taking the lead in helping those areas adapt to global warming, firms can advance their interests while building goodwill in communities where they do business.
How Will a Warmer World Look?
The forecast for extreme climate phenomena and their expected repercussions.
What Stakeholders Demand
Daniel C. Esty
Customers, capital markets, governments, and NGOs are putting more pressure on corporations to report on emissions and reduce them. Companies that fail to meet those expectations face serious consequences, for four reasons.
Conversation
Alyson Slater, the director of strategy at Global Reporting Initiative—the organization that developed the most widely used framework of reporting principles for carbon emissions—discusses the benefits of voluntary disclosure.
If You’re Not at the Table, You’re on the Menu
Andrew J. Hoffman
Sitting on the sidelines as climate policy forms is reckless. Corporations need to know what regulatory issues are at stake—and where.
When Being Green Backfires
Auden Schendler
Companies have been outdoing one another with high-profile purchases of renewable energy certificates symbolizing “green” electricity. Ironically, the buying spree may end up tarnishing those firms’ green credentials.
Accounting for Climate Change
Vicki Bakhshi and Alexis Krajeski
How will the prospect of climate change affect your business in the midterm? A consolidated balance sheet for a company in the year 2010 suggests answers.
Investors Hunger for Clean Energy
Theodore Roosevelt IV and John Llewellyn
Virtually any firm in any sector can reap the benefits of investors’ surging demand for business ideas that will take advantage of changing views and regulations on greenhouse gases.
Leading Change in Latin America
Maria Emilia Correa
A key part of the strategy at Masisa, a forestry and wood-manufacturing company in Chile, is to engage B2B customers in efforts to become greener.
Walking the Talk at Swiss Re
Mark Way and Britta Rendlen
Here’s why Swiss Re has put its money and muscle behind an incentive program to persuade employees to reduce their carbon footprints.
Place Your Bets on the Future You Want
Forest L. Reinhardt
Success in a carbon-constrained world will be determined by innovation, acumen, and leadership. That will require companies to make bold moves.
