Two slim guides have recently been published on climate change solutions, one written to CEOs on how business can profit by helping mitigate and adapt to climate change, one addressing what government policies are most promising. CWR co-host Bill Baue speaks with University of Michigan Professor Andy Hoffman, co-author with John Woody of Climate Change: What's Your Business Strategy?, published May 1 by Harvard Business Press as part of its "Memo to the CEO" series.
The ExxonMobil annual shareholder meeting this year carried high expectations from shareholder activists. Members of the Rockefeller family, descending from the founder of the Standard Oil monopoly that splintered into Exxon and Mobil, attended the meeting to support four different shareholder resolutions on corporate governance and climate change. Of these four, the resolution supported by most Rockefellers asked the company to split the CEO and Board Chair positions. Today's CWR guest, Bob Monks, has filed this resolution at ExxonMobil since the early 2000s.
Utilities and coal companies are pushing to open over a hundred new coal-fired power plants in the US. But activists, investors, communities, consumers, and scientists are pointing to financial, regulatory, environmental, and social risks that far outweigh the potential benefits of coal. And they are pulling back the veil from the myth of clean coal, exposing that king coal is a naked emperor. Carbon capture and storage, the key to coal's "clean" claims, has years of technical and economic hurdles to cross.
Each generation reinvents the world inherited from the previous generation. A new generation is inheriting a wounded planet and a dysfunctional economy. Youthful energy seeks to heal our world and revitalize our economy using new strategies and adapting existing tools. Today, we focus on new generations in sustainability. First, we hear from Tim Cohen-Mitchell of the Young Entrepreneurs Society in Orange, Massachusetts, from a presentation he made at the recent Pioneer Valley Sustainable Investing Summit that Corporate Watchdog Radio helped organize.
When it comes to renewable energy, wind is taking the lead--at least at this stage of technological development. But what's the best model for developing it? Should we follow the centralized utility model with big wind farms set up in a few places -- offshore Massachusetts or the state of Texas -- and then send the juice over wires to power homes and businesses far away? That's the dominant model in the US. Or should we follow the community-owned wind power model, where the people using the power have a financial stake in it, too?
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