Climate change and sustainability

The science is clear: human activity is changing the earth’s climate, which threatens the natural environment and stability of nations. Every company has a responsibility to address this.

Stakeholders (employees, customers, investors, communities, ecosystem players) are demanding action. Companies are at risk of intervention by regulators, loss of brand capital, abandonment by business partners.

Yet, firms also can aggressively face climate change and in the process seize competitive advantage, develop new business models, and create new value.

Here’s how those businesses can communicate about their actions.

Consider the audience
Consumers, the media, business peers, governments, and employees all need to be treated differently. Different versions of the same story, addressing the questions and anxieties of each group.

Keep it real
This is not the time to be vague. Have specific 5- and 10-year carbon reduction targets, for example. Track your investments and activities and be transparent about them.

Maintain a dialogue
The company and their stakeholders are in this together. Don’t issue broadcast messages and think you are communicating. Establish feedback mechanisms and platforms for conversation.

Rely on science
Don’t talk about climate actions as if they are feel-good gestures. Tie what you do directly to established reports of scientific consensus. Become climate nerds.

Share with the world
Being a business leader in combatting climate change is not only the actions you take but also how you tell the story. Be willing to be bold, to be inspirational.

I hope your company is a “climate steward” or at least is on the path to become one. I’m willing to bet that if they are, it makes you prouder to work there and to be a part of that effort.

“You cannot get through a single day without having an impact on the world around you. What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”

Jane Goodall

“Climate change isn’t something in the future. That narrative is fundamentally flawed because there are millions impacted and so many displaced already. That is the new inconvenient truth that no one wants to hear.”

Aneesa Khan

“There’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent threat of a changing climate.”

Barack Obama

“I’m often asked whether I believe in global warming. I now just reply with the question: Do you believe in gravity?”

Neil deGrasse Tyson