Consider these three developments from back in 2008, as the global economy hurtled toward a financial meltdown:

• National Grid set an industry-leading long-term target to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 80 percent by 2050, in keeping with current climate science.

• Timberland launched a long-term corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy that includes quarterly stakeholder calls with CEO Jeff Swartz and a first-of-its-kind online stakeholder engagement platform.

• Ford chartered its Board Sustainability Committee to foster "sustainable growth" with "long-term value," a step that now has the company moving aggressively to produce the most fuel-efficient cars and trucks in the industry.

What do they have in common?  All three focus on the long-term, spurning what McKinsey's Dominic Barton, in a recent Harvard Business Review article, calls "quarterly capitalism" (which has proven so destructive) in favor of what he calls "Capitalism for the Long Term." Barton's article outlines three key tenets for rewiring the 21st century corporation and its role in society, all of which are displayed in the examples above:

• Fight the Tyranny of Short-Termism

• Serve Stakeholders, Enrich Shareholders

• Act Like You Own the Place

Barton refers in passing to "sustainable growth" and environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in his excellent piece, but he fails to highlight the inseparable connection between capitalism and long-term global sustainability.

So let's examine that connection here. In addition to the economic crisis, businesses operating in our global economy face colossal environmental and social challenges -- climate change, energy and water constraints, population pressures, rising consumer expectations and endemic poverty, to name just a few. Addressing those problems with urgency and scalable solutions will be a key driver of future prosperity for global companies and their wider community of investors and other stakeholders.

The business case for acting on sustainability is compelling. A recent MIT Sloan/Boston Consulting Group (BCG) study divides surveyed companies into "embracers," those actively integrating sustainability into their core business strategies, and "cautious adopters" who see sustainability as "essential to remaining competitive" but lag on core integration.

"The embracers, it turns out, are the highest performing businesses in the study," say MIT and BCG -- not only on tangibles, such as profitability, but also intangibles, such as employee engagement, innovation and stakeholder appeal. Among the embracers getting shout-outs: Unilever, Duke Energy, Proctor & Gamble and Clorox.