First Take: Climate-Ready Rust Belt, What Firms Have No Women on Top?, and More...

Published June 23, 2011

• Rust Belt Ready for a Changing World: Your company may be preparing to adapt to climate change, but can the cities you work in hold up to weather changes, natural disasters and water disruption? Jeff Opperman of the The Nature Conservancy took a crack at ranking U.S. cities based on those and related risks, concluding that Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit, Chicago and Minneapolis are the top five cities that are most resilient to climate change, while Phoenix, Houston, Sacramento, Las Vegas and Miami are the most vulnerable.

• How to Help Business Be All it Can Be: A new report from Accenture and the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) interviews a number of CEOs from across industries to identify how they turn the business challenges they face into opportunities not just for growth, but for sustainable philanthropy as well. Download the free report here.

• No Women On Top: Oil and gas companies make up one-third of the 29 companies on the Standard & Poor's 500 that have zero women on their board of directors, reports Bloomberg Businessweek. Some companies defended their situation by saying there are too few qualified, experience women to fill board or top-paid executive roles. Other companies on the list include uniform-maker Cintas, Discovery Communications, MetroPCS and NetApp.

• Rewarding Ideas: GE announced the winners of the second phase of its Ecomagination Challenge today as part of its Ask Anything online discussion (where you can also check out the winners' bios), which is still going on through 3 p.m. Eastern/noon Pacific. The second Ecomagination Challenge sought ideas for innovation in home energy, while the first had focused on concepts that fit into the smart grid.

• Recycle a Phone, Win a Scooter: Sprint yesterday kicked off a contest to boost its buyback program by partnering with scooter maker Vespa. Through August 26, anyone who returns an old cell phone to Sprint will get up to $250 toward a new phone, as well as a chance to win a Vespa scooter (and get a Samsung Replenish, Sprint's new eco-phone, to boot).

• Emergency Oil Release: Plans by the International Energy Agency to release 60 million barrels of oil from stockpiles led to drops in oil costs today, Reuters reports. The IEA said the move was to make up for drops in output from Libya.

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Jonathan Bardelline is a regular contributor to GreenBiz.com, where he formerly served as Associate Editor.

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First Take: Climate-Ready Rust Belt, What Firms Have No Women on Top?, and More...

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