The Many Faces of Climate Action

The better we understand global climate change and its implications, the bigger -- and scarier -- it seems to become. At the same time, as different people and sectors understand the specific challenges facing them, they add new tools and ideas for combating climate change and turn at least some of the challenges into opportunities.

A new updated report from the U.S. Global Change Research Program on the likely consequences of climate change for the United States, for example, discusses specific implications for sectors such as transportation, while two other items -- one on Ford's latest sustainability report and the other on "green" shipping initiatives -- highlight some of the innovation opportunities already being addressed.

Meanwhile, "new money" is also having an impact, as illustrated by the launch of an interesting new lifecycle emissions software tool from recent start-up Planet Metrics. Meanwhile, private equity firm KKR is expanding an innovative Green Portfolio Partnership Program that seeks to deploy the capabilities of selected portfolio companies to reduce the emissions impacts of others.

Finally, our feature story on "The Nexus of Climate Change and Human Rights" showcases the growing convergence of the climate change and human rights agendas. While at first glance this might seem to make the already complex challenge of climate change effectively "boundless," we should be encouraged by the promise of a whole new front of ideas, tools and approaches for understanding and addressing the most significant impacts of climate change on our global community.  

Eric Olson is vice president of advisory services at Business for Social Responsibility.

The executive summary to this report asks: What would it take to aggressively scale up clean energy to have a major impact on job growth, energy independence and climate change over the next 10 years?

The federal energy efficiency provisions included in H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a.k.a. Waxman-Markey, could save approximately $1,050 per household by 2020 and $4,400 per household by 2030, according to an updated analysis by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

In this 50-minute session, four experts will discuss their companies' journeys toward sustainability using data analytics, modeling and a whole- systems approach. They will address the benefits of increasing efficiencies to save costs, improve performance and meet environmental targets using IBM Green SigmaTM, a proven methodology for delivering value to key stakeholders while driving out waste and inefficiencies. And they will discuss how they have joined with other sustainability- focused companies to form the Green Sigma™ Coalition and bring this successful methodology to others.