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“Science is no longer the bottleneck,” Professor John Sterman says. “The challenge is political and social.”

Businesses are beginning to see the value of sustainability-oriented innovation but are challenged by the barriers that make the transition to it difficult.

#innovation

Look at the massive shift among Republicans on the issue this year.

Keystone rejected, Exxon investigated—this doesn’t end well for oil.

#oil climatechange

The 2014 Sustainability report shows the benefits of sustainability partnerships and board engagement.

Given the implications of sustainability’s evolution within the corporate sector, we — MIT Sloan Management Review (MIT SMR) and The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) — focused this year’s research on the critical role of sustainability collaborations that address systemic issues, and on the role of the board of directors in guiding their companies’ sustainability efforts. To better understand these two topics, we surveyed nearly 3,800 managers and interviewed sustainability leaders from around the world

#MIT #BCG #collaboration #sustainability #report

By giving a voice to those without economic power, Gram Vaani showcases the true power of the Internet.

#india #social network

Pressuring Lego to part ways with Shell, putting a stop to the gendered marketing of toys and fighting for the survival of bees: these are the 10 campaigns that have taken 2014 by storm

Reflections and predictions 2015

http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/series/sustainable-business-predictions-2015

#campaign #lego #shell

1. More businesses recognize that climate change is real 2. Companies align their strategies with ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ 3. Businesses switch from advocacy to activism 4. More big supply chain disruptions 5. A growing focus on future-proofing

#climate change #business #sustainable development goals #supply chain

Reusing old products, eliminating waste and improving recycling could add £640bn to the global economy, but many businesses don’t have an end-of-life plan for what they sell

#circular economy #reuse #recycle

Free-market and Keynesian approaches dominate today’s economic debates. Yet neither approach is delivering good results, underscoring the need for a new Sustainable Development Economics, with governments promoting new types of investments.

The key is to reflect on six kinds of capital goods: business capital, infrastructure, human capital, intellectual capital, natural capital, and social capital. All of these are productive, but each has a distinctive role.

In the future we’ll print our own smartphone cases while manufacturers print more complex goods like vehicles for same-day collection

#3dprinting #manufacturing #supply chain

Turn Down the Heat: Confronting the New Climate Normal explores the impact of climate change in Latin America, Central Asia and the Middle East and finds that warming of close to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times is already locked into the earth's atmosphere.

#climate change

NRG, which built a leading electricity business from coal and other conventional power plants, is aiming to reduce its carbon emissions 50 percent by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050, the company said on Thursday.

David Crane, the company’s chief executive, made the announcement at a ceremony breaking ground for the company’s new headquarters in Princeton, N.J., conceived as a green-energy showcase that will open in 2016.

“The power industry is the biggest part of the problem of greenhouse gas emissions, but it has the potential to be an even bigger part of the solution,” Mr. Crane said in an interview before the announcement.

In addition, Mr. Crane said that he was mindful of the growing pressure from younger Americans and investors to decrease dependence on fossil fuels. A report this week commissioned by Ceres, a Boston advocacy group that focuses on the economic risks of climate change, concluded that investments in large fossil fuel and nuclear plants had a higher chance of causing financial harm to utilities than investments in renewable sources, in part because of proposed Environmental Protection Agency regulations for power plants and the falling costs for large-scale wind and solar installations.

#nrg #utilities #power industry #energy #usa

Elon Musk Speaks About Tesla and SpaceX

The entrepreneur offered a glimpse into his life in innovation while in conversation with the Aspen Institute’s Walter Isaacson.

Strategic planning has been under assault for years. But good strategy is more important than ever. What does that mean for the strategist? A McKinsey Quarterly article.

Many companies have an executive to guide their strategies. The discipline’s professionalization, which began in earnest in the 1980s as it evolved from the chief executive’s domain into a core corporate function, prompted the creation of heads of strategy, strategic-planning directors, and, more recently, chief strategy officers (CSOs). Who better than a professional strategist to help meet the big new uncertainties of the 21st century?

#strategy

The 2013 Late lessons from early warnings report is the second of its type produced by the European Environment Agency (EEA) in collaboration with a broad range of external authors and peer reviewers. The case studies across both volumes of Late lessons from early warnings cover a diverse range of chemical and technological innovations, and highlight a number of systemic problems. The 'Late Lessons Project' illustrates how damaging and costly the misuse or neglect of the precautionary principle can be, using case studies and a synthesis of the lessons to be learned and applied to maximising innovations whilst minimising harms.

http://sustainability.ku.dk/sustainability-lectures/previous/slides/SSC_lecture_13-05-28_Gee.pdf

#precaution #innovation #eea

We live on a finite planet and sometimes our impact on it is greater than we realize. The seemingly isolated actions we take every day—from our choice of morning beverage to our choice of business practices—are often links in a chain of unusual connections we would never have imagined.

#water

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