MIT Sloan Management Review

Earlier this year, the financial services company HSBC came out with a report in which their analysts calculated that taking climate change seriously could cut share prices of major oil companies by up to 60%. That report, Peak Planet: The next upswing for the climate agenda, held some sobering news for business. Now that it has been made freely available on the company’s website, executives concerned with managing risks may want to read it.

This year, more survey respondents say sustainability is on their company’s management agenda. Not all companies have found ways to profit from their sustainability efforts — but those that have share some interesting characteristics.

The Chicago Climate Action Plan aims to mitigate shocking forecasts that the northern city is on pace to end up with summers like those in the U.S.’s Deep South, with as many as 72 days over 90 degrees before the end of the century, up from an average of fewer than 15.

“As examples like Wikipedia and Linux show, it’s now possible to harness the collective intelligence of thousands of people around the world to work closely together at a scale that was never possible before in human history.â

How can you explain to ordinary people the dangers of not taking action to lower the risks associated with climate change in the future?

That's a question MIT Sloan School professor John Sterman has given thought to -- which was evident when he gave a presentation on climate change last week at a systems thinking conference at MIT.

Energy sector innovation faces an important hurdle, according to MIT’s Ernest Moniz. How do we reconcile the cultural mismatch between innovators and the establishment?

The director of the MIT Energy Initiative explains why blending big-company culture with entrepreneurial innovation is the challenge that leaders must learn to meet.

Think about the challenges involved in combating climate change, and issues like international cooperation, public opinion, public policy and technological innovation may all come to mind. But there's another key topic that may not come to mind quite as readily -- and that's a business challenge.Â

Vivienne Cox, former executive vice president of BP Alternative Energy who recently retired from BP after 28 years, gave a lunchtime presentation here at MIT earlier this week. Her subject? The challenges of providing energy to today's world -- and the threat of climate change.

Two experts explain that, to achieve the kind of innovation in energy technology necessary to address climate change, the U.S. needs a different policy approach.

Sign of the times: In a wide-ranging speech on energy policy, a leading U.S. energy executive discusses the need to place some type of price on carbon dioxide emissions.

This month's Strategy+Business contains a beautiful, must-read article co-authored by MIT Sloan School's Peter Senge (with Bryan Smith of York University's Sustainable Enterprise Academy and Nina Kruschwitz).Â

The Internet does a great job of facilitating knowledge sharing through tools such as wikis and forums. But these tools have their limitations.

The longer the United States, other industrialized nations and the developing world head down different policy tracks on global warming, the harder it will be to achieve the coordination necessary for effective action.