Environmental Leader

In “Climate Change: What’s Your business Strategy?” (Harvard Business Press, $18), due out May 1, 2008, Andrew Hoffman and John Woody – two MBA professors with experience with environmental issues – tell organizations how to measure their carbon footprint, set a climate target that meets the environmental needs of your business, engage your operations in climate change initiatives, and get a seat at the policy development table.

“You can remain completely agnostic about the science of climate change but still recognize its importance as a business issue,” Hoffman and Woody write.

In the 97-page book the authors smartly project that regulations that raise the cost of emissions are beginning to affect how businesses operate.

“… If you’re a business, this is a business issue,” Hoffman told Reuters.

Climate change will also create opportunities, in the form of new demand for green products, which is attracting new investment, the authors note.

“Regulation is coming. If you want a seat at the table to influence what that regulation should be, you’ve got to get on this now,” Hoffman said. “It may even be too late.”

Andrew Hoffman is the Holcim (US) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan and Associate Director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise. John Woody is a Deal Associate at MMA Renewable Ventures, a renewable energy firm in San Francisco and formerly the Business Solutions Fellow for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.