An Interview with Bloomberg’s Sustainability Editor, Eric Roston
Apr 6, 2016 12:05 PM ET
Campaign:
Bloomberg: Sustainable Finance
Originally posted on globalreporting.org
The issues are more focused, direct, and I think mature, than they have ever been in the past. The idea of a global “carbon budget”—that there’s only so much CO2 we can produce without courting true danger—now enforces discipline on every nation and company that considers it. The crash in energy prices has both helped and complicated the movement away from fossil fuels. We’re seeing the leading sustainable companies really transforming what they make, how they make it, and how they disclose it all to stakeholders. There are now commonplace, standard practices in sustainability that a decade ago would have been wishful thinking. In what way do you see sustainability reporting and increased transparency playing a role in helping to address these issues?
In the U.S., which is the place I know best, policy developments tend to lag private-sector adoption. So the more that the country’s and the world’s biggest companies embrace sustainability and transparency, the likelier it is that Washington and state capitals may give it the force of law. What we’re looking for here is contagion—a good kind—where companies compete on sustainable best practices and lift everybody around them. Read the full article here
Journalist Eric Roston has been overseeing sustainability news coverage at Bloomberg LP since 2011, and over the past 15 years has worked on climate change from virtually every angle, including publishing the popular science book, ‘The Carbon Age’. Eric Roston will be moderating all four plenary sessions at next month’s GRI Global Conference. In this exclusive interview, we discover his views on the key sustainability challenges of our time, and, what action is needed to solve them.
Page Content What do you see as the main issues in sustainability right now and why?The issues are more focused, direct, and I think mature, than they have ever been in the past. The idea of a global “carbon budget”—that there’s only so much CO2 we can produce without courting true danger—now enforces discipline on every nation and company that considers it. The crash in energy prices has both helped and complicated the movement away from fossil fuels. We’re seeing the leading sustainable companies really transforming what they make, how they make it, and how they disclose it all to stakeholders. There are now commonplace, standard practices in sustainability that a decade ago would have been wishful thinking. In what way do you see sustainability reporting and increased transparency playing a role in helping to address these issues?
In the U.S., which is the place I know best, policy developments tend to lag private-sector adoption. So the more that the country’s and the world’s biggest companies embrace sustainability and transparency, the likelier it is that Washington and state capitals may give it the force of law. What we’re looking for here is contagion—a good kind—where companies compete on sustainable best practices and lift everybody around them. Read the full article here
Find out more about the GRI Global Conference 2016 here
