Environment

Today, we have more options for getting from one place to another than ever before. Innovations abound, but are we making the most of this progress to build a future where all people can move more freely?

Earth Overshoot Day keeps coming earlier, and it’s not an occasion we want to celebrate. It’s the day our annual demand for ecosystem goods and services, like cropland, timber, fish stocks and carbon dioxide absorption, begin to exceed what ecosystems are able to renew in a year. Calculated by Global Footprint Network, Earth Overshoot Day reminds us that we are consistently borrowing from the future, and a more aggressive approach to sustainability isn’t an aspiration, it’s a need.

In a plenary address at the BSR Conference 2015, Tom Linebarger, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Cummins Inc., explored how resilience can help build a better world.

What’s past is NOT prologue, according to Jean Paul Gladu, President and CEO of the Canadian Council for Aboriginal Business. In his presentation during Sodexo’s inaugural Quality of Life Conference, he said that to make progress, “…government and industry should stop worrying about the past and look more deeply at their future. I think we spend too much time looking behind us and we’re not focusing, or at least looking ahead at what opportunities lay in front of us.”

Today, the National Community Advisory Council (NCAC), a diverse group of nonprofit and private-sector leaders convened by Bank of America, recognizes its 10th anniversary with the addition of five new members representing environment and sustainability expertise. Meeting this week in Washington, D.C., the group of senior consumer, community and academic leaders gathers twice a year to advise the bank on critical issues impacting society.