Giving Compass' Take:

• Duquesne Professor Robert Sroufe discusses the importance of engaging business students in addressing climate change and offers ways to make it happen. 

• How can funders help business schools better prepare students to address climate change? 

• Find out why sustainability is good business. 

Duquesne Professor Robert Sroufe, a winner of the 2017 Ideas Worth Teaching Award, is an expert in putting tools for quantifying environmental impact in the hands of rising business leaders.

Q: What contributions can people graduating from business school today can make in the face of that challenge outlined by the IPCC report?

A: The IPCC report and more recently the National Climate Assessment report are stark reminders of what inaction or business as usual will get us, i.e., rising temperatures, reduced biodiversity, and increasing costs from destructive natural events that exceed the investment in infrastructure and waste reduction that could have avoided these disasters. Given the staggering amount of waste we have in our energy, transportation, and food systems, opportunities abound for graduates to question the status quo.

Graduates should no longer accept wasting 66 percent of all energy produced in this country, or that 81 percent of every gallon of gas going into a combustion engine vehicle is lost as waste in the form of heat and friction. As business students spend the holiday breaks with friends and family for Thanksgiving, Christmas, spring break, or the summer, they can rethink food systems where food travels an average of 1,500 miles to get to our plates and we waste 40 percent of it. All of these examples of waste provide openings for business students to rethink systems and contribute to an innovative and integrated approach to including social, environmental, and governance (ESG) performance in capital expenditures.

Read the full interview with Duquesne Professor Robert Sroufe about engaging business students in addressing climate change at The Aspen Institute.