Yale Business Sustainability Summit: Earth Day@50

April 17, 2020

The Yale Sustainability Summit on April 15^th was the first and largest Earth Day@50 commemoration – cutting across sectors and continents with an embrace of historic and current challenges as well as the shift in approach from conservation and pollution control to sustainability as a shared strategic objective.

We showcased CEOs of seven leading organizations and a series of other corporate sustainability thought leaders for a special two-hour conversation about the evolving role of business in addressing society’s sustainability challenges. This Yale Business Sustainability Summit was timed to explore the business-sustainability relationships on the eve of the 50th Anniversary of 1970 Earth Day (April 22, 1970), when tens of millions of Americans took to the streets to demand ramped-up environmental protection in the face of choking smog in cities across the country, fouled water ways (including the drama of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River catching on fire), and a terrible oil spill that blackened the California coastline near Santa Barbara – and which signaled the launch of the modern environmental era in America.

zoom meeting

This discussion between renowned global CEOs, prominent environmental leaders, and scholars from the worlds of science, economics, marketing, epidemiology, law, history, marketing, and management found common ground in objectives and alignment in direction. At the same time, while the finger pointing may have subsided over the past half century efforts towards progress, there was widespread agreement that the environmental contributors to the COViD-19 pandemic provided vivid evidence that this is no time for celebration. We are a long way from “mission accomplished” but this is also not “mission impossible.”