Sustainability Symposium Recap: Roger Ballentine

Fighting climate change with capitalism.

Roger Ballentine believes in a new version of capitalism that encourages climate solutions and environmental performance by aligning innovation, stewardship, social equity, and profit. Throughout his presentation at Green Builder Media’s Sustainability Symposium 2022, Ballentine offered ideas and strategies for addressing climate change while harvesting financial abundance.

 

In his earlier years, Ballentine was the Chairman of the White House Climate Change Task Force and Deputy Assistant to the President for Environmental Initiatives during the Clinton administration. At this time, climate change was an unpopular topic from a political perspective. However, Clinton saw a transition to a low carbon economy as a tremendous economic opportunity.

Now, as president of Green Strategies, Ballentine works with companies to develop comprehensive Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategies for the greater goal of a decarbonized future. 

Ballentine argues that government action and new technology, while very important, will not be the panacea for our climate emergency. Instead, he advocates for aligning the private sector and market forces in a way that can propel change. He acknowledges the immense economic opportunities that come with decarbonization.

“While markets certainly got us to where we are today, it was profitable to pollute, and there were no associated financial costs,” Ballentine asserts.  “Instead of being misaligned with environmental stewardship, what if markets were aligned with addressing the climate crisis? What if there was more value in being part of the solution than being part of the problem?”

He offers up the idea of climate capitalism since “fundamentally, climate is, in fact, a business issue… and should be proactively incorporated into business strategy.” The idea that businesses should mitigate risk and add new value offers an opportunity for profit creation and competitive advantage.

Watch the recorded presentation to learn more about what Ballentine sees as key aligning factors pushing the economy towards ESG and values-aligned action.


This Sustainability Symposium content is brought to you by Trane Technologies.

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