The number of companies appointing a chief sustainability officer has grown significantly over the last few years. Due to the novelty of the role, the CSO's actual responsibilities and tasks are still vague. It's critical for executives and boards to ensure that the CSO's role is balanced among all three elements of ESG. The authors present a CSO's eight distinct tasks and a visual framework to ensure that each one gets the level of effort it needs....

But shiny ads are not all these companies do to protect their commercial interests in the face of a rapidly heating world. Most also provide financial support to industry groups that are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on political activities, often to thwart polices designed to slow climate change. For example, The New York Times recently reported on the Propane Education and Research Council's attempts to derail efforts to electrify homes and buildings in New York, in part by committing nearly US$900,000 to the New York Propane Gas Association, which flooded social media with misleading information about energy-efficient heat pumps. The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, which represents oil refiners and petrochemical firms, has spent millions on public relations campaigns, such as promoting a rollback of federal fuel efficiency standards. These practices have been going on for decades, and evidence shows that industry groups have played key roles in blocking state and federal climate policies. This matters not just because of the enormous sums the groups are spending, but also because they often act as a command center for political campaigns to kill pro-climate policies....