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....

Jing Li, an assistant professor of applied economics in the MIT Sloan School of Management, stands at the front of the classroom and encourages her undergraduate students to dig deeper. “Why was this a good idea?” she prompts. “How did people come up with these numbers?” It’s the second-to-last day of class, and the students in 15.0201/14.43 (Economics of Energy, Innovation, and Sustainability) are discussing their teams’ results and the logic behind the decisions they made in the Electricity Strategy Game — a main feature of this elective. “[With] so much magic,” a student quips in response to Li’s question, to a chorus of laughter. The real magic, they all know, is in Li’s approach to teaching: She holds her students accountable for their conclusions and throws them head-first into challenging problems to help them confidently engage with the complexities of energy economics. “She didn’t baby us with tiny data sets. She gave us the real deal,” says Wilbur Li, a senior computer science major and mechanical engineering minor (no relation to Jing Li). He initially took the class to round out his fall semester schedule, unsure if he would keep it due to a rigorous class load. However, just a couple of weeks into the semester, he was sold on the class....

Companies that made significant acquisitions during the financial crisis outperformed those who didn’t....

“I hate to say this right now, but I haven’t felt this energized in years,” one CEO I advise admitted to me during the first week of Covid-19 stay-at-home orders. When I asked about the source of this energy, the CEO noted that the crisis allowed an unusual freedom of movement — strategically and as a leader — that he had forgotten about. The relief from budget constraints, the suspension of market expectations, and the welcome escape from the conformity of the daily routine all contributed to his unexpected reaction to working during the pandemic....