Bringing big businesses into the climate fight

Lubber says it’s her job to change the way business executives and investors think about and react to the threats posed by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and disappearing natural resources.

Lubber, who was recently honored for her work by the environmental organization Green Global USA, discussed with Globe reporter Erin Ailworth how her group, which manages an investor network worth $8 trillion, is working toward its goals.

You have an MBA and a law degree but chose to work at public-interest group MassPIRG for a minimal salary out of college, then later started the National Environmental Law Center and worked as a regulator at the EPA. Why?

What I’m doing is completely consistent. It is about recognizing the importance of addressing sustainability as part of the future of our life. Will we have a planet and an economy that takes us into the next generation? I didn’t have two kids 30 years ago, but I do now. This is the first time in history that we are about to provide our kids with a future that is not as stable as we had. That is just not tolerable.

Your interest in the environment was already developing when you were in high school. Talk about that.

There was no recycling in our whole town. My high school project in my junior and senior year was running a recycling program, and learning how to lobby the town to give us money to have the town center for people to drop off things and getting some small amount of town funds to get the trucks to take them.

On to your work with Ceres. How important is it for the business world to address climate change and other environmental issues?

Global warming is the biggest threat we face to our economy, to our public health, to our natural resource base, to national security. And we’re not going to fix it with just the government.

We’re going to fix it if we move all of the most powerful institutions. And right now at Ceres, our job is to move the largest financial players and the largest multinational companies to be part of the solution.

How do you do that?

What we’re trying to do is a raise the flag, say sustainability needs to be integrated into the way businesses act, investors evaluate businesses, and capital markets are run.

And putting specifics on that, it means putting a price on carbon pollution.

When something is free you get more of it, and so what do we have? We have lots of carbon pollution. If there is cost on it, we will see less of it.

What argument do you use to get companies on board?

Don’t do this because it is a good-guy thing to do. There are a lot of environmental groups making that case. We represent investors; we work with businesses. Do this because it is financially good for the bottom line, as well as good for the future of the planet.

How should companies start to address environmental concerns?

There are companies that are looking to move their sustainability officer to the C-suite where they report directly to the chief executive.

What Ceres says is you’ve got to analyze your risk on sustainability issues, disclose it, you’ve got to have the board set goals, the CEO held accountable. You’ve got to deal with not only your facilities - it has got to be the facilities, products. You should engage your employees and your supply chain.

What kind of impact does it have when you’ve got big-name firms backing Ceres?

Deutsche Bank is part of our investor network. Having them come up to Capitol Hill with us to talk about why building a green economy and bringing out financial products that focus on carbon is a good thing for their business and a good thing for the economy - that’s what members of Congress have wanted to hear.

Not that it’s good for the environment. They need to hear that this is not going to damage the economy.

We can’t think that [nongovernmental organizations] and the government are the only players on leading the sustainability effort . . . The largest Fortune 500 companies and beyond, we’ve got to move them into the space where they are leading on sustainability and not fighting it.