Sustainability leader Bill Weihl to employees: Push your companies on climate

Bill Weihl is a veteran in the corporate sustainability business. The former MIT professor, who went on to spearhead climate-positive initiatives at Facebook and Google, is now addressing a ballroom full of people who have followed suit, spending their days and weeks agitating for carbon reductions in their respective companies. The audience is quiet and focused.

But Weihl has moved on in several important ways. He left the private sector to found the nonprofit ClimateVoice in 2020. Not long after, he was diagnosed with ALS, a debilitating and progressive disease. He requires a wheelchair and he can no longer speak. But that has not kept him from communicating. AI has been used to clone his voice — with incredible fidelity — and deliver his speech as he faces the audience. His message is to go beyond internal sustainability measures, beyond business as usual, and use their influence to support public policy that addresses climate change.

Check out Climate & Capital Media’s excerpts from Bill’s keynote speech at the recent GreenBiz24 conference in Phoenix.