If you're in the C-suite of any large company, here are three strategies that can be considered for a rudimentary evaluation of how you are positioned and from that, how you will communicate in the years ahead.

Carbon War Strategy A: Get With the Program.

This is the advocacy strategy. The company reads the public policy trend, accepts it and decides to make it a friend. Executives get involved with policy makers to shape government rules toward win-win outcomes. If this were a card game, the bet would be to take some share of the pot. Onlookers — or company stakeholders — are told how this is in their interest.

Carbon War Strategy B: Fight the Program.

Call this the contrarian strategy. The climate change policy trend-line is so alien to the company that it looks like a noose. Executives turn to their political representatives and policy makers to slow walk or stop indicated outcomes that will have a hugely adverse effect on the company and its business. The bet is on playing to break up the game. Stakeholders are frightened by the dire prospects and the communications from the company are toward the valiant defense of their interests, seeking support for political resistance.

Carbon War Strategy C: Watch the Program.

The straddle strategy. Public policy trending seems fairly clear but management asks, why show our cards just yet? Executives keep a low profile, maintain relations with policy makers and watch how the advocates and contrarians play. The idea is to win a late pot, maybe with a surprise play. Stakeholders are assured that management is aware of the changed competitive environment; general commitments are expressed toward social and economic accountabilities.

For the book Corporate Greening 2.0, my associates in EnviroComm helped me scan the Web for insights on how companies are telling their climate change and sustainability stories. This informal survey had two goals: find corporate communications that are good examples, if not benchmarks, that chief communications officers and their corporate teams can consider. We settled on sorting for corporate sites in which, as of the spring of 2008, companies either took a forward and active position (Carbon War Strategy A) or expressed some level of acknowledgment or commitment (our cautionary category Strategy C).

To get useful insights on corporate climate-change communication, the team read relevant statements posted on 200 company sites, roughly the larger Fortune 500 companies. We checked home pages and went within easy-access site sections, using tabs or other devices on the home page or using available search devices for key words including sustainability, environment, energy efficiency, global warming and climate change.

Of the sites reviewed, the more aggressive communications were from companies associated with coalitions and groups with forward positions on global warming response. These generally accepted the urgent (or "crisis") climate change situation and the need for collaborative action engaging public and private interests. Some took very specific positions on legislative approaches. For instance, at the beginning of our survey, BP, Dow, PG&E, GE, Duke and Shell had joined the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, whose members from both the NGO and corporate communities advocate federal legislation on cap-and-trade and other control mandates. We found also a more aggressive and public-positive set of messages from companies active in trade association, government and general business programs. For example, among the more than 120 companies listed at the time of our review as part of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency's "Climate Leaders" program companies including Abbott, Citigroup, Dell, Pfizer, and United Technologies were rather clearly "Strategy A" communicators. We found many of these same companies among the more than 125 members of the Business Roundtable's RESOLVE (Responsible Environmental Steps, Opportunities to Lead by Voluntary Efforts) program. And there was a general scattering of "Strategy A" enterprises in various industry groups.

What about companies falling into the extremely limited category "Strategy B: Fight the Program" posture? As brave as these windmill tilters may be, they are generally less communicative, less accessible and less apt to rationalize social concern and business case for global warming, and therefore less useful to communicators seeking benchmark examples. No such company appears in our Corporate Greening 2.0 list.

Inferences for Carbon War Communicators

Our team sat down after our review of the selected sites and drew these inferences for the chief communications officer:

Take charge of your language.

This is a communications tactic that starts by being able to use the Peter Drucker-type orientation: Who is your stakeholder? What does he want (and understand)? Therefore, what do you do? If you're clear on that, the content, style and language on the Website should be much easier and most effective. In our survey, "climate change" and not "global warming" seemed to be the more comfortable semantic haven, but we see the political loadings of "global warming" starting to waver through common use and the term may well be the best way to connect a company with its stakeholders. "Sustainability" is popular, with some evidence of "corporate sustainability" and I at least am biased toward that since I think it wraps around Greening 2.0 to include energy — and engages the power of sociopolitical interaction.

Show sociopolitical interaction.

We saw the tripartite accountabilities — social, economic and political — showing up on effective sites. The critical tenet of stakeholder communications — make it clear that you understand and care about the stakeholders' interest or concern — was easy to grasp when the site provided examples (text or photographs) of the company engaged with stakeholders including local groups, business partners, regulators and legislators.

Make the business connection.

Examples of products, services and business lines benefiting from a smart, sensitive carbon-war strategy were shown by some companies. But we didn't see what we consider to be enough connection to corporate economics or financials in many of the green or climate-change sections. Care for the investor, as well as for business partners and employees, need not be overwhelmed by the softer, social side. At minimum, links or tags to "investor information" need to be prominent on the green site.

Prove it.

As open doors to show evidence and build trust, the best examples were sites that made green progress and especially carbon-reduction targets clear and trackable. Commitments were best expressed in incremental terms (a specific number by a specific date, with milestones to get there), with graphs, tables and comment as to how progress will be achieved. The proof clinchers were respectable third-party validations and endorsements.

Keep it fresh.

We found some old content on company sites that conflict with current information — effectively undercutting corporate communications and those who convey it in other forums. Best case seems to be to abandon a lot of the archived information, to update the site constantly, to keep the graphics and all the tabs and keys and functions working. At the same time, know that when you take down something you've posted, somebody out there in the news or watchdog community will call you on it and try to make hay with it.

Finally, while we didn't find much of it on many sites, feedback needs to be facilitated through various devices for contacting the company or participating on an affiliated blog. This carries risk but nothing that is unmanageable. It's your site and you control it, so solicit and prepare for feedback. Think through what you're posting. Have talking points and fact sheets available to your executive team and employees. Plan your handling of questions, criticisms, blog postings and additional communication opportunities created by opening your electronic doors.

Bottom line: the Internet is the company's primary carbon-war communications channel for building trust and corporate sustainability.

(For more on this: The climate change policy positions of benchmarked corporations as well as those of several associations, think tanks and advocacy groups appear in the Guide and Appendix of Corporate Greening 2.0, available from Amazon.com.)