I recently connected with Susan McPherson (@susanmcp1), head of communications consultancy McPherson Strategies, to discuss the role of corporate storytelling in CSR and sustainability initiatives. Susan, named one of the "Smartest Women on Twitter" by "Fast Company" magazine and the founder of the popular bi-weekly #CSRChat, has spent her career focusing on the intersection between brands and social good.

Cigarettes are where the realization first dawned. Not the one you're thinking of. Not the unalterable and horrific truth about what cigarette-smoking can do to you. No, I'm talking about the incredibly simple, yet impossibly hard to accept epiphany that telling people something is bad for them does not mean they will stop doing it. No, not even if you show them incontestable facts and get a legion of serious-looking men in white coats to testify.

Much has changed since the first Earth Day (1970) in the U.S. - the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the passage of the Clean Air, Clean Water and Endangered Species Acts. Since 1990, the movement has gone global, lifting environmental issues onto the world stage.