- More businesses are laying out their plans for fighting the global climate crisis.
- Companies' efforts are important, but without government rules, these actions won't be enough.
- Voters in many countries don't believe governments are doing enough to reverse environmental damage.
Ronald Reagan will likely be resting easy this Earth Day.
The nation's 40th president, who was famously skeptical of what he saw as inept government bureaucracy and unnecessary regulations slowing down the progress of capitalism, wouldn't have to worry all that much today about elected officials or agency heads showing up to demand companies do more to fight the climate crisis.
Much is being made about how the business world, in the absence of government leadership, is getting called to the stage at this environmental tipping point.
But it's not clear that corporate America is ready for the spotlight. Sure, many companies are doing far more than a few years ago. Some are laying out serious road maps that contain specific milestones and accountability measures. Others are making feel-good but shaky promises to reach emissions-neutrality goals decades from now.
Yet without rules or incentives around emissions that the government is best equipped to administer, many businesses won't do enough, Scott Barrett, a professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, told Insider.
Barrett points to an overall lack of government action and an absence of robust and binding international agreements around greenhouse-gas emissions as the central problems.
"To rely on business to make up that gap, it verges on fantasy, really," Barrett said. Even companies whose leaders are well-intentioned are limited by the constraints of running for-profit businesses. "These institutions really were not designed for this purpose, and there's only so far they can go," he said.
When the first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, air pollution was a major problem in most US cities. In 1969, a river in Cleveland topped with industrial runoff caught fire, something that had happened at least a dozen times before. Almost one in 10 Americans took part in demonstrations or activities that spring day, and those first Earth Day participants sought something in particular: government action.
Later that year, the Nixon administration created the Environmental Protection Agency. That, along with subsequent legislation like the Clean Water Act, allowed the government to drive cleanup efforts and go after corporate polluters — and in many ways, it worked. The nation's waterways and air are generally cleaner than they were then, though other problems, like plastic pollution, have mushroomed.
Now, a half-century and what feels like a geologic age worth of carbon later (global carbon emissions are up about 90% in that time), many are hoping that, faced with government inaction, businesses will step up. But will it be enough?
Businesses should be doing more
Tzeporah Berman, international program director at Stand.earth and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, told Insider companies should be pushing governments to do more in part because economic instability resulting from climate disruption is, well, bad for business. Besides, she said, corporations are made up of people who have families.
Berman believes businesses' conversations with government officials about building a factory, or setting up a data center or establishing a digital startup should begin with companies demanding action on climate change and access to infrastructure such as renewable power sources. She sees that as a better way for businesses to use their influence than by seeking self-serving handouts like tax breaks.
"They need to use their power now for positive climate action," Berman said of businesses. She said that while these kinds of carrot-and-stick conversations often aren't as tangible or as glamorous as, say, a company greening its corporate campus, the impact could be greater.
"What a company does in terms of lobbying and advocacy right now — at this moment in history — is as important, if not more important, than what they're doing in their own corporate headquarters or facilities," Berman said.
Some businesses are doing the kind of lobbying that Berman is prescribing. But voters say the results aren't there. Polling routinely shows a majority of people in the US want the government to take greater action on climate change.
A recent Ipsos survey involving 31 countries revealed Americans aren't alone in their frustration with those in charge: Just 39% of respondents said they believed their government had drawn up a clear plan to fight the climate crisis.
Voters believe, and policy studies indicate, that government action can decrease the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. The policies just have to meet the rhetoric. Getting there is going to require businesses and the government to work together.