Corporate Honesty and Climate Change | Teen Ink

Corporate Honesty and Climate Change

June 29, 2021
By Ratan BRONZE, Bangalore, Other
Ratan BRONZE, Bangalore, Other
2 articles 0 photos 0 comments

It is quite conceivable that climate change is arguably the world's toughest hurdle today. It is a multidisciplinary problem that requires action to be taken from almost every country in the world on a large scale and has posed an exceptionally significant impact on our daily lives.

In this day and age, our climatic conditions have shifted and there is a rise in temperature across the globe. It is a well-established fact that fossil fuel industries have invested huge sums of money attempting to discredit climate change and its position in it.

A study by Oliver Lazarus claims that corporations have invested millions of dollars lobbying against climate change policies, and funding fraudulent research that attempts to obfuscate the connection between livestock and the global warming crisis. The most significant correlation is that meat and dairy products account for roughly 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The meat and fossil fuel industries, in liaison, create a large-scale anti-climate change movement. The largest meat and dairy corporations have invested a significant amount of time, resources, and effort trying to dismiss the connection between livestock and climate change.

A popular instance was when in 2009, the ACES act was introduced as a discussion draft, which was also known as the Waxman-Markey climate bill. The bill set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and forced high-emitting industries to cut down on their production by a certain amount. This worried the meat industry, as cutting down on production would mean a reduction in their profits. Hence, they formed an alliance with the fossil fuel industry and prevented the bill from being passed.

Recent articles and journal entries suggest that these collaborations between the meat and fossil fuel industries take place mainly through funding false research and lobbying.

Historically, the agriculture and meat sector has been known to campaign for things like rights to communal public grounds, or industry-biased management regulations. However, in recent news, they have taken to hindering policies that would affect their production. Major US groups are known to have collectively spent approximately $200 million in lobbying since 2000, on climate-related issues like cap-and-trade, the Clean Air Act, and greenhouse gas regulations. Just four of the 35 corporations surveyed, namely Nestle, Danish Crown, Danone, and Dairy Farmers had made promises to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. The remaining 31 major meat producers had not. Furthermore, there are significant differences in how businesses disclose emissions and intend to mitigate them.

Furthermore, the industries have been known to finance their own researchers, who then publish fraudulent studies that downplay and diminish the connection between their industry and climate change. They achieve this by arguing that its emissions are negligible in comparison to that of other industries, such as transport. They choose to overlook the fact that their sector, although less than some other sectors, accounts for 14% of emissions, implying that it is still a significant contributor to the universal increase in temperature.

With the statistics in front of us, it is rather obvious that these industries need to remodel themselves. The countries housing corporates that practice these means must be held accountable, and measures to sustainably develop need to be taken.


The author's comments:

My passion for writing began as a hobby, but as my style evolved, I found joy in expressing myself through words. My relationship with writing has developed since I first started; and my love for various disciplines has grown, especially over the course of the pandemic. It has helped me out of the ruts I've found myself in during quarantine; it has been a constant throughout the ever-changing environment


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