Businesses Battle Against Global Warming Set To Hot-up
Richard Edwards
in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)
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1 Comment
After a weekend in which the gloomiest picture of climate change yet painted was published, there’s little doubt that big business is going to come under even more pressure to up its game when it comes to reducing carbon emissions.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) has warned – in no uncertain terms – that if the environment isn’t given top priority by governments around the world, then “catastrophe” could await.
Which makes the findings of a recent study by McKinsey all the more interesting. According to the US-based consultancy, environmental issues are now more likely than any other factor to impact on shareholder value. In all, 48 percent of the 2,600 global executives questioned in the study ranked climate change the number one threat, above data security, healthcare benefits, political influence and job losses from offshoring.
However, despite the globalisation of business, it seems that priorities still vary widely from country-to-country and continent-to-continent.
As one of the world’s biggest polluters, the IPPC will be warmed to know that environmental concerns topped the list in China – as it did in Europe. In India data security worries, with 34 percent, came out on top but, perhaps more worryingly, issues concerning healthcare and employee benefits comfortably outstripped the furrowed brows caused by global warming on the faces of CEO ’s in North America.
An indicator of how the environment has risen up the corporate agenda can though, be seen in the fact that just two years ago job losses from offshoring were thought to be the chief threat to shareholder value – a worry that appears to be rescinding.
Responding to the IPCC ’s fourth report in 20 years, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, said: “I come to see you humbled after seeing some of the most precious treasures of our planet threatened by humanity’s own hand. All humanity must assume responsibility for these treasures.”
And big business has to assume more responsibility than most.
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Reader Comments (1)
Therefore people will have to come to the reasoning, sooner or later, that the ORE-STEM complex, thought out by some of the foremost scientific minds (the late and great US scientist Dr. Glenn Seaborg included who was the major thinker on the matter – Element 106 Seaborgium) is the only answer. For to stop the now ever-growing human destructive juggernaut in its tracks, only something of an immense undertaking of an equal magnitude will do this. The sooner politicians and industrialists realize this, the sooner the world may have a chance to prevent what is on the horizon for humankind.
Dr David Hill
World Innovation Foundation
Bern, Switzerland
www.thewif.org.uk
Ps. Note that Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC is one of the World Innovation Foundation's newest Honorary Consulting Members. There are now nearly 3,500 Global Consultant Fellows and Honorary Members of the WIF who see a new way forward for the world-at-large and a strategy for Survival in the long-term where the sustainability of the human existence is their primary objective.