{"id":36014,"date":"2018-07-18T06:02:14","date_gmt":"2018-07-18T11:02:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36014"},"modified":"2018-07-18T06:02:14","modified_gmt":"2018-07-18T11:02:14","slug":"when-corporations-take-credit-for-green-deeds-their-lobbying-may-tell-another-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=36014","title":{"rendered":"When Corporations Take Credit for Green Deeds, Their Lobbying May Tell Another Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Corporations Take Credit for Green Deeds, Their Lobbying May Tell Another Story<\/a><\/h3>\n
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Today most large companies like Exxon Mobil, Ford and GM<\/span> issue slick reports<\/a> extolling their efforts to conserve resources, use renewable energy or fund clean water supplies in developing countries. This emphasis on efforts to curb environmental harm while benefiting society is called corporate\u00a0sustainability.<\/p>\n

Once uncommon but now mainstream, this show of support for a greener and kinder business model<\/a> might seem like a clear step forward. But many of these same companies are quietly using their political clout, often through industry trade associations, to block or reverse policies that would make the economy more sustainable. And because public policy raises the bar for entire industries, requiring that all businesses meet minimum standards, lobbying to block sound public policies can outweigh the positive impact from internal company\u00a0initiatives.<\/p>\n

This kind of corporate hypocrisy \u2014 what we call talking green while lobbying brown \u2014 is a form of greenwashing<\/a>, in which companies trumpet their good deeds while hiding their efforts to block progress. As the past<\/a> and present<\/a> presidents of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability<\/a>, we are concerned that this greenwashing may delay by years or even decades steps that might solve sustainability problems, such as slowing the pace of climate change or ending the ocean plastic pollution crisis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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Greenwashing is environmentally responsible talk without action.<\/span> By Tamixes\/Shutterstock.com<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Sounding Good Yet Lacking\u00a0Impact<\/strong><\/p>\n

We and our colleagues in the alliance have documented many business initiatives that fall short of the impact they claim. One of the best known was the chemical industry\u2019s Responsible Care<\/a> program, created after an explosion at Union Carbide\u2019s plant in Bhopal, India,<\/a> killed thousands of people in 1984. Strategy professors Andy King<\/a> and Mike Lenox<\/a> showed<\/a> that participants actually made less progress in reducing their emissions of toxic chemicals than did nonparticipants. That prompted the industry to overhaul the\u00a0program.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Corporations Take Credit for Green Deeds, Their Lobbying May Tell Another Story Today most large companies like Exxon Mobil, Ford and GM issue slick reports extolling their efforts to conserve resources, use renewable energy or fund clean water supplies in developing countries. This emphasis on efforts to curb environmental harm while benefiting society is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[171,5317,5164,20916,20915],"class_list":["post-36014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-corporations","tag-desmog-blog","tag-lobbying","tag-magali-delmas","tag-tom-lyon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36015,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36014\/revisions\/36015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}