How much responsibility do corporations have for the climate crisis and for stepping up with solutions?
Here at the ISCFC we are committed to promoting personal, community, national and planetary solutions to reduce our environmental impacts and boldly confront the climate crisis. But as individuals, we can feel powerless when there are huge corporations -such as the fossil fuel industry and factory farms– that are disproportionately responsible for carbon emissions of the past and the present.
What should we do about this? Do you agree that corporations should do more? And if so, what does that mean exactly? How do we persuade or impel polluting industries to change their ways?
Corporate responsibility >
Corporations Do More Damage than Anyone
Corporations produce just about everything we buy, use, and throw away and play an outsized role in driving global climate change. A recently published report identified that 100 energy companies have been responsible for 71% of all industrial emissions since human-driven climate change was officially recognized. Only one hundred companies… so much damage can be done to our planet with the money and power that these corporations have. Not to mention the amount of pollution some of these corporations produce. CocaCola uses 3 million tons of plastic packaging annually, Pepsi is about the same. Plastic packaging can take hundreds of years to decompose, and in the oceans it breaks down into tiny pieces that enter the food chain and kill wildlife that consumes it.
As important as it is that we personally try everyday to lower our carbon footprint, it’s even more important that major corporations drastically reduce their contributions as quickly as possible, or we might not have a planet to live on pretty soon.
I think the solution to this is a boycott we force Coca Cola to make their bottles out of a more reusable material like paper or something. Or maybe if Coca Cola had soda machines every where we bring a reusable cup and fill it up for ourselves so we dont use a plastic bottle but instead we use our own cups
I agree that Coca Cola and other soda companies should switch to reusable plastic bottles. This will help clean our oceans and help with the co2 emissions.
I agree that it is largely big corporation contributing to global carbon dioxide emissions, but it is also important to think about how those corporations wouldn’t have as much power without the masses of consumers around the world, especially in places like the United States. Things as simple as shopping in locally owned businesses can be a start. If the corporations aren’t making as much money, eventually they will have to change something in order to win back buyers, and if it becomes a competition of who can be the most green, technology will be developed to make that happen.