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 >
Governmental Responsibility to the Future Generations
The government has a responsibility to help and protect the lives of future generations. We are nowhere near where we need to be. The website I used said that by 2100, a third of Florida will be underwater. I know that Florida is a controversial place, however, there are still people that live IN Florida that would loose their homes by the time it gets to 2100.
While Florida may be end up underwater, that is an insignificant amount compared to the total amount of land we will lose if the oceans continue to rise. One of the most notable places that is disappearing due to sea level rise is Venice (a small network of canals, islands, and bridges just off the coast of Italy), which already has sustained serious damage due to sea level rise, but by 2100 it may be entirely underwater! This is due to global warming. Global warming causes massive sheets of ice from both the north and south of the Earth to melt, and when a continent's worth of land ice melts, it rises the water level significantly. This throws off Earth's natural balance in the first place, but it more directly affects the land available to us as humans, a space which is shrinking incredibly rapidly (compared to Earth's rate of change). But how do corporations factor into this? Corporations and commercial production factor for most carbon emitted each year, and that means they factor the most in climate change. The more climate change each year, the more land ice melting there is, and the more sea level rise there is. This means that industry is also the largest contributor to climate change. But in America, at least, I do agree that the government has most of the responsibility for reducing these industry emissions. As they are generally the only larger organizational body with control over these corporations, they must use their power to try and reduce emissions. Luckily, putting these measures in place is predicted to reduce carbon emissions by massive amounts, which will help with the overall effort to reduce global warming. However, what can we do to stop companies from putting such a massive amount of CO2 into the air? We can stop supporting their destructive processes. By protesting against and boycotting carbon heavy industry (trying to force them to change), and trying to get the government to do something about it, we can reduce the emission strain that comes from industry, and reduce the effects of global warming. And if we act fast enough, we might just be able so save the Floridians AND the Venetians from a watery doom.
Sources/Additional Information:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/2022 … om-sinking
https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sea … %20sheets.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/ice-sheets/
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/source … -emissions
https://www.epa.gov/climate-change/clim … nitiatives
https://news.mit.edu/2021/reducing-emis … ustry-0721