The Corporations Speak

By: Anna McGinn ’14

Reading industries’ and corporations’ take on climate change policy is an interesting perspective to dissect especially after reading IPCC and scientific documents. Their focus is not to describe the science of climate change or to create international agreements on GHG emissions. Rather their report, “Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options: A report summarizing work at RFF as part of the inter-industry U.S. Climate Policy Forum,” explains how corporations would like the United States to approach climate change regulations. From page one, they focus on regulating GHG emissions through various market approaches. In the realm of corporations, everything has a dollar value. Further, they are careful to use non-committal language and are vague in their explanations of solutions. Despite some drawbacks, it seems impressive that these 23 corporations came together to create this document in the first place. It serves as an acknowledgement of the magnitude of the issue.

However, as I was reading about how these corporations, such as Exxon Mobile, DuPont, and Alcoa, propose the United States approaches climate policy, I became curious about these companies specific commitments to sustainable business and corporate responsibility. They have a lot to say about how the United States ought to deal with climate change, but I thought it unlikely that any of them would actually take proactive steps to lessen their impact without the government forcing them to do so. All of the corporations’ websites have a section on “their commitment to the environment” which reads akin to Alcoa’s statement that, “Alcoa is meeting the challenge with a core commitment to operating sustainably in the communities and ecosystems in which we do business. At the same time, we’re delivering new ideas and solutions that will help build a healthier and more sustainable future both for the planet and its people.” The statements sound like the company is going to save the planet, but in reality they are empty statements.

Many of the companies who are parties to the report have horrendous environmental track records which do not reflect their fluffy statements about their commitments to the environment. Further, they should not be giving the government recommendations on environmental policy. In fact, just in the last few months a handful of these corporations have been in the media for negative environmental actions.

Woman standing outside of a DuPont property.

DuPont Corporation, a chemical company with a miserable environmental record, is currently negotiation to avoid paying for the chemicals they dumped in the Delaware River over the course of many years. Recently, DuPont also had to pay $70 million and long term medication monitoring to a community in West Virginia for the toxic pollution that came for their zinc smelter located in West Virginia town. Further, the El Paso Corporation, Chevron, and Exxon Mobile partially fund “Energy In Depth” which is a Gaslands attack group that claims to be funded by small, independent oil producers. Basically, they are funding a group to thwart the efforts of environmental groups in order to protect their fossil fuel businesses. Chevron is also currently installing a pipeline in Ecuador. During this process, there have been several spills in which many people have died. In 2009 in Pennsylvania, coal mine discharge from a CONSOL energy mines killed thousands of fish. John Arway, the Pennsylvania fish and boat commission executive director stated that, “The fish kill on Dunkard Creek was one of the most devastating that has occurred on Pennsylvania waters during my 31 years with [the] commission.” Finally, earlier this year deep sea drilling commenced again despite the fact that there are no new environmental regulations. Although it is the government that allowed the companies back on the water, the corporations did not take it upon themselves to comply with more stringent environmental regulations.

A few examples of the over 42,000 fish killed by the Coal Mine discharge in PA.

Basically, even though the report is a step in the direction of corporations seriously considering their environmental impacts and acting to counter their emissions, they have a long way to go. Although these corporations have a strong lobbying presence in Washington, the United States government must take into account the special interests of these groups including their direct ties to fossil fuel extraction and use which clearly sways their report’s recommendations.

Work Cited:

See links for information about the corporations and newspaper articles from The Huffington Post and The New York Times

Kopp and Pizer, eds., 2007. “Overview,” in Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options, Resources for the Future, Washington DC, pp. 6-21.