In the wake of COP26, a lot of ink has been spilled on how mega-corporations, under pressure from consumers and environmentally aware shareholders, are stepping up to the plate with promises to go entirely carbon neutral within a few years or decades.
Yet, a shocking new study of 25 mega-corporations, released this month by the NewClimate Institute and Climate Market Watch, finds that much of this is smoke and mirrors. In fact, the researchers conclude, in reality, the emissions-reduction strategies for these companies, with a cumulative revenue of over $3 trillion and a greenhouse gas footprint equaling 5 percent of the world’s total, add up to only a 40 percent reduction rather than the 100 percent rollback implied by “net zero.” As worryingly, by 2030 the reductions would only amount to 23 percent as compared to 2019.
Moreover, many of the pledges involve somewhat nebulous “offsets,” an accounting trick that allows a company to plant trees or implement other carbon-sequestration strategies in lieu of reducing emissions. Yet, as the authors of the report point out, to get anywhere near net zero, companies can’t play an either/or game: Instead, they have to both implement offsets and also, at the same time, reduce emissions.
Behemoths like Amazon, Google, Ikea and Walmart all were rated in the report as showing “low integrity” when it came to their net-zero pledges. Others, including Nestlé, Unilever and the BMW Group, were awarded a “very low integrity” moniker for their publicly stated efforts.
In some instances, these low grades were due to manifest failings; in others, the companies simply weren’t providing enough data to adequately analyze their goals. In the introduction to the report, the authors wrote that, “it is more difficult than ever to distinguish between real climate leadership and unsubstantiated greenwashing.”
But what is clear from the report is that the unsubstantiated greenwashing side of the equation is, unfortunately, all too common. Companies seem far more concerned with appearing to be implementing major eco-efforts than with actually fundamentally, and urgently, working to roll back the climate change crisis.
One of the practices companies use to make their efforts appear better than they in fact are is comparing current and future emissions levels to abnormally high baseline years, so that what in reality are regular annual emissions instead appear to be declining emissions. The GHG [Greenhouse Gas] Protocol defines three main kinds of emissions. Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from a company’s property; scope 2 are indirect emissions from the purchase of electricity, heating, steam production and so on; and scope 3 are all the other emissions associated with a company’s activities, such as the distribution of a company’s product, the packaging of goods, business travel, the emissions associated with the garbage produced at the end of a product’s life, and so on.
Scope 3, in particular, has proven to be an area that large companies can manipulate data on to make themselves look better on the environment than they in fact are. “For example,” the authors write on page 20 of their 127-page report, “CVS Health’s scope 3 emissions are 70-80% higher in 2019 than in 2017, 2018 and 2020, without a clear explanation, potentially undermining the meaningfulness of the company’s target for a 47% reduction in scope 3 emissions by 2030 compared to 2019.” It’s a similar strategy to the tax-dodge that the Trump Organization is accused of, whereby the company allegedly inflated the values of its properties when trying to get loans, and then deflated the values when paying property taxes.
In that same section, the authors note that Unilever is claiming emissions reductions for its soaps and detergents operations based on taking credit for more energy-efficient water-heating systems for customers who wash hands with the company’s soap, and the use of more renewable electricity-generation sources for running the washing machines that use the company’s detergent.
At least 7 of the 25 companies the research focused on were so selective in what emissions they considered that the report concluded they could be hiding up to 98 percent of their actual emissions footprint, making their public promises little more than nonsense. Other companies camouflaged “upstream” and “downstream” emissions — upstream emissions being connected with the production of goods, and downstream emissions being associated with the consumption of those goods — including energy sales and the daily operations of their stores, from easy identification. In some instances, they only mentioned them in their report footnotes — and this despite the fact that the vast majority of their carbon emissions come from these sources. Still others sold off carbon-intensive branches of their operations to subsidiaries, and then reported declining emissions, even though, in reality, they had simply shuffled the emissions from one set of operations to another.
The malfeasance continues from one realm to the next. In many instances, apparently, the pledge to reach net zero is accompanied by no specific emissions reduction targets on a year-on-year basis, rendering the pledge little more than feel-good waffling. “12 of the companies with (net-)zero emission targets have made no specific commitment for the reduction of their own emissions in the net zero target year,” the authors write. These included Amazon, which the authors lambasted for pledging to get to net zero but not actually putting forward “any specific [greenhouse gas] emission reduction target.” A similar lack of specificity accompanied BMW’s net-zero pledge.
Pledging to get to net zero is the easy part. Actually getting there, and reshaping supply chains to ensure that at all points of the production and distribution process greenhouse gasses are actually significantly reduced, is the difficult part. The world’s largest corporations are perfecting the art of green spin. But, as this report shows, with catastrophic climate change now a looming reality, it’s past time for them to go beyond the spin and actually ensure that their public commitments are met over the coming years.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.