Climate Change and Business: Are Companies Benefitting?
Climate change is an issue that has become increasingly ubiquitous in all areas of life in recent decades. As population increases, there is a parallel increase in pollution, exacerbating climate change, which not only affects the environment, but also has an impact on human life and business. Climate change is generally thought of as a negative force due to its effects on the environment and its projected repercussions. However, there have been some upshots of climate change that have had positive impacts on business. Climate change presents businesses the opportunity to promote themselves by appealing to the public’s preoccupation with environmental concerns. It also presents opportunities for businesses to capitalize on climate change through entrepreneurship and innovation addressing environmental issues. Furthermore, by adopting ecofriendly practices that are conceived as responses to climate change, businesses can reduce costs of production and operation. As a result of climate change, companies are prompted to adopt sustainable business practices, “taking the goal of sustainability, and translating that into the changes required of an individual organization—changes which maintain the organizations capacity for producing human benefits, including the profitability needed for survival, while optimizing the environmental balance of its operations.” Through this pursuit of sustainable business, companies can benefit from the climate change that plagues the planet, through promoting a “green” image, “green” innovation, and ecofriendly practices. While there are some positive effects of climate change on businesses, these optimistic outcomes do not outweigh the extreme con...
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... capitalize on public concern. They are able to use their efforts to mitigate climate change as a way to market their company and appear trustworthy to their consumers. Companies benefit from climate change as they struggle against it. They promote a trustworthy, socially responsible, sustainable image; innovate technologies to meet the public demand for environmentally friendly products; and change their operations to ecofriendly procedures. Climate change itself does not have enough direct benefits on business to outweigh the costs of climate change on the planet. But rather it is the ways in which businesses react to climate change that provides them with majority of advantageous effects. Thus, climate change itself has substantially more costs than benefits for business, even though reaction of companies to climate change provides some subsidiary gains.
One thing is for sure, large number of companies are starting to face problems and trying to come up with solutions to this crisis. Many suggestions have been made towards companies and some include changing more environmental friendly supply chain. (Carbon dioxide supply chain reporting in a Swedish multinational corporation, 2010). Swedish multinational corporation Entra has stated the fact that there is a relationship between their costs and energy sourcing. Since they are sometimes supplier to their suppliers, the environment pushes Entra and all organizations to look into how they can influence their supply channels. BP Amoco as many other companies, have set a target on reducing Greenhouse gasses. One step that they took was...
Supplying eco-friendly products has been on the Walmart agenda since the early 1990s. After a failed first attempt and much criticism, the company decided to try again. In a speech made in October of 2005, CEO of Walmart, H. Lee Scott Jr., declared Walmart would devise a “business sustainable strategy” to reduce the environmental impact the company had. Walmart could not pull this off alone. If they only focused on the confines of themselves, rather than all that they were involved with, it was estimated that they’d only reduce their impact by about 10%. To reach that goal of 100%, Walmart had to involve stakeholders to make networks which achieve sustainability. These networks proved to be vital in not only Walmart’s goal in minimizing its environmental impact, but recovering their reputation, avoiding criticism, saving money, raising awareness, improving customer satisfaction, and creating incentive for other businesses to work towards sustainability.
A business should make sure its methods of production are not negatively affecting its employees and that all the people in the business are happy and willing to work. Also, a business should make sure that its methods of production are not producing any waste on land or water or air pollution, for these negatively affect society. A business that cares about it’s influence on the environment, and its consumers is bound to make a difference. For example: General Mills wants to reduce the amount of energy it uses. In order to do this, they had energy monitors installed into some of their equipment in one of their manufacturing plants. The result: General Mills saved around six hundred thousand dollars (James). Profit can be obtained faster by a business that is looked upon as a positive influence on the environment and its employees. Overall, a business should be careful about how it produces its products and think about society’s health before it makes a decision, for if it doesn’t, the liability for damage is a much greater price to
...made. Climate change poses a huge for the fulfillment of the future generations. It is on us, our generation to make decisions regarding emissions of greenhouse gases that will not pose a significant risk of serious adverse consequences to the future generation. At a global and national level, climate change responses must focus on long-term sustainable solutions to ensure the well-being and needs of future generations are met. This will mean minimizing the impact of greenhouse gas emission for the future generations. The faster we can control climate change, the less consequences the future generations will have to endure. The future generations should also be given a world that is health, a world that offers a sustainable future and a world that we, ourselves would want to live in. It is for the future generations that we much meet the challenge of climate change.
Climate change is a change in global temperature and regional climate patterns. At the turn of the 20th century, there has been rising issues about climate change, arguing that global warming and climate change is an issue worsened by the human race. Change in climate is a natural process in which changes from season to season and even fluxuates over thousands of years. Over the time frame of the last 650,000 years there has been seven cycles of glacial advance and retreat (Global Climate Change). It could be argued that climate change is a natural process and the Earth is suppose to change its temperature from hot to cold. Yes, that is true. However, the rate in which the temperature is changing is something this Earth has never endured. In
“At present, the global system for carbon emissions trading is embodied in the Kyoto Treaty,” said Al Gore, which points out that Global Warming is not a national problem, but global problem. The Kyoto Treaty states that parties involved will reduce greenhouse emissions in their nation (United Nations). These facts introduce the idea of transforming this perilous world into an innocuous one. It supports his claim for having a preferable future for all, where there will be no droughts, devastations, deaths, or poverties due to global warming. His repetition of the word “reduce” engages the audience of having a solution to climate change. Mr. Gore continues with his ideas to reduce Global Warming by saying, “...Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CSS)...will play a significant...role as one of the major blocks of a solution to climate crisis.” This fact is an example of a paradox as before this statement he mentioned that CSS, a method to capture the CO2 burned from the burning coal, is an expensive method which most companies resist from using. His use of paradoxes throughout his speech makes the audience rethink their opinions. These statistics are part of many other logically statements that Mr. Gore used to support his claim. Some of these logical procedures include; electronic cars, reduction of renewable
It’s been said by many and thought by others, countless times before. “It’s not that bad. The media and these environmentally obsessive individuals are over exaggerating the negative global climate change impacts”. After all the planets warming has potential to produce positive outcomes as well. It has even been argued that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant; rather it is an essential component for photosynthesis, a process that indirectly supports human life deeming the greenhouse effect as normal. Furthermore the warming of the planet would result in less harsh and cold winters; in turn this would mean fewer deaths, predominantly among vulnerable groups such as the elderly. Environmentally this could potentially produce greener rainforests and enhanced plant growth in the Amazon, increased vegetation in northern
Soviet Central Asia remained one of the poorest regions of the USSR until the break- up of the union. These republics lagged behind the others in all social and economic indicators. The shortcomings of the Soviet policy of rapid economic integration were visible by the 1970s and a number of problems including environmental problems were assuming critical proportions (Patnaik, 1995). The situations became worst after the disintegration of Soviet Union in 1991 due to the lack of managements and resources. Central Asia is faced with a range of serious environmental challenges, where climate change and climate variability will add to the current problem complex. Climate variability is not a new phenomenon in Central Asia but climate change will add to existing and recurrent economic, social and ecological stresses, risks and uncertainties. With climate change follows environmental change which is manifested in changing resource abundance or scarcities of natural resources and ecosystem services (Nilsson and Ingevall, May 2009). Key environmental challenges include climate change and climate variability, radioactive emissions, widespread pollution, desertification, loss or degradation of ecosystem, salinization, floods, droughts and large-scale natural resource depletion of land, water, forests, minerals and energy resources. Climate change adds to existing economic, social and environmental challenges. Central Asia’s environmental problems are not isolated phenomena but are linked in multiple ways with other development themes across the region. Attaining development objectives such as sustained and pro-poor growth, public health, broad-based employment, devolution a...
As environmental concerns become more of an issue for consumers, they will be more aware of the impact that a company has on themselves and the environment and therefore be more conscious of who they support with their dollar.
Climate change has been one of the most discussed issues in these modern days. It is prove on many researches that the increase in man-made green house gas emission can significantly affect the climate in the world, on every part of the globe. In the last few years, climate change has become the most researched subject in science. The reason is that because climate change can affect significantly to the earth and it has to be taken care of. In a business world, particularly in Automotive Industry, climate change is also one of the must discussed subject, and because of automobile is one of the factors that produce the most CO2 (Carbon dioxide), it become one issue that force automotive industry to change their product to reduce the amount of CO2 emission.
Stuart Hart, in a business article, discusses the tough task for companies to make a sustainable global ec...
It is becoming increasingly certain that climate change will have severe adverse effects on the environment in years to come. Addressing this issue poses a serious challenge for policy makers. How we choose to respond to the threat of global warming is not simply a political issue. It is also an economic issue and an ethical one. Responsible, effective climate change policy requires consideration of a number of complex factors, including weighing the costs of implementing climate change policies against the benefits of more environmentally sustainable practices.
In recent years, business or green business was no longer an option to become an obligation. Companies started to change their mindset and values to develop new environmental proposals, for example launching second ecological lines.
Humans have been destroying the planet since we were able to stand on two legs. As a society, we need to work to reverse these terrible effects that our existence has on the planet. Sustainability is one way to begin reversing these effects, while still living our daily lives. In 2006, Al Gore presented his documentary, “ An Inconvenient Truth”, as a way to show the world the evidence behind global warming, climate change and the destruction of our planet. This documentary shocked the world. It was clear that changes needed to be made, but the destruction was more intense than previously thought. SInce this revelation in 2006, companies have tried to cut down on their greenhouse emissions, as well as offered sustainable products to their customers. Through a debate of morals and
Each year the average temperature of the earth increases .02 degrees Fahrenheit (Global Warming). Although this may not seem like a big change, our ecosystems are so fragile that even this slight boost in temperature is very destructive; oceans rise, glaciers melt at an alarming rate, species of animals cannot adapt and die off. As the twenty first century continues on, these changes are accelerating at an alarming rate, mainly due to population increase. Humans are producing more waste, owning more cars and building more pollution emitting factories every year. Unfortunately all of these factors help contribute to global warming. Some awareness concerning this problem has been raised but the general public seldom takes heed of these warnings. Rarely do people ever think of the effects of their actions and those that do almost never change their ways. Luckily, some companies such as Honda, GM and BP are working hard to change people’s attitude towards our environment. They have realized the threat pollution poses and have decided to do something about it—through advertising. Each year these companies raise millions of dollars through advertising for the purpose of environmental research, auto development and public education.