Supposedly Pro-Climate Companies ‘Missing The Moment’ to Support Action

None of America’s largest “climate positive” corporations are fully supporting the country’s biggest and best legislative opportunity in over a decade to address the climate crisis and move toward alignment with the Paris agreement, a new report shows.

The report, a collaboration of ClimateVoice and InfluenceMap found none of the top 20 “climate positive” companies have endorsed the climate policies of the Build Back Better Act, supported its revenue raising provisions, and opposed lobbying against the bill by trade associations; 12 met none of those requirements. Those companies — 3M, Cisco Systems, Coca-Cola, Google, HP, Johnson & Johnson, McDonald’s, Nike, PepsiCo, Pfizer, Qualcomm, and Tesla — are “missing the moment,” the report said. “This is our shot at national policy,” ClimateVoice founder Bill Weihl told Grist. If these companies don’t step up, “they are going to be held to account for years to come.”

As reported by Grist:

The White House and progressive senators say the Build Back Better Act is the nation’s best chance of mitigating future climate change-related suffering and costs, which promise to be astronomically higher than the upfront cost of reducing emissions now. But the bill, which contains funding for various green initiatives, tax credits for clean energy, and a program that would slash roughly 80 percent of the emissions from the electricity sector by the end of this decade, is on the rocks. Democrats can’t decide amongst themselves how much to spend on the package or even exactly which programs should be included in it. If the climate portion gets declawed or cut entirely, the left may not get another opportunity to pass climate policy for a very long time.

For a deeper dive:

Grist

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