Meeting the challenge of climate change is a three-legged stool – it requires action from individuals, business, and government.
The largest aggregate entity in the world is business, as well as the largest emitter of greenhouse gas. But business is a manifestation of consumer demand. ClimateCounts.org operates on the belief that individuals, given the right motivation and access to information, have the power to influence business through the choices they make every day.
One year ago ClimateCounts released their first scorecard to determine how serious 56 major corporations where in reducing their carbon emissions and effectively addressing their overall carbon footprint. Across 9 industry sectors, businesses are graded based on 22 criteria (pdf) to determine if they had:
- Measured their carbon footprint
- Reduced their impact on climate change
- Supported (or opposed) progressive climate legislation
- Publicly disclosed their climate policies and actions
This morning ClimateCounts released their second annual scorecard based. The good news is that, overall, there is a clear shift in business toward an increased commitment to reduce carbon impact.
But there’s still a lot of work ahead. That’s where you and I come in. We can use the scorecard to determine which companies we want to do business with and avoid companies that are “stuck” in the old “business as usual” mind set.
We can applaud the efforts of the companies making a commitment to the climate and let them know we intend to do business with them because of it. On the other hand, we should encourage the less visionary and courageous businesses to do better and let them know we aren’t planning on doing business with them until they do.
Nobody gets a free ride, we all have a lot of work to do to create a stable climate and sustainable future. ClimateCounts helps empower at least two of the three legs of that stool – and you know the third leg of government will follow where people and business leads.
