Want to Kickstart Climate Action? Make Companies Report Their Carbon Footprints.
A “modest proposal” to give corporations a real incentive to cut emissions.
The COP26 climate summit, held in Glasgow, in November, was long on stirring pledges and promises. What it lacked were concrete plans to fulfill those commitments. Activist Greta Thunberg dismissed the proceedings as a lot of “blah, blah, blah.”
A “modest proposal” by Stefan Reichelstein to give corporations a real incentive to cut emissions can be found in a new article by Stanford Graduate School of Business.
According to Reichelstein mandatory disclosure actually leads to voluntary reductions. By making the numbers visible to all of the company’s stakeholders, it creates an incentive for management to take action. If we can just get companies to put their name on their own emissions, maybe we can get the ball rolling on more ambitious efforts — and begin to move beyond “blah, blah, blah”.
Read the article here.