{"id":223935,"date":"2022-11-21T12:00:43","date_gmt":"2022-11-21T12:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=223935"},"modified":"2022-11-16T05:32:28","modified_gmt":"2022-11-16T05:32:28","slug":"its-not-just-coca-cola-corporations-have-co-opted-the-un-climate-talks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/11\/its-not-just-coca-cola-corporations-have-co-opted-the-un-climate-talks\/","title":{"rendered":"It\u2019s Not Just Coca-Cola: Corporations Have Co-Opted the UN Climate Talks"},"content":{"rendered":"

COP27 is covered with logos. But that’s just the start of companies’ influence.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Grist<\/p><\/div>\n

15 Nov 2022 – <\/em>Once a year, delegates from almost 200 countries gather for the purpose of finding ways to keep climate change from spiraling out of control. This time around, they\u2019re meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for COP27. And the event is brought to you by the largest plastic producer in the world, Coca-Cola.<\/p>\n

While Coca-Cola is considered a lower-tier sponsor than the conference\u2019s \u201cpartners<\/a>,\u201d which include Microsoft, IBM, and Bloomberg Philanthropies, Coca-Cola\u2019s role has garnered an exceptionally large amount of criticism. Nearly 240,000 people have signed a petition<\/a> for the Egyptian government-led conference to drop the partnership with Coca-Cola, a corporate giant that makes roughly 4,000 plastic bottles from oil every second<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Over the years, climate summits have become a branding opportunity for corporations to attach their names to high-profile efforts to save the world. One report found that the companies sponsoring the 2015 summit in Paris, for example, had paid around $18.8 million<\/a>, about 10 percent of the total budget. It can be hard for organizers of an expensive-to-run conference to turn down that kind of money. But those sponsorships have become a target of protest<\/a> as activists seek to show how companies like Coca-Cola have contributed to the climate crisis, the very thing COP27 is supposed to address.<\/p>\n

The Coca-Cola debacle inspired a recent political cartoon<\/a> that contrasts the conference\u2019s lofty goal of limiting climate change with the merch-filled expo that takes place alongside it. \u201cMake sure you grab your COP27 gift bag,\u201d says a comic by Australian cartoonist Andrew Marlton. The panels advertise fictional swag: a shirt that says \u201cMy environment minister went to COP27 and all I got was this lousy t-shirt,\u201d an \u201ceconomy-size bottle of greenwash,\u201d and the new book by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg (\u201cno need to read it, just be seen with it\u201d). Thunberg, for her part, decided to skip the conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, in part because of the corporate-friendly atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All the logos on display at COP27 hint at what\u2019s going on behind the scenes: Companies have been influencing the global climate negotiations since their inception in Rio de Janeiro 30 years ago<\/a>, working to make sure that the final agreement would not force them to cut emissions from fossil fuels. Instead, they began volunteering \u201cnet-zero\u201d pledges to cancel out their emissions at some later date. They\u2019ve also started to shape the conversation at every summit. When COP27 attendees talk about \u201cnet-zero\u201d and the need for ever-better climate data<\/a>, for example, they are talking about climate change in a language that businesses helped develop, and one that experts say distracts from the true goal: the need to reduce fossil fuel emissions.<\/p>\n

The Coca-Cola sponsorship \u201cseems outrageous to me,\u201d said Adam Rome, an environmental historian at the University at Buffalo. \u201cBut if you\u2019re in a world where pretty much everything is voluntary and everything has to make, ultimately, business sense, then you\u2019re going to get net-zero pledges, and you\u2019re going to get corporate sponsorships of government or civil society.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Even though oil companies haven\u2019t been allowed to sponsor the talks<\/a>, the fossil fuel industry still has a huge presence: By one count, it sent more than 630 lobbyists<\/a> to Sharm el-Sheikh, a larger delegation than sent by any country except the United Arab Emirates, the host of next year\u2019s climate summit. (It wasn\u2019t until last year that the conference\u2019s final agreement mentioned the phrase \u201cfossil fuels\u201d<\/a> at all \u2014 and even then, the language got watered down<\/a>.) COP27 has also been criticized for hiring a public relations firm, Hill+Knowlton Strategies<\/a>, that has represented oil companies such as ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and Saudi Aramco, to manage communications.<\/p>\n

Climate advocates often justify corporate involvement by saying that companies have a role to play in financing the changes that are needed, said Jennie Stephens, a professor of sustainability science and policy at Northeastern University. But she believes that corporate influence at negotiations is preventing \u201cmore transformative action\u201d from resulting. Instead of denying the problem or undermining science, those who oppose reducing emissions are now focused on delaying climate action, Stephens said. \u201cPart of delay is to acknowledge the problem and then present corporate interests as if they\u2019re doing something to mitigate problems, when in fact, they\u2019re not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite talking about fixing climate change more than ever, for instance, all major oil companies are on track to increase oil production by 2026, according to a report earlier this year<\/a>. \u201cIf they are still planning to extract all these fossil fuels in perpetuity,\u201d Stephens said, \u201cthere\u2019s no way we\u2019re ever going to meet any of the goals that all the countries have committed to in this whole long, expensive process that so much time and effort has gone into.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Office of the President of the United States
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

So how did corporations become such major players in climate politics? It goes back to an old public relations strategy. In the 1960s and \u201970s, environmental activists brought attention to how polluters were setting rivers on fire, spilling oil into the ocean, and spraying pesticides everywhere. Companies were branded as villains and were forced to get in line with new regulations to prevent pollution.<\/p>\n

Around that time, a young PR rep named E. Bruce Harrison figured that the key to avoiding future regulations was all about compromise. Calling for \u201cbalance\u201d between the \u201cThree Es\u201d<\/a> \u2014 the environment, energy, and the economy \u2014 would make the industry\u2019s position look reasonable and responsible, and leave environmentalists looking like they wanted to ruin the economy<\/a>. By working with<\/em> environmentalists, companies could appear to be doing the right thing \u2014 and get a seat at the table where decisions got made.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what businesses did leading up to a major U.N. climate agreement in 1992. The first order of business of the Global Climate Coalition<\/a> \u2014 a group of utilities, oil drillers, automakers, and other companies assembled by the National Association of Manufacturers a few years earlier \u2014 was to influence the international treaty that would be signed in Rio de Janeiro. At negotiating sessions, industry representatives argued for a voluntary approach to reducing emissions, in the hopes of avoiding a binding one. They got what they asked for. A National Association of Manufacturers business activity report<\/a> in 1992 congratulated itself on a \u201cstrong and effective presence\u201d during the Rio negotiations.<\/p>\n

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After that, the Global Climate Coalition \u201cactively lobbied\u201d ensuing climate conferences to make sure companies wouldn\u2019t be forced to cut emissions, according to a report<\/a> by Robert Brulle, a sociologist at Brown University. It also lobbied Congress and the White House to make sure that the United States, the biggest emitter in the world in the 1990s, would not ratify any binding climate treaties that managed to pass anyway. In 2001, when President George W. Bush withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, which would have required countries to cut carbon emissions, White House staff met with the Global Climate Coalition to congratulate them. \u201cPOTUS rejected Kyoto, in part, based on input from you,\u201d read the talking points<\/a> prepared for Paula Dobriansky, the lead negotiator on U.S. climate policy at the time.<\/p>\n

The coalition disbanded in 2002, with its mission accomplished, but companies never left the scene of climate negotiations. They gradually took on more of a sponsorship role and began setting up official-looking side events.<\/p>\n

Corporations\u2019 high level of involvement in the negotiations is a natural outcome of people\u2019s lack of faith in government to take action on climate change, and the belief that businesses can help fill in the gap, Rome said \u2014 an idea that\u2019s been in force since around 1990<\/a>. \u201cThere\u2019s obviously still a lot of people who are skeptical of what corporations will do,\u201d he said. \u201cBut a lot of other people, whether grudgingly or not, have thought, \u2018Well, government isn\u2019t going to do anything. Businesses are usually powerful institutions. If anybody can do something, it\u2019s business.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Companies and governments often pledge to go \u201cnet-zero\u201d \u2014 meaning that they\u2019ll suck up as much carbon dioxide as they emit \u2014 but such plans are often light on the details. The United Nations says it wants to crack down on these wishy-washy climate promises. Last week, it issued a new report<\/a> offering guidelines to make \u201cnet-zero\u201d pledges more meaningful. The report was perceived as taking companies to task<\/a> \u2014 the U.N. secretary-general, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres, said there must be \u201czero tolerance for net-zero greenwashing.\u201d<\/p>\n

But experts told Grist that the bigger issue was that the United Nations was spending so much time talking about \u201cnet-zero.\u201d While the concept of zeroing out emissions could work, in theory, critics say it is too ambiguous to be meaningful and easily gets exploited by policymakers and companies<\/a>. A recent study analyzing public pledges<\/a> from hundreds of large global companies found that 93 percent of them were on track to miss their emissions goals.<\/p>\n

For those who see \u201cnet-zero\u201d as bogus, talking about it might end up perpetuating the problem. Rome thinks that the U.N. report\u2019s focus on getting companies to follow through on their pledges seemed to be dodging a real solution: requiring<\/em> companies to cut emissions. The report \u201conly guarantees that we\u2019ll spend a lot more time talking about the details, when the whole idea of it is the problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Squabbling over details has become a feature of U.N. climate conferences as well as discussions around corporate sustainability, said Matthew Archer, a professor of sustainability at the University of York in the United Kingdom. Archer is writing a book arguing that \u201cendless discussions\u201d about metrics and measurements can distract from the real work that needs to be done on climate change. He argues that, while accurate data is needed, the search for ever-more-accurate numbers has become a form of delaying action itself.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe whole conversation [around net-zero] is turning toward, \u2018Oh no, you\u2019re measuring it wrong, you haven\u2019t considered this aspect,\u201d Archer said. The debates \u201cend up just becoming technical squabbles and people fighting over very minor methods and methodological questions,\u201d while ignoring the bigger questions about power in politics \u2014 such as whether net-zero is a helpful way to achieve climate goals at all.<\/p>\n

Rome says that voluntary action from corporations will never be enough to solve the climate crisis. \u201cThe whole last 30 years has been this vast experiment in what they are willing to do voluntarily,\u201d he said, with lackluster results. The world doesn\u2019t need more \u201cgood\u201d companies to make more net-zero pledges, Rome explained: It needs rules that force all<\/em> companies to cut their emissions.<\/p>\n

Coca-Cola may be in the spotlight for greenwashing with its sponsorship of the latest climate summit, but the problem is much bigger than one company. The U.N. has been \u201ctrying to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys in the corporate world,\u201d Rome said. \u201cThat\u2019s important, but it\u2019s not nearly as important as pointing out that at the end of the day, we need something beyond more good guys.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Kate Yoder is a staff writer at <\/span><\/em>Grist.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Go to Original – grist.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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