For years, delegates from all over the world have met to
discuss ways to mitigate the impacts of a changing climate. Our global
capitalist system has enabled businesses to extract ever-greater resources and
generate relentless pollution. Now, many of the same companies that are guilty
of destroying our climate are being lauded as “partners” and “stakeholders” in
the climate talks. Corporate sponsors would foot a fifth of the bill for the COP21
December gathering. Aside from the COP21, there are two major business-centered
side events coinciding with the conference.
The Sustainable Innovation Forum, is being organized in
conjunction with the United Nations Environment Program to help companies to
“generate profitable business opportunities and partnerships, provide top-level
access to emerging markets and reinforce their commitment to, and their
position as leaders within, the global sustainability industry.” The event
bills itself as “the largest business event on the sidelines of the COP.” Last
year’s event in Lima, Peru, boasted hundreds of attendees from industry and
governments and was sponsored by investment banks, agribusinesses and the International
Chamber of Commerce, among others.
The second corporate event during COP21 is Solutions 21,
whose positive-sounding online literature sports slick messaging—“Live the
Climate Experience,” its website announces. The gathering will include a free
exhibition of technology as well as “concerts, films, parties and incredible
events.” The business-centered coalition declares: “Solutions COP21 offers a
new perspective and a unique experience. Because climate solutions do exist,
because the subject is a fascinating one.” Corporate Europe Observatory
detailed in a new report how Solutions 21 is simply “a chance for big business
to promote its pie-in-the-sky market-based techno-fixes to climate change.” The
organization also exposed how the various levels of corporate sponsorship of
the event offer “privileged access to climate policy-makers.” The group put it
bluntly: “The more money you have, the better you can buy your way to being
seen and heard by our political leaders, and the more effectively you’ll be
associated with solutions to the climate crisis.” Meanwhile, “civil society
struggles to be heard even when hundreds of thousands take to the streets,
highlighting the undemocratic nature of this kind of luxurious corporate
lobbying show.”
A new campaign called “Kick Big Polluters Out,” calls on
world leaders to ban corporate interests from the climate negotiations. The
campaign, organized by Corporate Accountability International, explains:
“For two decades, the world’s biggest polluters delayed,
weakened, and blocked climate policy at every level. From the World Coal
Association hosting a summit on “clean coal” around the 19th Conference of the
Parties (COP19) to Shell aggressively lobbying in the European Union for weak
renewable energy goals while promoting gas, these big polluters are peddling
false solutions to protect their profits while driving the climate crisis
closer to the brink.” Influence Map, a United Kingdom-based organization that
tracks corporate influence on climate policies reported last month how fossil
fuel companies specifically damage climate agreements. According to their
report, “The energy majors’ slogan leading up to Paris 2015 is to call for a
price on carbon. Behind the scenes, however, they are systematically
obstructing the very laws that would enable a meaningful price.”
It is clear that the goals of the corporations do not
coincide with ours. Corporate entities exist to make profits—the larger the
profits, the better. They do not exist to lead us to a more just, more
equitable and safer world—unless that hypothetical world just happened to be
the most financially lucrative one. Capitalism is actually incompatible with
saving our species from the ills of climate change. Corporations cannot and
will not lead us to climate-friendly policies.
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