It’s easy to become pessimistic about the way the current federal administration is passing legislation (or the lack thereof) to regulate carbon emissions. The idea that corporations might fix the problem instead, doing their own regulating, is attractive. They move toward more sustainable practices, some for the good press, some to help the environment, but overwhelmingly instead because it will be profitable.
. If the current surge in the profitability of renewable energy sources ends, however, the corporations will go back to fossil fuels just as quickly. Instead, the government must supply the carrot and the stick here; to make a lasting solution, government regulations and tax exemptions must make environmentally friendly solutions the most profitable choice for corporations.
. Our market will always follow what is most profitable. Right now, the most profitable thing is renewable energy.
. “Turning to renewables for new power generation is not simply an environmentally conscious decision, it is now—overwhelmingly—a smart economic one,” said Adnan Z. Amin, director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), in a statement to Business Insider.
. Corporations are the most effective way of reducing climate change; they are the biggest contributor. According to the Carbon Majors Report, since 1988, at least 70 percent of greenhouse gases have been from 100 large corporations. The best option to control corporations is to control what is most profitable.
. This is very possible. Many of the current democratic presidential candidates support a policy called carbon taxing or pricing, along with public industry to influence the market, and other methods of making energy efficient methods the most profitable. This hard power curbs greenhouse gas emissions better than the public’s soft power over these corporations.
. We can’t control corporations. We can ask them nicely, we can demand that they change, but they aren’t obligated. What has hard power is money, and the government can control money. We can push corporations this way and that for a little while, but the only long term solution is to use the power the public has: to influence the government instead.
Government should lead in protecting the environment
