A little over a year ago, Syracuse University flew me all the way from Colorado to give a talk on climate change, and not a single grad student showed up. I asked my host professor why. He told me that the students think capitalism is bankrupt. They don’t want to hear from a corporation on climate. Business has nothing credible to offer them, he said. The students felt that absent a clear and nontoken effort to solve the two crushing problems of our time — climate and equity — business wasn’t relevant anymore.
A skier threads his way through patches of dry ground at Squaw Valley Ski Resort, March 21, 2015, in Olympic Valley, California. Many Tahoe-area ski resorts closed due to low snowfall during California’s historic drought.
(Photo: Max Whittaker/Getty Images)
The Climate-Equity Connection
Two trends will force business into action.
May 13, 2021
· Long read
Summary.
Auden Schendler considers himself and the business he works for, Aspen Skiing Company, to be good corporate citizens concerned about and acting on climate change. But even he acknowledges that companies (including his own) will be faced with big challenges when it comes to treating climate as a core stakeholder, particularly as political movements increasingly attempt to build a broad climate-equity coalition. Whether companies want to acknowledge these challenges in corporate strategy or not, he warns, they are real — and businesses ignore them at their peril.