How to keep fossil fuels in the ground, from the boardroom

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2023

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Brynn O’Brien not only reads corporate climate plans, she crunches the numbers. When they don’t add up, she calls her friends who manage trillions of dollars in assets and they all ask to speak to the manager. Brynn is the Executive Director of the Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility, a shareholder activist organization that works to ensure that publicly traded companies with net zero goals are conducting their coal mining, electricity generation, and other activities in a way that ensures we hit the 1.5C Paris target. Recently, ACCR has replaced part of a board, brought forward coal plant closures, and filed a lawsuit that’s taking on greenwashing.

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Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to David Stringer and Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week, rights, representations and repercussions.
0:08.0	When it comes to fossil fuel companies and climate change, it often becomes a conversation
0:24.0	about us versus them, the people versus the corporation, planet versus profits.
0:29.5	Look, it's not surprising given the fossil fuel industry's track record on climate action.
0:34.2	But it doesn't have to be that way.
0:36.2	If the owners of those companies, the holders
0:38.5	of capital, use the immense power they have over corporations. Shareholders have so much power
0:45.8	that has been badly under-exploited today. There's just power sitting on the table.
0:51.5	This is Bryn O'Brien, executive director of the Australasian Center for Corporate
0:56.0	Responsibility. Companies are core units of capitalism, and Bryn makes the case that it's possible to harness
1:03.7	the forces of capitalism to be a solution for tackling climate change, rather than continuing to
1:09.6	worsen it.
1:10.9	And Bryn has shown it can be done.
1:13.6	Recently, ACCR convinced the Japanese company Nippon Steel to start investing in new low-carbon
1:19.4	manufacturing.
1:20.9	And it even got the Australian company, BHP, to set a date to retire a coal mine, stopping
1:26.3	roughly 600 million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.
1:31.3	ACCR strategy is to engage with companies.
1:35.3	It starts simply with sitting down with the company and talking it through.
1:39.3	Now, that might sound simplistic.
1:41.3	It's one reason why shareholder engagement sometimes is criticized for being
1:45.2	too conciliatory, even ineffective. But Bryn says that if companies don't change just with dialogue,
	...

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