Net zero: Do corporate pledges make any difference?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 27 October 2021
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Around one fifth of the world’s 2000 largest public firms have committed to net zero targets in the coming years. Most are pledging to something called climate neutrality by a given date. But do these pledges actually make any difference in the flight against climate change? We here both sides of the argument with climate futurist Alex Steffen based in California, and Simon Glynn, the co-lead on Climate and Sustainability, at the UK management consultants, Oliver Wyman.
(Image: Cooling towers at a coal fueled power station. Credit: Getty Images).
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:06.3 | Today, ahead of the UN Climate Summit, we're assessing the risk of corporate greenwashing. |
| 0:11.4 | What do companies mean when they pledge to become net zero? |
| 0:15.9 | It is quite possible to commit to net zero in a way that really doesn't add much value, that relies too much on |
| 0:23.6 | future actions, and even that doesn't count everything. So isn't in fact zero in the end. |
| 0:29.4 | But what can? What should companies be doing then? It shows the goal and the commitment as a way of |
| 0:35.0 | getting things to happen. You know, if these targets were not set, then technologies wouldn't be pursued |
| 0:39.4 | and we wouldn't be doing a whole lot of things we are doing. |
| 0:42.1 | We're doing it because we set these targets. |
| 0:44.3 | The dream, or is it a myth of carbon neutrality, |
| 0:47.3 | we crunch the numbers in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:53.1 | It's estimated a fifth of the world's 2,000 largest public firms have now committed to net zero targets in the coming years. |
| 1:02.4 | Visa, BP, Shell, Amazon, the list just keeps getting longer. |
| 1:07.3 | Today we are announcing the climate pledge. The climate pledge is to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement 10 years early. Amazon becomes the first signatory to the climate pledge. We want to use our scale and our scope to lead the way. |
| 1:26.7 | To meet the most ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement, change needs to happen faster. |
| 1:34.8 | Shell is becoming an energy business for the future, and it's playing its part to help drive |
| 1:39.7 | that change. |
| 1:41.0 | That's why Microsoft is committing to become carbon negative by 2030, meaning that we'll |
| 1:46.6 | reduce our emissions by half and remove from the atmosphere more carbon than we emit. |
| 1:51.3 | PepsiCo is doubling down on its climate priorities pledging to drastically cut its greenhouse gas |
| 1:56.5 | emissions. This move comes as more and more consumers. |
| 1:59.6 | And those are just some of the most are pledging to |
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