forbes | How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain?
Human activities are behind the extinction crisis. Commercial agriculture, timber extraction, and infrastructure development are causing habitat loss and our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change.
Public corporations are responding to consumer demand and pressure
from Wall Street. Professors Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg
published Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations last fall, arguing that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the world’s resources in ever more creative ways.
“Our book shows how large corporations are able to continue
engaging in increasingly environmentally exploitative behaviour by
obscuring the link between endless economic growth and worsening
environmental destruction,” they wrote.
Yale sociologist Justin Farrell studied
20 years of corporate funding and found that “corporations have used
their wealth to amplify contrarian views [of climate change] and create
an impression of greater scientific uncertainty than actually exists.”
Corporate capitalism is committed to the relentless pursuit of growth, even if it ravages the planet and threatens human health.
We need to build a new system: one that will balance economic growth with sustainability and human flourishing.
A new generation of companies are showing the way forward.
They’re infusing capitalism with fresh ideas, specifically in regards to
employee ownership and agile management.
