focused their attention on the private sector—
treating companies not just as entities to regulate
but also as core partners. We “need to accelerate
our transition” off fossil fuels, says Brian Deese,
director of President Biden’s National Economic
Council. “And that... will only happen if the Amer-
ican private sector, including the incumbent en-
ergy producers in the U.S., utilities and otherwise,
are an inextricable part of that process.”
For some, the emergence of the private sector as
a key ally in the efforts to tackle climate change is
an indication of the power of capitalism to tackle
societal challenges; for others it’s a sign of capital-
ism’s corruption of public institutions. In the three
decades since the climate crisis became part of the
global agenda, scientists, activists, and politicians
have largely assumed that government would need
to dictate the terms of the transition. But around
the world, legislative attempts to tackle climate
change have repeatedly failed. Meanwhile, inves-
tors and corporate executives have become more
aware of the threat climate change poses to their
business and open to working to address its causes.
Those developments have laid the foundation for a
new approach to climate action: government and
nonprofits partnering with the private sector to do
more—a new structure that carries both enormous
opportunity and enormous risk.
Just 100 global companies were responsible
for 71% of the world’s greenhouse- gas emissions
over the past three decades, according to data from
CDP, a nonprofit that tracks climate disclosure, and
pushing the private sector to step up is already
showing dividends. Last fall, more than 1,000
companies collectively worth some $23 trillion set
emission- reduction goals that line up with the Paris
Agreement. “We are in the early stages of a sustain-
ability revolution that has the magnitude and scale
of the Industrial Revolution,” says Al Gore, the for-
mer U.S. Vice President, who won the Nobel Peace
Prize for his work on climate change. “In every sec-
tor of the economy, companies are competing vig-
orously to eliminate unnecessary waste to become
radically more energy efficient, and focus on the
sharp reduction of their emissions.”
Despite that momentum, risks abound. Compa-
nies have an incentive to make big commitments,
but they need a credible system to set the rules of
the road and ensure that those pledges can be scru-
tinized. Even then, corporate progress is unlikely
to add up to enough without clear policy that in-
centivizes good behavior and punishes bad behav-
ior. “To catalyze business, we need governments
to lead and set strong policies,” says Lisa Jackson,
vice president of environment, policy, and social
initiatives at Apple and a former head of the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency. “That’s just
what the science says.”
ILLUSTRATION BY SHOUT FOR TIME