Corporate influence in climate policymaking

FRANCISCO GARCÍA GIBSON

Londres

Taller; Ideas Incubator workshop; 2022

LSE Government

Most countries are not enacting climate change mitigation policies in time. In the United States and many other countries this is in large part due to emission-intensive businesses using money to influence policymaking, obstructing climate policies that may cause them economic losses (Cory et al. 2021). Recently, however, many businesses—in areas such as food and finance—are becoming increasingly aware that climate change poses an even more serious threat to their bottom line. For example, in a world with more frequent droughts and decreasing per capita incomes, Unilever will find it harder to buy cocoa and sell cocoa products. Consequently, some businesses are beginning to use their money to influence policymakers into enacting timely climate policy. Now, democratic theory has long questioned the unequal influence of money in political decisions. A system where a person’s political influence is significantly determined by their wealth, and where wealth is largely unequally distributed, is instrumentally and intrinsically undesirable. Does this imply that businesses should abstain from using their additional political power to push for timely climate policy? In this paper I argue that businesses often should not abstain from using their influence in this way.