“Okay. What Do You Want Me to Do About It?” – A Highly Influential Corporate Executive With Ties to The Business Community and Federal Government
To the thousands of people rallying outside the skyscraper where my multinational corporation is headquartered: thanks for the reminder about these worsening environmental catastrophes. You’ve really opened my eyes to the disastrous, irreversible consequences that my insatiable lust for personal gain is enabling. I mean, why else would you be holding a papier-mâché effigy of me with dollar signs over my eyes and money bags in my fists? But what do you want me to do? Employ my power, obscene wealth, and influence in both the private and public sectors to remake society from the top down? Surely, you jest.
Do the actions of one individual really matter? As a former colleague of several sitting members of Congress in both major parties, I certainly couldn’t discuss climate action with them, working in concert with the business world to enact our ideas. Alternative energy wouldn’t be a wise investment, even if doing so might very well persuade my peers to do the same, thus making it profitable over a fairly short period of time. We can’t include an allotment in the annual federal budget for renewable energy infrastructure! How are we going to pay for it? By taxing the rich in proportion to their incomes and holdings, and reducing our military budget by less than five percent? What do you think that will accomplish, aside from creating millions of good-paying jobs, reducing our greenhouse gas emissions significantly, and aiding and quickening the transition from fossil fuels to renewables? Be reasonable!
Next, you’ll tell me that climate justice is inextricably linked to racial justice, the protection of democracy, and fundamental human rights. Do you think capitalism, a system that allows people like me to even exist, is the problem? I know more than one motion passed by the elected officials I’ve backed has contributed to this inaction, but what do you want? To convince moderate Republicans to get on board with action against the greatest existential threat in the history of humanity? Environmental policy has never been a bipartisan issue; even if Richard Nixon did create the E.P.A. and George H.W. Bush advocated proactive action on the climate crisis in the late eighties that might have nipped it in the bud. Stop confronting me with the checkered, self-serving history of my involvement in world affairs and begging me to atone for them by doing the right thing now before I die. I can’t take my wealth with me, of course, but I’ll die trying!
I can’t convene a meeting of our board to reassess our activities in the Amazon Rainforest, determining if our intrusion onto Indigenous Peoples’s habitats is a violation of land sovereignty. I can’t refuse to enter any partnership or contract with companies that are literally setting fire to the lungs of the planet. I can’t even order a firm-wide audit of our annual carbon emissions with the goal of reducing them to zero by 2030, the year the IPCC has given as a deadline to get our act together on all this. My limited power as head of this Fortune 100 conglomerate only allows me to do so much.
I appreciate you coming here and bringing all of this to my attention. Again. Let’s hold out hope that this will all work out the way it’s supposed to. A little faith never hurt anyone. Except, of course, that of the Evangelical Christian-led PACs partially bankrolled by me to essentially install a fascist theocracy. Now, if you’ll excuse me, there are representatives here from the U.N. and Amnesty International. They want to discuss funding humanitarian efforts to relocate people in island nations displaced by coastal flooding and relief efforts for domestic wildfire victims. I can’t imagine why they’d ask me for a handout. What do they think I am, a billionaire?