The world is once again being urged by the United Nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to avert the worst consequences of climate breakdown.
This time, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is calling for global greenhouse gas emissions to fall by 18% by 2030, compared with 2025 levels. This reduction is part of a pathway intended to limit the extent of global warming overshoot and give humanity a chance to return to the 1.5°C threshold by the end of the century. Under this scenario, global temperatures would peak at approximately 1.7–1.8°C above preindustrial levels around mid-century before declining.
The report also criticizes governments for failing to take the necessary action and calls for much deeper emissions reductions. Source: The Guardian, October 21, 2026
Indeed, governments have formally accepted responsibility for addressing climate change. In 2015, 195 parties adopted the Paris Agreement, committing to hold the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C.
The scientific pathway to achieving the 1.5°C goal was outlined in a 2018 report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). According to the report, global net CO₂ emissions needed to decline by approximately 45% below 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero around 2050.
Source: IPCC, Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C
Clearly, the world has not made sufficient progress. Berkeley Earth estimates that the global average temperature in 2025 was approximately 1.44°C above the 1850–1900 average. Although a single year’s temperature does not establish that the long-term 1.5°C threshold has been crossed, the trend is alarming.
Source: Berkeley Earth, Global Temperature Report for 2025
But what about corporations? What responsibility do they bear for the gap between climate commitments and actual progress?
Corporate power extends beyond the marketplace
Corporations wield considerable economic power globally. Of the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 67% are corporations. Source: Global Economic Entities
Given their enormous economic power—and the political influence that accompanies it—corporations must be held accountable as essential participants in addressing climate breakdown. Governments cannot succeed without their cooperation. However, cooperation should not mean allowing corporations to shape climate policies primarily around their own economic interests.
In the United States, for example, business interests spend billions of dollars on election-related activities and lobbying government officials to secure favorable policy outcomes.
Source: OpenSecrets, Election Spending by Sector
Source: OpenSecrets, Federal Lobbying Set New Record in 2024
These activities help businesses protect and expand their economic and political influence. Consequently, corporate accountability must extend beyond what companies do within their own operations. It must also address how they use their political power to shape public policy.
Are CEOs and their companies taking climate breakdown seriously? And can their public sustainability commitments serve as a meaningful measure of corporate responsibility?
Thousands of corporations have publicly committed to environmental protection, including through participation in the UN Global Compact and initiatives aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Many major corporations also advertise their intentions to achieve net-zero emissions by approximately 2050.
The 2025 UN Global Compact–Accenture CEO study reported that 88% of surveyed CEOs believed the business case for sustainability had strengthened over the previous five years, while 99% planned to maintain or increase their sustainability commitments.
Source: 2025 UN Global Compact–Accenture CEO Study
These findings sound encouraging. However, public commitments and actual corporate behavior do not always tell the same story.
When corporate commitments conflict with corporate political activity
Annual PwC surveys of global CEOs suggest that environmental and nature-related concerns have not consistently ranked among their highest business priorities. Instead, corporate strategies continue to emphasize conventional business metrics, such as customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and automation, alongside concerns about cybersecurity and macroeconomic volatility. Source: PwC, 25th Annual Global CEO Survey, 2022
More troubling, corporations and their industry associations have actively sought to weaken climate regulations and slow the transition to clean energy, both nationally and internationally.
In the United States, for example, extensive corporate lobbying helped limit the scope of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better legislative proposal, which included significant investments in renewable energy and other climate-related initiatives.
Source: The Washington Post, August 31, 2021
Opposition came from a broad cross-section of American industries. Among the organizations involved were the American Gas Association, American Petroleum Institute, Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers, National Mining Association, National Restaurant Association, PhRMA, and the US Chamber of Commerce.
Source: Center for American Progress Action, Build Back Better: Support and Opposition
This contradiction is not confined to the United States.
The United Nations’ annual climate summit, known as COP (Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), provides the principal international forum for governments to negotiate climate policies, assess progress in reducing emissions, and strengthen their commitments.
Source: NOAA, Understanding COP
These negotiations take place under the framework of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 2015 Paris Agreement. Yet the growing presence of corporate representatives and lobbyists at these summits has raised serious questions about whose interests are being represented and whose voices carry the greatest influence.
Fossil fuel companies have been particularly visible and controversial.
Source: The Guardian, Fossil Fuel Lobbyists at COP
But they are not alone. Industries including mining, agribusiness, automobiles, food and beverage, and banking have also sought to influence climate discussions. Cross-sector business associations, such as the US Chamber of Commerce, have joined them.
This growing corporate presence has prompted civil society organizations to call for restrictions on corporate participation and influence in COP negotiations.
Watch: Civil Society Concerns About Corporate Influence at COP
But would excluding corporations from these discussions solve the problem?
Clearly, businesses must be involved in developing and implementing solutions. They control substantial financial resources, technologies, production systems, and supply chains that are essential to the transition toward a more sustainable economy.
The real issue is not whether corporations should participate, but whether their participation contributes to the public interest or allows private economic interests to undermine the policies needed to protect the climate and nature.
The problem of corporate greenwashing
Part of the answer lies in examining the extent to which corporate CEOs and their companies take climate change and environmental protection seriously.
Despite growing public commitments to sustainability, corporate priorities and political activities often suggest that environmental protection remains secondary to conventional business objectives.
Equally concerning is the prevalence of corporate greenwashing.
According to InfluenceMap, an analysis of 293 companies from the Forbes 2000 list found that 58% had net-zero or similar climate commitments that were at odds with their engagement in climate policymaking. In other words, many companies were publicly committing to climate action while failing to support the policies necessary to achieve it.
Source: InfluenceMap, The State of Net-Zero Greenwash
This contradiction raises a fundamental question: What value do corporate net-zero commitments have if companies simultaneously lobby against the regulations and policies needed to achieve them?
Government action requires corporate accountability
Even if COP negotiations were less influenced by corporate lobbying and produced policies consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement, those policies would still need to be translated into action by national governments.
And here lies the central problem.
As the US example illustrates, corporate political contributions, lobbying, and industry pressure can weaken, delay, or even prevent government action. Without addressing these sources of political influence, even ambitious international climate agreements may remain largely unfulfilled.
Corporate responsibility, therefore, cannot be measured solely by sustainability reports, emissions targets, or public commitments. It must also be measured by whether corporations support or undermine the public policies necessary to address climate change.
Ultimately, we cannot rely on voluntary corporate commitments while allowing companies to use their political power to obstruct meaningful climate action. Accountability requires transparency, enforceable rules, and consequences when corporate behavior conflicts with the public interest.
The question is not whether corporations can afford to take climate change seriously. It is whether governments and society are prepared to hold them accountable when their actions contradict their commitments.
In my next posts, I will explore how we might overcome a corporate mindset that discounts the value of nature—even though, without nature, business as a human activity cannot exist.