Mounting public concern about climate change is a rich marketing opportunity. But it’s also a challenge, because the public is growing inured to the most spurious green claims and demanding more credibility and accountability from companies. As a result, greenwashing is becoming both more common and harder to spot.
US president Joe Biden is under pressure to declare a national climate emergency and free up federal resources to address the global temperature rise. The move would put the US in the company of 18 other nations, and the EU, that have made the dire declaration.
As the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gases, the US bares outsized responsibility for the world’s climate changing for the worse. Researchers have now put a value to some of those damages: $1.9 trillion.
Fast-fashion giant H&M showed customers environmental scorecards for its clothing that were misleading and, in many cases, outright deceptive, a Quartz investigation has found.
The Higg Index, one of the fashion industry’s most well-known sustainability rating systems, came under sustained criticism this month. A New York Times article called out the index as too favorable to synthetic materials made from fossil fuels; the Intercept dug into the metric’s controversial ties to fast fashion; and the Norway Consumer Authority banned its use (link in Norwegian) in marketing to consumers.
Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the US, is no longer law of the land. With a decision published this morning, the majority of Supreme Court judges overturned the precedent.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine triggered an unprecedented exodus of companies out of Russia.
Would you rather have this?
The World Economic Forum’s 2022 annual meeting in Davos has begun, which means the elite of the international business world are gathering in Switzerland.
Down a narrow alley in Edinburgh, Scotland, there is a tiny library in an old, stone building. The single room houses about 4,000 books, most of them purchased second-hand, and all aiming to chronicle the history of business and finance. Its founder, Russell Napier, calls it the Library of Mistakes.
A growing field of academia is trying to suss out how bullshit adversely affects the workplace, and if there’s anything to be done about it.
New lines of electric trucks and SUVs are hitting the roads. Automakers are marketing vehicles like Tesla’s Cybertruck, Ford’s F-150 Lightning, Rivian’s R1T pickup truck, and GMC’s Hummer EV to customers who prefer driving big vehicles, no matter their fuel efficiency. These new EVs promise drivers the same heavy-duty performance as a combustion engine without burning a drop of oil, with marketing materials that boast of their horsepower, torque, and “watts to freedom” acceleration.
Two years into the covid-19 pandemic, vaccines are essentially a luxury good available only to the world’s richer citizens.That’s because the poorest countries have been left behind in the efforts to vaccinate the world against covid-19. Governments of rich countries funded the development and testing of vaccines, coordinated manufacturing, and protected the intellectual property of drugmakers—thereby ensuring that their citizens would get the vaccines first, and that their economies could reopen faster.
Most major banks in the US and Europe have set long-term goals to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from their lending portfolios. Yet most remain loath to sever ties with fossil fuel companies. That’s because they constitute a big share of banks’ business and because many bank executives believe that they have a financial and moral stake in helping high-emitting companies to transition to cleaner ways of doing business. The fossil fuel industry accounts for 10% of banking business in G20 countries.
The results are in from the first round of the French presidential election. Incumbent centrist Emmanuel Macron eked ahead of National Front’s Marine Le Pen, but was far from winning the election outright.
Ahead of his Twitter purchase, Elon Musk had been publicly ruminating on changes to the social media platform. Now that he’s buying it, rolling them out should be a breeze.
A month into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world’s richest countries have ventured into a financial world war.
The US Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced yesterday (March 21) that it will require companies to publicly disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and other climate-related financial information.
The recent volley of US sanctions against Russia is part of broad international campaign to force Vladimir Putin to withdraw from Ukraine.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has pushed the plumbing of financial transactions into the spotlight. Sanctions against Russia include a proposal to limit the country’s access to SWIFT, a platform for facilitating money transfers that is integrated into banking systems worldwide.
Orchids were once only known as the highlight of posh plant shows and grand hotel lobbies. Increasingly, however, the stereotypically finicky, humidity-loving flowers have become an affordable grocery-store commodity and a staple of middle-class households in the US.
