So if Monsanto wants to start an expensive project to build an extremely risky space elevator, all they have to do is make the proper disclosures and they're probably fine.
The companies are leaving trillions on the table right now by not spending their money wisely. The future economy is going to be based around climate change cleanup at the rate we're going right now and most companies are trying to lose customers by accelerating global climate change to make their customers pay more money to relocate, fix environmental issues, instead of buying their products.
Our society is going to be so financially strained in the future and it is a Direct result of the megacorps not spending their money in sustainable, responsible ways.
They should all be facing constant lawsuits from their stockholders for not doing better to protect the environment. Since their high-payed lawyers are presumably the ones that lobbied congress in the first place to make sure environmental care was not going to be part of taxes, and in fact that they should pay nearly no taxes at all, suggests to me that they think that the public good is best taken care of by corporations. It seems the only logical conclusion of this line of thinking: if the corps don't want to pay big taxes because they think it is a waste of money, then they have to be in charge of clean air for us, bu they don't actually care about that and so we're all going to suffer and pay less for their products because we have to pay more to fix the air.
I just don't get it.
Edit: For example, how many people in North Carolina will be buying new consumer electronics this Christmas? Will it be fewer than normal, because they have to spend a lot of their own money cleaning up from a storm that was exasperating via climate change and had to deal with a government that made planning for climate change illegal? I think so. I think fewer people there will buy iPhones this winter and fewer people there will buy TVs are even new fancy cars too. But really why are these corporations losing these sales already? It's because an area hit by a climate-change-fueled storm was unprepared by not taxing companies correctly and by the corporations themselves trying not to be taxed; so we end up with the population themselves trying to fix the errors of their government and this process takes expected money out of the corporation's hands.
But the storms will come, and come, and come, and there will be fewer opportunities to make money from people affected by climate change.
I. just. don't. get. it.
Do you own any stocks? Even holding a broad exchange fund makes you a stockholder. Have you led the charge in any lawsuits or is this just lip service outrage?
I was responding to a comment, sorry if this message got lost. Companies who do not spend their money according to stockholder wishes get sued, correct? For misuse of funds?
My post was attempting to explain that I consider it a gross misuse of corporate funds to not spend excess cash-on-hand on projects to reduce the effects of climate change on humanity. To me, it is clear that a corporation wishing to maximize profit must address climate change or risk being sued for misuse of their funds.
> Do you own any stocks? Even holding a broad exchange fund makes you a stockholder.
No I do not own any stocks.
> Have you led the charge in any lawsuits or is this just lip service outrage?
There's no need to be rude. I stand by my words. I have no resources or funds or stocks to give me the standing to approach this topic with a corporation or lawyers. I just get by every month. There's no need to insult my opinions and call my description and opinions 'lip service'. I'm being serious, no need to belittle me.
No, they get sued for malfeasance: taking investments and failing to return a profit.
It doesn't matter what stockholders want, the purpose of buying stocks is to make a return, and if a company fails to prioritize profit above all else, then they have broken the implicit or explicit contract with their shareholders: investment now in return for dividends later.
I agree future historians will judge our governments and our megacorps, the current keepers of humanity's resources, very harshly. However, many of those at the ships' helms are insulated from their own externalities, the consequences of their decisions. And most of the shares are held by others who are similarly insulated, or abstracted away through 401ks and mutual funds.
The core of the problem is that our entire system of resource allocation is based on who can make the most money with them and construct the tallest walls around them, not who uses them to better the most lives.
For every million lives destroyed by climate change, there is a million more that doesn't care about anything beyond their family, their friends, and their iPhone. A warming planet will make much of Siberia arable, for example.
I think the answer to your questions begins with another question: what would make a CEO not use lobbying to resist taxing externalities of his company? What about a board of directors? A shareholder? An "average voter?"
When we can answer those questions, we can begin to make progress.
It's entirely possible that more consumer electronics and home appliances will be purchased in North Carolina in Q4 this year, because so many were damaged in the flooding and will be repurchased out of necessity, coupled with some flood insurance money.
Example of head tax: http://www.astoria.or.us/Assets/dept_1/pm/pdf/occupational%2...
There was recently a big fight over a head tax Seattle tried to impose.
So let's say you're an influential shareholder at a big company, this company has been successful because it did a few things well, and there are a bunch of other shareholders with their own agendas.
Meanwhile you are a human being just like any other so fundamentally you're making decisions about what you're going to do with your own life, which is the only thing you really control.
Now, you're concerned about climate change. Does it really make sense to try to lasso this big company into doing something about climate change, if it has no experience in that field, and no one there joined in order to work on climate change?
More likely you would put some of your own (presumably considerable) resources into some other project that's focused on climate change. Because that's going to have a better chance of success than trying to sequester resources away from BigCorp for something that BigCorp fundamentally isn't committed to.
The point is you are an investor and it just doesn't make sense to invest resources into X with the goal of doing Y's job. You would invest in Y instead. Put another way if you own an all-star basketball team and you want to win an ice hockey championship you don't tell them to start playing hockey on the weekends, you use the money they made to go buy a hockey team.
Yes, the number of hurricanes could increase. But it might double, over the next century.
That's bad, but in the vast scheme of things, it isn't that bad.
No scientist believes in something like day after tomorrow, or anything coming close to what you are implying is going to happen.
It will be more like trillions of dollars in damages, over the next century. Not some world changing event.
We've been dealing with hurricanes for a while now, and if they double, it isn't going to cause the entire economy to stop.
If you want some recent example, look at Puerto Rico. ~5K people died in the recent hurricane. This is bad. But if it happened twice as often, would the world coming grinding to a halt? No. The Earth would keep spinning, people would continue to go to work every day, and watch TV.
If you want to learn from the experts on the actual scale of damage and timeline, go read what the IPCC have to say on the matter. They are the official authority on the matter. And they do not agree with the idea of world ending consequences, like people imply all the time.
Yes, lots of people will die especially in places like Bangladesh. Yes this is terrible, especially when it should have been prevented.
No, this isn’t a Hollywood movie where the species is about to disappear.