We have a saying in my field: Don’t take business advice from people who think the business shouldn’t exist. Obvious? Tautological, even? Don’t be so sure. As someone in the world of corporate engagement, talking to the world’s largest companies on behalf of investors, you wouldn’t believe how often I find myself confronting corporate policies that were made to placate activists who really don’t want the company to exist.
Take for example “net zero”—those activist demands that commit the company to bringing carbon emissions to zero by a certain timeline. How realistic is it for an energy company to commit itself to zero carbon emissions when its core business is … energy? There’s a reason countless companies we have engaged with have explicitly stepped away from net zero targets—it’s called physics.
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