Corporate Knights Summer 2023

Not so natural gas I was troubled to see Corporate Knights running sponsored content by Enbridge Gas to promote “renewable natural gas” (RNG) as a “carbon negative… clean energy supply, which reduces emissions.” This is exactly the kind of greenwashing that CK regularly calls out in its reporting. Enbridge is confusing the public and consumers about the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels while manipulating readers into thinking that Enbridge is a responsible climate leader. RNG may have a small role to play in capturing methane to marginally reduce emissions in the medium term. But it’s difficult to take North America’s largest fossil fuel pipeline company’s supposed commitment to climate action seriously when Enbridge is actively trying to lock customers across the continent into using oil and gas…

I have had a lot of jobs in my life, from putting up a shingle as a seven-year-old private detective for hire, to batboy, paperboy, Fairmount bagel bagger, centrefielder for Yugoslavia and rickshaw runner in Toronto – but head of Corporate Knights takes the cake. For the past two decades, we have helped to fan what was once considered the quaint idea of stakeholder capitalism (where companies serve us instead of the other way around) into a full-blown social movement. Today, this sustainable brand of business is the main competitive advantage for many of the world’s leading corporations – as evidenced by the 18-year track record of financial outperformance by Canada’s Best 50 Corporate Citizens and our Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations Index. Our formula has been a well-measured recipe…

In Madagascar, where children are skipping school to dig into bone-dry river beds, and Argentina, where corn husks come up hollow. Across the parched Mediterranean, subject to another blistering heat wave in April, and in massive reservoirs in the United States, where dangerously low water levels threaten power generation. “Water is a human right,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres at the UN’s first water conference in 46 years, held in New York in March. “But water is in deep trouble. We are draining humanity’s lifeblood through vampiric overconsumption and unsustainable use, and evaporating it through global heating.” Nearly three out of every four natural disasters on this planet are linked to water, and one in four of us live without safely managed water services or clean drinking water, the…

When a problem is likely to be resolved at some point in the future with no lasting harm, they say it will all come out in the wash. Back in 1986, an ecologist on a research trip to Fiji reportedly coined the term “greenwashing” in an essay critiquing a beachfront resort’s towel reuse policy. Four decades later, greenwashed marketing claims, did not, it turns out, come out in the wash. They’ve permeated nearly every product category, from “carbon neutral” burgers and disposable cola bottles made with “plastic from the sea” to net-zero oil companies and ESG labels slapped on trillions of dollars in poorly regulated investment funds. But the Wild West era may be coming to an end. As The Atlantic put it in March, “The world is finally cracking…

Some insurance companies have started to decline coverage for certain new fossil fuel projects, untangling themselves from the risks that come with propping up coal, oil and gas. So climate activists were surprised and disappointed when three large reinsurance companies backed out of the United Nations’ Net-Zero Insurance Alliance (NZIA) within just three weeks of each other this spring. Munich Re, Zurich Insurance Group and Hannover Re each announced they were quitting NZIA. In late March, Munich Re said that it was leaving the alliance because of antitrust concerns but that it was still committed to decarbonization. Zurich followed days later. Hannover Re didn’t give any reasons for its decision but said it is also still committed to its climate targets. Climate campaigners fear that the antitrust risks cited by…

ChatGPT did not write this. But artificial intelligence will continue to have a profound impact on the job market over the next five years. That’s one of the takeaways from a new report from the World Economic Forum (WEF) that maps out the future of employment. The report says that by 2027, nearly one-quarter of the labour market will experience disruption – signalling a significant shift as jobs are lost and created. The key drivers of this change are the technology, environmental and economic sectors. There’s going to be a net loss of 14 million jobs, or about 2% of current employment, according to the WEF. This is the fourth edition of the Future of Jobs Report, which poses questions to 803 companies that collectively employ more than 11.3 million…