Providing information empowering markets to foster a better world. Corporate Knights produces editorial at the intersection of business and society, with news and analysis about sustainability and corporate sustainability rankings
The world is inching ever closer to 2050, the target date set in Paris in 2015 for countries to reduce their emissions to net-zero. While some still believe that goal is attainable, cutting carbon may be more gradual than many might expect. That’s especially true today as three new forces – inflation, deglobalization and changes in clean tech investments – are impacting the energy transition in new ways. That’s according to John Cook, senior vice president, portfolio manager and co-lead of the Mackenzie Greenchip Team, which runs the $2.7 billion Mackenzie Greenchip Global Environmental All Cap Fund. While we’re only at the start of the energy transition, with the International Energy Agency saying that US$4.5 trillion must be invested annually in clean energy by 2030. Now’s the time for investors…
Right on Just read Scott Gilmore’s inspiring “The Right Thing to Do,” posted to a couple of B.C. enviro listservs, and wanted to say thanks. Such good leadership on your part. This long-time climate activist has long believed that there can be no mitigation success without bipartisan, all-on-the-same-page cooperation – cooperation in understanding the climate dangers together and working on possible solutions together. —Bill Henderson, Gibsons, B.C. Putting the conserve back in conservative Love how you’ve framed this: there’s nothing ideological about the clear need to conserve and carefully steward the gifts nature has given us. I also think there are probably lots of conservatives who believe this but are keeping quiet about the issue because it’s not currently on-message for their party. Kudos to Corporate Knights for seeing that…
We all hold on to shibboleths – long-standing beliefs accepted by a particular group of people that are often no longer true. Like many in the environmental movement, I long thought of political conservatives as a nemesis for the environment. I came by this association honestly: from my grandfather, who co-founded the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, the predecessor to the left-leaning NDP, to my mother, who once told me that if we elected the Progressive Conservatives in the 1988 federal election, they would chop down all our trees. Later, however, after I co-founded Corporate Knights magazine and launched a survey, asking leading environmentalists who had been the greenest Canadian prime minister and U.S. president in history, I was surprised that on both counts, conservative leaders won the green star: Brian Mulroney…
Known for its intricate canals, gabled houses and progressive social policies, Amsterdam has been sharpening its knives when it comes to its food. An increasingly assertive push to get its residents to shift to a plant-based diet has made the Dutch capital the latest big city – and first capital in the European Union – to back the citizen-ledPlant Based Treaty. It’s part of a growing wave of cities around the world that have been signalling an understanding that food can’t be ignored when it comes to dealing with the climate crisis. (Methane emissions from livestock in particular are considered a major contributor to climate change.) The Plant Based Treaty now has 26 municipalities pledging to take the matter seriously. The treaty is non-binding, but as the Scottish capital Edinburgh…
A new report renders a damning portrait of Canada’s Big Five banks on their path to net-zero emissions by 2050. Instead of shifting toward net-zero, the banks have moved backwards, raising their financing of the fossil fuel industry with only modest increases to low-carbon energy. The banks racked up $275 billion in loans and bond and equity underwriting to fossil fuel companies between 2020 and 2022, which represents 16.9% of their total financing activity of $1.6 trillion, states the report by InfluenceMap, a global corporate research think tank based in London. Instead of moving to reduce their financing of oil and gas, Canada’s financial heavyweights increased their fossil fuel involvement to an average of 18.4% of total financing in 2022, up from 15.5% in 2020. By contrast, European and U.S.…
New York City architect Jared Della Valle began his career buying and redesigning existing buildings. In 2002, he invited three other architects to cooperate on a project to transform five vacant lots in Brooklyn into 10 attractive low-cost homes – demonstrating his profession’s power to lead social change. After two decades of designing both millionaires’ penthouses and socially conscious housing projects, Della Valle’s firm, Alloy Development, is turning heads again, with a gleaming tower in downtown Brooklyn called 505 State Street: New York’s first all-electric skyscraper. The 44-storey building with 440 market-rate residences is a three-sided landmark (like the famous Flatiron Building in nearby Manhattan) amid a full city block that Alloy is redeveloping. The super-efficient, fossil-fuel-free tower has integrated improved insulation and triple-glazed windows, as well as residential heat…
