I recently had lunch with Mary Wenzel, a senior vice president at Wells Fargo who directs the bank’s environmental projects. The bank’s efforts are laudable: it intends to finance business opportunities that protect the environment to the tune of $30bn by 2020, it’s making its offices more efficient, it’s a big-time supporter of a nonprofit called Grid Alternatives that delivers solar power to low-income people, and so on.
But when I asked Mary whether Wells Fargo has declared itself to be in favor of a carbon tax or a cap on carbon dioxide emissions, she told me that, no, that’s a step the bank has not yet been willing to take.
In that regard, Wells Fargo is typical of most big companies in the US. None of the big Wall Street banks – Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase or Citi – has taken a strong political position on the climate issue, as best as I can tell. And although a dozen or so big companies, including an oil company (Shell), utilities (NRG Energy, Duke Energy) and GE joined together back in 2008 to form the U.S. Climate Action Partnership to call for regulation of greenhouse gases, their efforts have gone dormant.
With the exception of the Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy’s Climate Declaration (weakly-worded as it is), America’s corporate leaders have largely been missing in action when it comes to the climate issue.
I thought about all that when I heard today that Patagonia, the outdoor clothing company, is closing its New York stores Sunday until 3pm so that its employees can join the People’s Climate March. CEO Rose Marcario will join the march. Patagonia has also printed a full-page ad about the march in The New York Times.
In a blog post, Marcario writes about her great-grandfather, an immigrant laborer who with others worked to build on the city’s streets because “they wanted to create a better future for their children and grandchildren”. That’s what this march is about, she writes:
It is the work of this generation to make clear we reject the status quo – a race toward the destruction of our planet and the wild places we play in and love. We cannot sit idly by while large special interests destroy the planet for profit without regard for our children and grandchildren.
We have to keep the pressure on. That means being loud and visible in the streets, in town halls and our capitals, and most important, in our elections – voting for candidates who understand we are facing a climate crisis.
Meanwhile, Patagonia has launched a crowdsourced art campaign called Vote the Environment that is designed to inspire voters – especially young people – to support candidates who will act on behalf of the future and the climate in the upcoming midterm election.
Now I understand that Patagonia is a private company, and a relatively small one, that markets itself to consumers who love the outdoors. It’s a low-risk proposition for Patagonia and Marcario to join a climate march. Cynics will suspect that Patagonia is inviting marchers to gather in its Central Park West store for coffee and bagels on Sunday morning in the hope that they will come back later to buy its pricey gear.
But even acknowledging that Patagonia is sui generis, I’m struck by the vast distance between Patagonia (and a handful of other forward-thinking companies) and mainstream corporate America. Imagine the CEOs of big banks, GE or Walmart marching for climate action. It’s inconceivable.
What is conceivable – and what’s fair – is to ask those CEOs to follow the lead of business leaders such as Marcario and the Risky Business trio of Hank Paulsen, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer by engaging, in a serious way, in the climate debate.
That means putting climate regulation at the top of their companies’ Washington agendas, and refusing to support political candidates who don’t have a plan to deal with the climate crisis. If not now, when?
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