Corporate Social Responsibility: A Unicorn or an Oxymoron?

Is CSR a unicorn, or a horse with a shell glued to its forehead? Is it a mythical beast that can only be seen by virgins and saves communities from the poverty pollution and problems they face – sometimes also caused by business? Or is CSR a way to dress up an old nag – business – and make everyone believe in the magic, when you just whitewashed horsemeat?

I don’t believe CSR is anything more than a case of the emperor’s new clothes – or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That’s not just because of the over-abundance of ‘sustainability’ and ‘stakeholder-driven’ acronyms and slick new-speak. CSR is in direct conflict with the sole objective of a corporation – generating profits for owners. Companies are actually money-mercenaries – they are sworn to generate profit. Aside from that, corps can do whatever they want. But what if they want to do something that would make – gasp – less money?! That could actually end in a lawsuit with stockholders. Continue reading

Changing the Climate: A Return to Science-Based Decision-Making

Apparently while I was on vacation this summer America officially entered the FUBAR zone. The first half of 2012 has some pretty apocalypt~ish weather trends, with the U.S. breaking thousands of temperature records, half of America declared a disaster area, and massive crop failures across the grain belt guarantee food prices will spike in September. Let’s not forget the hail storms, massive power outages, haboobs, derechos, and other End of Days occurrences of 2012. So when do the aphids and frogs arrive?

Yet Global Warming, Climate Change, or The Sky is Falling, depending on your perspective, has garnered nary a mention in the Presidential election. David Roberts wrote an excellent piece on the current state of affairs regarding climate change, saying “It’s as though the very term is an endangered bird — every time it flitters across a screen somewhere, it’s met with great excitement.” But if we drop the discussion on limiting carbon emissions, we’re all going extinct.

Scientific studies continue to demonstrate a correlation between carbon emissions and a spike in global temperatures and extreme weather events. See the shifting temperature distribution graph and the average temperature chart if you don’t believe me. Yet the cultural conversation in America is so scientifically illiterate and willfully ignorant that it overpowers peer-reviewed research, an international consensus, and the very future of stable human civilizations. Continue reading

Can Corporate Social Responsibility Save the Planet?

My first day of the MBA portion of my joint Environmental Policy and Business Administration degree, our Business Sustainability and Society professor asked students for word associations with ‘Corporate America.’ Here is a wordle of the class crowdsource.

Corporate America: A Culture of Psychopaths? 

I contributed the world psychopath, because what else do you call a ‘person’ who lacks a conscience? Through Citizens United we have declared corporations to be people, but they have no moral compass, no Jiminy Cricket. People need to sleep at night with the choices they’ve made, but corporations rest easy after serving their shareholders and executives. To complicate matters further, it seems that the personality types that excel in financial and corporate leadership exhibit abnormally high psychopathic tendencies (up to 10 times societal averages). By allowing psychopaths to run our businesses and government, the American people have lost control of our country, and humanity may lose control over the anthropocentric climate change we’re causing through our shortsighted economic policies. Continue reading