How Investors Can Help To Secure Climate Action

And how we can try to affect the process.

Towards the end of January, a group of investors, who are worth a combined $6.5 trillion, called on large fast-food chains such as McDonald’s and KFC to reduce their carbon emissions, sending ripples through the industry.

This is demonstrative of the huge potency that capital has in the fight against climate change. Moreover, though, it is demonstrative of the power of the people to pressurise investors into calling for change.

For the past few years, there has been a growing public cognizance of climate change, water consumption, and other environmental concerns such as plastic pollution. People have used this growing knowledge and understanding to attack large corporations for their contributions to the problems.

And, recently, there have been signs that this pressure may be filtering through to company boardrooms.

The McDonald’s executive, for example, wouldn’t ordinarily decide to make any decisions which increased costs just for the sake of the environment. Today, we see McDonald's making its own decisions to scrap the use of plastic straws, and set some carbon emissions targets for its providers.