Environmental Damage is not just a corporate issue.
Green Junction by Julie Peller Ph.D.
Recent studies have assessed the amount of environmental and societal damage caused by global corporations. An analysis by economists who evaluated nearly 15,000 public companies (just a fraction of the total) concluded that companies would be required to pay 44% of their corporate profits for climate change-related environmental impairments. While it is easy to blame companies for carbon pollution, consumers also bear responsibility. Consequently, one way for individuals to tackle climate change is by consuming less.
Most companies rely on natural capital, also called ecosystem services, encompassing the earth’s vast resources. Our lifestyles depend on natural capital/resources, from the basics of clean water to the less abundant precious minerals required for our electronic devices. According to the Geneva Environmental Network, we overuse resources beyond the earth’s ability to regenerate or recover. “Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity’s demand for ecological resources and services in a given year exceeds what Earth can regenerate in that year.” In 2024, it fell on August 1st.
S&P Global Sustainable recently released a report assessing the global environmental damage caused by corporations, “Unpriced Environmental Costs: The Top Externalities of the Global Market.” The research shows that companies cause trillions of dollars in unpriced environmental damage. The most significant percentage of damage falls in the category of greenhouse gas emissions (that trap heat in the atmosphere), followed by other air pollutants. The agricultural sector “generate the majority (57%) of land use-related environmental damage costs.”
Pope Francis has repeatedly emphasized protecting our Common Home, the earth that provides ecosystem services. In an address from ten years ago, he pleaded that the planet is “the greatest resource which God has given to us and is at our disposal not to be disfigured, exploited, and degraded..”
Julie Peller, Ph.D., is an environmental chemist (Professor of Chemistry at Valparaiso University ). She has been writing a weekly column called The Green Junction for the past seven years and is helping to move the call of Laudato Si to action forward. Her Research Interests are advanced oxidation for aqueous solutions, water quality analyses, emerging contaminants, air quality analyses, Lake Michigan shoreline challenges (Cladophora, water, and sediment contaminants), and student and citizen participation in environmental work.
Another good essay thank you. The GOP’s environmental destruction follows the malignancy of Citizens United and lays bare its force: The extremely wealthy aren’t dependent on free supplies of clean water, they can import private tanks and install their own desalination equipment if it comes to that. They don’t worry about climate change, because they can afford to build lux retreats high in the Swiss Alps, complete with vertical farms for growing their own produce.
But the middle class can see floods, droughts, and increasingly extreme weather with their own eyes, and even the most skeptical know now that climate change is no hoax.