What role do businesses play in responding to climate change?

Should businesses be taking climate action? And if so, what should they be doing?

We think businesses are critical to the climate response. Business activities represent a large portion of global carbon emissions, and if we’re going to meet net zero carbon emissions we need to see huge reductions in this. 

At the same time, businesses are also a huge vehicle for innovation, with the potential to accelerate the kind of change that we need to see – from inventing new technologies to developing models for sustainable business practices.

So we need bold business climate action, and we need it now.

Plus, it might be optional to make changes now, but we’re already starting to see this become legally enforced – in the US, for instance, companies may soon have to declare their carbon emissions. Not only that, but climate impacts will reach into our supply chains and markets, so businesses will be forced to adapt too.

Every company will become a climate company.

What role can businesses play in mitigating climate change?

We need climate leading companies making bold, impactful plans and actually executing on them. 

Many companies are more than happy to make a vague promise or a pledge on climate change, but it’s still rare to see companies that follow through with well thought through, truly impactful actions.

Climate leading companies should act boldly on climate change and:

1. Measure their own carbon emissions (including Scope 3 emissions), and put changes in place to reduce those emissions wherever possible.
2. Offset the remaining, unavoidable emissions with high-quality carbon offset credits – or alternatively regularly contribute to high-quality carbon projects regardless of their own carbon footprint.
3. Use their platform to further their positive climate impact – it could be about embedding climate impact into a product, developing partnerships with others to magnify climate work (communities like B Corp are great for this), or communicating expertly about climate change with your employees, customers, and suppliers. 

Curious about how we're measuring, reducing, and offsetting our own carbon footprint at Lune? Read our previous post sharing our actions so far and our future plans: Putting our money where our mouth is – addressing Lune's carbon footprint.

All businesses across every sector, big or small, can play a huge part in combatting climate change. Now’s the time to act, and act boldly.

Getting started on your climate journey – Earth Day 2022

This blog was originally published for Earth Day 2022, exploring a core themes of the day in the context of business sustainability, to innovate (broadly).

If your business is looking for ways to act (boldly) on climate change, we can help you put the actions discussed in this post into place – simply get in touch for an initial scoping chat.