Good Business: Three Case Studies in Corporate Power Wielding on Climate Change

Auden Schendler • November 21, 2024

Auden Schendler, Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen One, argues that market forces and corporate voluntary efforts alone are decidedly failing to address climate change. Drawing from his newly released book, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering Our Soul, he shares key actions for scaling impact, whatever size your organization might be.


The corporate sustainability movement arguably began when multinational corporations like Toyota, 3M, and DuPont started thinking about manufacturing differently in the late sixties. Most of their solutions saved money and energy while reducing pollution. 3M developed water-, not solvent-based processes, both saving on cost and ensuring regulatory compliance. DuPont developed solutions to the ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbon problem that the company itself had created. And Toyota pioneered the idea of lean management, where process efficiency enabled energy and materials savings. This was exciting stuff — author Paul Hawken incorporated some of these approaches into his 1993 ecological-business manifesto, The Ecology of Commerce. That book got into the hands of Interface CEO Ray Anderson, and the modern corporate sustainability movement was born.



The Corporate Sustainability Thesis


In short, this movement posited that business could be a meaningful part of solving global environmental problems — at a profit — for some of the same reasons that 3M, Toyota, and DuPont were so successful. There actually were business drivers behind those solutions! Given that it was cheaper to save energy than to make it, couldn’t business also lead the way on climate solutions and even model the how-to for governments and policymakers? The benefit was that these fixes would all happen on the free market, without regulation.


Thirty-plus years down the line, it’s pretty clear that thesis has failed. Not only do global carbon emissions continue to climb, but resulting natural disasters continue to wreak havoc on economies, supply chains, and human lives. Looking back, the approach, even at Toyota and DuPont was entirely voluntary and therefore not systemic, seems complicit with the fossil fuel industry’s desires. After all, if that industry had wanted to design an approach to environmentalism that would distract these wealthy, powerful, global, and nimble organizations while making it seem like they cared, corporate sustainability would be it — earnest tokenism, but no disruption.


Given this situation, it’s worth asking what meaningful actions business can actually take to address the climate problem at scale. Below are three case studies from my own experience in the United States — yet which apply internationally — to help business leaders think through their own opportunities to scale regenerative impact.



Holy Cross Energy: Changing Utility Leadership to Cut Carbon Footprint


Early in my career I deployed all the energy savings techniques I could think of at the business at which I work, which runs ski resorts, hotels, and restaurants. We had implemented lighting and boiler retrofits, green building construction techniques, equipment controls, and high-efficiency pumping systems and motors. But our carbon footprint didn’t budge. After some analysis, we realized we couldn’t move the needle because our electricity came from coal, and the percentage of coal used by our utility was going up. We would never be able to overcome that carbon burden with efficiency alone: we needed to change supply. The story of how we became community organizers over many years to change the board of our local utility is described in a chapter of my new book, Terrible Beauty. In a nutshell, it required literal door-knocking, phone banking to find potential board candidates, arm-twisting, and then elaborate, highly strategic electronic campaigning. It was not easy, but over a decade (starting in the late 2000s) we tipped the balance of the board from coal boosters to clean energy advocates. That utility’s energy supply went from 6% to 80% renewables, with a goal of 100% by 2030. Our carbon footprint, and that of our whole region, plummeted accordingly. Ironically, rival businesses that declined invitations to participate in our community organizing also benefitted, making progress on their own carbon goals thanks to this work.



Kimberly-Clark: Exerting Public Pressure on Business Partners


Our second win was similarly complicated. In 2007 we were invited to join Greenpeace’s boycott of the large, multinational forest products company Kimberly-Clark, which was logging endangered forests to manufacture Kleenex, a facial tissue. Surely they could improve forestry practices, use post-consumer waste, and therefore meaningfully move the needle on climate which is, in substantial part, about how we manage forests. Our small company mattered little on the balance sheet — we spent $30k annually on the product — but our brand (perhaps the most famous ski destination in the world) meant a lot. As a result, weeks after joining the boycott, the CEO of Kimberley-Clark asked to talk to our own CEO. Think about that: the ratio of our revenues at the time was on the order of 200 to 1. And yet they cared about damage to their own image through our brand power. We engaged in a healthy and civil dialogue. 700 other companies also joined the boycott. And three years later, Kimberly-Clark significantly changed how it practiced forestry. Military historians have a term for this: asymmetric warfare. Businesses can use the power of their brand to drive disproportionate change.  



Using Advertising as a Tool for Activism


As we pursued this “power wielding” approach to driving meaningful action on climate change, we turned to our marketing program. It made sense: we reach millions of individuals through our advertising. We knew that most ski resort advertisements are boring and undifferentiated: they feature skiers on a blue-sky day. But if every ad is the same, how do you get a viewer’s attention? We decided to try something new: combine climate activism with marketing. In 2017 we developed a campaign called “Give a Flake,” which featured postage-paid postcards to U.S. Senators who are swing votes on climate policy. The day the campaign launched — with thousands of postcards appearing in a half dozen different magazines — the office of one Senator called us, irate. “What are you doing attacking us?” they asked. Our CEO took the call: “You’re not doing enough on climate. We’re asking you to do more.” In the United States, elected officials had never experienced consequences for denying climate science or failing to take meaningful action after saying they cared. This was one of the first instances of a consequence: public, political pain.


While our own campaign didn’t change policy in its time, it was part of an evolution in the American zeitgeist. When the country's most significant climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, came in front of the U.S. Senate in 2022, swing senators declining to support the bill came under enormous public pressure, including from the ski and resort industry, and consequently voted for it.



Meaningful Corporate Climate Action is Good Business


The hard truth is that the corporate sustainability movement is a failed experiment. Most multinational corporations profess to care about the essential sustainability challenge — climate change — but their actions are token, intermittent, not to scale, and their net-zero targets are managed through unregulated and questionable carbon offsets. Net Zero Tracker reports that over one thousand companies from the Forbes 2000 list have made such pledges. The simplistic concept of carbon neutrality captured the public's imagination because the climate issue is complex: it sounds like a winning solution. Yet most research on offsets show that "the large majority are not real or are over-credited or both," as Barbara Haya, director of the Berkeley Carbon Trading Project, said in 2023.


And in many cases, corporate pledges to net-zero are overtly duplicitous ­— making bold decarbonization announcements while simultaneously selling technology to expedite fossil fuel extraction as Microsoft has done; or, like Salesforce, affirming climate policy leadership while paying dues, along with peers like Microsoft, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable — which work directly to counter those goals.

This is all ultimately bad business: climate is in fact a threat to operations; and duplicity crushes reputation and credibility. Whistleblowers and NGOs that recognize this are cropping up. They are the tip of the iceberg, and business should see them as opportunities, not threats. Why? Because corporations are made up of, and serve, human beings, each a universe unto themselves, with hopes and aspirations, lives filled with epic love and loss, and the desire to live a “right” life.


These individuals' goals are consistent with a fundamental definition of business: “the practice of making one’s living by engaging in commerce.” And one does not “make a living” by destroying spirit and home.

About the Author:

Auden Schendler, Senior Vice President, Sustainability, at Aspen One and author of the newly released

Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul.


PHOTO: Dan Bayer | Aspen One Utility Scale Solar Array | Carbondale, CO, USA

Read perspectives from the ISSP blog

By Ioannis Ioannou, PhD June 19, 2025
London Business School Professor Ioannis Ioannou, PhD examines the vulnerable narrative infrastructure surrounding ESG. By collaboratively engaging those most affected by ESG transitions—indigenous peoples, workers, young people, small businesses, and communities, particularly in the Global South—we can foster the trust, legitimacy, and collective commitment for meaningful progress. Who Gets to Tell the Story of ESG? For more than a decade, ESG rapidly evolved from a specialized investor consideration into an elaborate global infrastructure of standards, metrics, taxonomies, and disclosure frameworks. Investor attention soared, corporate sustainability teams grew exponentially, and ESG vocabulary— climate risk, fiduciary duty, and double materiality—became firmly embedded in corporate boardrooms and regulatory discussions globally. Yet, despite ESG’s impressive institutional and technical advancements, the narrative meant to support it remained remarkably fragile. While ESG developed sophisticated standards, disclosures, and metrics, it never invested in the narrative infrastructure to explain its purpose, build public understanding, or secure legitimacy beyond institutional circles. Without the broader stakeholder engagement and effective storytelling that would connect ESG to people’s lived realities, it became vulnerable. Critics didn’t need to challenge carbon accounting or materiality frameworks; instead, they recast ESG as a job killer, an elite agenda, or an unwelcome intrusion into everyday life. The backlash caught many ESG professionals off guard, though the warning signs were visible. ESG’s rapid adoption by investors and regulatory bodies created an illusion of momentum, but this obscured a deeper structural gap. ESG rarely connected meaningfully with those directly affected by ESG-driven transitions—workers facing disruption, small business owners adapting to shifting expectations, and communities, particularly in vulnerable regions, confronting real and immediate climate risks. For these groups, ESG often seemed abstract, distant, and disconnected from their daily concerns. Narrative infrastructure might sound like an unusual concept, but it's foundational to widespread support. It connects people and institutions, conveys meaning, and determines whether ESG is seen as genuine leadership or merely corporate branding. Robust narrative infrastructure ensures resilience under political pressure; without it, initiatives can rapidly lose whatever public approval they may have had. Constructing narrative infrastructure requires explicitly recognizing storytelling— and who contributes to that storytelling—as integral to ESG strategy, not simply a communications exercise. Effective narratives generate trust precisely because they emerge from transparent dialogue, clear accountability, and inclusive stakeholder engagement. By contrast, greenwashing uses storytelling deceptively, aiming to conceal poor performance, and deflect scrutiny. Strong narrative infrastructure, unlike greenwashing, strengthens credibility and legitimacy by openly connecting ESG commitments to shared realities, tangible actions, and measurable outcomes. It is a fundamental strategic asset for ESG success. Importantly, narrative infrastructure also concerns who gets to tell these stories. Over the last decade, the central narrators of the ESG story have largely been institutional actors: executives, investors, sustainability professionals, academics, and regulators. Their contributions have been invaluable, driven by expertise, rigor, and genuine commitment. Yet these narrators also represent a relatively narrow perspective, shaped by institutional backgrounds and professional incentives. Many important voices have remained largely excluded from shaping ESG narratives: indigenous people whose lives are often fundamentally changed by corporate activities, workers whose livelihoods are directly impacted by ESG transitions, young people deeply invested in future outcomes, small businesses continuously adapting to new ESG-related requirements, and especially communities—particularly in the Global South —directly facing the worst of climate disruptions. While these stakeholders' experiences occasionally appear within ESG reporting, they seldom influenced strategy or shape decisions in a substantial way. This exclusion poses significant, practical risks. Stakeholders naturally resist initiatives perceived as imposed from above or disconnected from their lived realities—not necessarily because they oppose ESG’s goals, but because they feel unheard and invisible within such ESG narratives. The resistance appears as political backlash, active public scepticism, or disengagement, all severely undermining ESG’s legitimacy, effectiveness, and public support. Addressing this critical weakness requires deliberately building ESG’s narrative infrastructure through inclusive, collaborative, and ongoing engagement. Practically, companies should move beyond occasional or reactive consultations toward sustained processes where stakeholders actively shape strategies. This can involve establishing community advisory boards with real decision-making power, participatory scenario planning that integrates diverse local perspectives, and internal cross-functional councils that ensure workers, communities, and youth voices directly influence ESG outcomes. Such sustained, authentic collaboration bridges the gap between institutional intentions and genuine public legitimacy. Within companies, narrative stewardship should not be limited to corporate communications or sustainability departments alone. Effective ESG storytelling depends on regular, structured collaboration across multiple functions—including strategy, human resources, procurement, product development, and finance—to ensure ESG commitments align authentically with core business decisions and reflect real-world stakeholder experiences. Companies can institutionalize this collaboration by creating dedicated cross-functional ESG committees tasked with integrating diverse internal perspectives, monitoring stakeholder feedback, and ensuring ESG initiatives clearly connect to tangible social outcomes. At an institutional level, building ESG narrative infrastructure involves establishing platforms that broaden participation in ESG discourse. It requires supporting initiatives that improve public understanding of ESG standards and practices, funding research that evaluates public perceptions of ESG alongside traditional financial metrics and ensuring ESG disclosures transparently reflect diverse stakeholder concerns. ESG narrative legitimacy grows stronger when diverse perspectives genuinely shape how ESG commitments are determined and communicated, implemented, and monitored—not merely as token inclusions, but as integral, strategic components of ESG itself. Regulators have an essential role in shaping ESG narrative infrastructure. Current ESG disclosure standards typically prioritize technical accuracy and financial materiality, mostly targeting investor needs. Broadening these frameworks to explicitly incorporate public legitimacy could significantly enhance ESG’s impact. For example, regulators could introduce clear criteria assessing whether companies effectively communicate their ESG strategies to diverse stakeholders and evaluate how these communications influence brand value and reputational risk—approaches already emerging in Europe’s Green Claims Directive and the CSRD/ESRS focus on double materiality. Additionally, policy evaluations could systematically measure whether ESG initiatives are genuinely perceived as fair, inclusive, and beneficial by the communities they affect. Public support and trust require deliberate and continuous effort; they cannot be assumed or taken for granted. Fortunately, inspiring examples of effective ESG narrative infrastructure already exist. Companies like Patagonia have openly integrated supplier and worker voices into their ESG narratives, transparently highlighting labour practices and sourcing standards, significantly enhancing their credibility. Unilever’s inclusive “living wage” campaigns have similarly leveraged stories from frontline workers to connect ESG metrics with tangible social outcomes, strengthening stakeholder trust. Industry-specific initiatives, such as the Bangladesh Accord in apparel, demonstrate how authentically incorporating diverse stakeholder experiences—including employees, unions, and community representatives—into ESG reporting can reinforce accountability and legitimacy. These examples highlight how inclusive storytelling, grounded in genuine stakeholder participation, can transform ESG commitments from abstract promises into credible actions with real-world impact. ESG professionals now face an exciting strategic opportunity: intentionally building a narrative infrastructure that's genuinely inclusive, collaborative, and resilient. Yes, involving diverse stakeholders means navigating complexity, dialogue, and occasionally tough compromises. It also means embracing participatory processes that might feel messier or less predictable. But it's exactly this diversity of voices and collective authorship that generates persuasive, robust narratives—ones that not only resonate widely but can confidently withstand shifts in politics, culture, and public sentiment. Beyond strengthening ESG's narrative infrastructure, it's important for ESG professionals to step back and consider sustainability more broadly. By explicitly linking ESG narratives to overarching sustainability objectives—such as respecting planetary boundaries and enabling a just transition—professionals can better illustrate how financial markets, corporate strategies, and policy frameworks actively support broader ecological and social well-being. Making these broader connections explicit can deepen trust, enhance engagement, and ensure the interconnected ESG-sustainability story resonates meaningfully with all those whose futures depend on it. We stand at a turning point, facing a critical opportunity to strengthen ESG’s narrative foundations. While ESG’s narrative fragility has been clearly exposed, this moment also offers an inspiring chance to intentionally build a more inclusive, credible, and resilient narrative infrastructure. The future of sustainability depends not only on rigorous metrics or detailed disclosures, but ultimately on whether those whose lives are impacted recognize themselves clearly in its story. By authentically amplifying diverse voices, explicitly connecting ESG initiatives to broader sustainability goals, and developing narratives rooted in real-world experiences, we can foster the trust, legitimacy, and collective commitment necessary for meaningful and lasting progress.
By Antoinette de Crombrugghe May 15, 2025
I belong to a generation raised in the shadow of the climate crisis. But it wasn’t something we were taught in school. It wasn’t part of our curriculum, our standardized tests, our childhood vocabulary. We came across it slowly, in fragments, through social media, activism, panic headlines, and documentaries. We educated ourselves. We connected the dots. And still, many of us are figuring out how to carry this knowledge and how to live with it without being crushed by it.
PHOTO: Ana Bachurova | Pléneau Island, 65°06.6’S / 064°04.0’W
By Ana Bachurova March 20, 2025
After recent travels in Antarctica, UNEP-FI Energy Efficiency Lead Ana Bachurova, M.Sc., MBA shares learnings and insights into our current environmental realities and how practitioners in sustainable development can advance positive impacts.
More blog posts