Drawdown Labs

When I graduated from college less than a decade ago, there seemed to be only two paths for people interested in fighting climate change full-time: science or policy. 

As founder of the Climate Leadership Collective and former Microsoft employee, Drew Wilkinson knows the ins and outs of getting employees engaged on climate. 

Laura Lara Rodriguez is a seasoned 3M employee. She’s been with the company for about a decade, starting initially in product and technology development and now coordinating teams as Research and Development Program Manager. 

Lisa Feldman is the senior director of culinary for Sodexo, a multinational food service company that works with institutions like hospitals, college campuses, senior living centers, and company offices. 

When Suzume Soryo* started working as a technical writer at a software company, she jumped immediately into the climate community at her new organization. 

I have worked in the sustainability space for almost a decade. In that time, I have witnessed my parents struggle to tell their friends what their daughter does for work; my friends who work in tech smile and nod when I talk about climate policy; and strangers apologize to me for not recycling. 

Reducing methane emitted by agriculture, fossil fuels, and landfills is one of the most important and effective actions we can take to stabilize Earth’s climate. 

To avoid climate catastrophe, we must invest in the most effective “emergency brake” climate solutions as quickly as possible – through philanthropy, private investment, corporate spending, and government funding.

Few topics in the climate community are more charged than the capitalism vs. climate change debate. Is capitalism compatible with a world in the throes of climate change? Can endless economic growth persist on a finite planet? Is it even possible to dismantle our current economic system—and build a new one – in the next seven years? 

It’s time to elevate and expand corporate sustainability from the often siloed, underresourced work of small sustainability teams to the work of every team – harnessing the passion and expertise that every employee has to advance climate action.

Round after round of layoffs, deepest in the tech industry, have left over a quarter million workers wondering what’s next for their careers. I was one of them.

We are reaching an important juncture within the corporate climate landscape.

Today’s definition of business climate leadership centers on companies doing less harm, gradually reducing their emissions—and the damage they cause—over time. But this version of leadership neglects the many other levers companies have at their disposal to help or hinder our future on a livable planet.

One of the most confounding realities of the climate crisis is that two seemingly contradictory facts are simultaneously true: that humanity has at our fingertips the solutions to fix it at the very same time that global greenhouse gas emissions soar higher than ever. 

Governments and businesses are looking to lead on climate change, but too many of their commitments are built on flawed “net zero” frameworks and problematic “carbon offsets.” Authentic climate leadership requires more—a transparent and meaningful “Emissions 360” pledge that is focused on bringing real emissions to zero, helping others do the same, and equitably addressing historic climate pollution.

Two years ago Mark Carney, then-head of the central bank of England, called into question the very existence of corporations that don’t adhere to the steep emissions reductions required to limit warming to 1.5°C: “Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist.”