Issues for Discussion

As the earth’s population approaches seven billion, there are a host of issues that confront us. Pandemics, hunger, terrorism, and global warming are among the most obvious and pressing.  Some of these problems can be traced back to large corporations’ unsustainable and environmentally destructive practices. Admittedly, some corporations are genuinely involved in helping to solve these issues, others are primarily involved in trying to exploit them, or worse, fighting the solutions to them.

Global warming, for example, is the single greatest threat the world has faced since fears of nuclear war peaked in the 60s.  Yet coal companies, utilities, and oil companies continue to thwart legislation to transition the US economy off fossil fuels. Oil companies like Exxon, actually funded hundreds of front groups to challenge the research on global warming even though the 1200 top climatologists in the world working under the auspices of the UN have concluded that the threat of global warming is real, that it is due to man-made greenhouse gas emissions, and that we have a limited amount of time to address the issue of face a uncontrollable warming spiral that threatens all life on earth.

In the 21st Century the greatest issue we face will be how to control the destructive behavior of large corporations and instead marshal their resources and innovation to address issues like climate change, pandemics like aids, hunger and malnutrition, and even terrorism which feeds on the discontents of the poor and disenfranchised.