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‘Fight Harder,’ U.N. Chief Implores, Rousing Global Climate Ambassadors Listen · 6:12 min 11NOV2026 By Chico Harlan and Lisa Friedman NYT Gift Article link nytimes.com/2026/11/11/clima… Reporting from Antalya, Turkey The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, spoke at COP31, a meeting aimed at reducing emissions, amid a sharp drop in attendance by world leaders. Opening a climate summit that leaders from most industrialized nations chose to skip, António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, on Wednesday warned that the planet was on a “path to mutually assured destruction,” unable to wean itself from planet-warming fossil fuels and facing intensifying disasters. “Fossil fuel interests keep making a killing while killing our planet,” Mr. Guterres told world leaders gathering for the summit, known as COP31. Mr. Guterres, who is in the final weeks of his term after leading the United Nations for a decade, urged nations to “end the addiction” to fossil fuels. His remarks sharpened the tensions for an event that often struggles to directly address the burning of fossil fuels, which is the root cause of climate change. He and others acknowledged the world has failed to meet the goal it established in the Paris agreement in 2015 to limit rising global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. That’s the threshold beyond which scientists say the dangers of global warming — including worsening floods, fiercer wildfires, droughts and ecosystem collapse — grow considerably. On Wednesday, leaders one by one insisted that despite rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere, it was possible, and critical, to get back on track. nytimes.com/2026/09/02/clima… “Science is not telling us to surrender,” Mr. Guterres said. “It is telling us to fight harder.” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, the host of the conference, warned, “With every minute that we fail to achieve the targets set out in the Paris agreement, the risks and costs we face continue to grow.” He blamed a “greedy mind set” of overconsumption for the failure. Turkey is one of several countries, including the United States, whose climate goals have been deemed “critically insufficient” by independent analysts to keeping temperatures at safe levels. climateactiontracker.org/cou… The two-day leaders’ summit is part of the broader U.N. climate conference, which began on Monday in Antalya on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. This year, 91 world leaders are attending, according to advance figures, down from 156 three years ago. At the same time, more than 92,000 people have registered to attend the summit, according to the U.N., making it the largest climate conference in history. COP31 comes at a challenging time for climate efforts. Wars and tariffs have driven a wedge into international cooperation. The U.S. and Israeli fight against Iran, now in its ninth month, has disrupted the flow of oil from the Middle East and pushed up global fuel prices. Nations are building up solar and wind capacity as a hedge against shocks while also burning more coal to ensure a stable energy supply. And in part because of data centers to power artificial intelligence, nations need more energy than ever — whatever the source. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil said climate change had “disappeared” from the global stage over the past two years. Without directly mentioning the United States or President Trump, who has imposed steep tariffs on Brazilian products, he said, “We started talking more about weapons and tariffs than the survival of future generations.” nytimes.com/2026/07/15/busin… The United States, the largest historic emitter of greenhouse gases, withdrew from the Paris climate agreement and is skipping COP31. Prime Minister Andy Burnham of Britain, who is scheduled to speak on Thursday, was expected to be the only leader of the Group of 7 wealthy nations to attend the climate summit. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, whose country was host to the landmark Paris agreement, will be absent because Wednesday is Armistice Day, and is then traveling to Ireland for a European meeting, government officials said. Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada are also skipping the event. “It really is a disgrace,” Mohamed Adow, the director of Power Shift Africa, a climate research group, said in a statement. “The world’s biggest economies should be leading the response to the climate crisis, not leaving it to others.” Mr. Erdogan also used his address to call for more humanitarian aid to Gaza. He referred to the war between Israel and Hamas militants that began in 2023 as “not only a genocide, but an ecocide.” The war, Mr. Erdogan said, had uprooted olive trees, polluted the soil and water in the seaside territory and turned Gaza’s cities into “enormous piles of rubble.” Israel strongly rejects any suggestion that it committed genocide. Mr. Erdogan has often harshly criticized Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, contributing to increasingly tense relations between Turkey and Israel. nytimes.com/2026/08/29/world… In his speech, Mr. Guterres called out fossil fuel interests several times and drew applause when he said, “I will not stop telling the truth.” Nations agreed three years ago to transition away from fossil fuels, starting with steps this decade. But some oil- and gas-exporting countries have since ramped up production. Carbon emissions continue to rise. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia have blocked recent U.N. conferences from revisiting the deal and fleshing out specifics. “Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs,” Mr. Guterres said. “And that won’t happen on its own. The dinosaurs did not have a lobby, but fossil fuels do.” Ben Hubbard contributed reporting. Chico Harlan is a global climate correspondent for The Times. Lisa Friedman is a business correspondent covering energy for The New York Times. See more on: Antonio Guterres, nytimes.com/topic/antonio-gu… United Nations nytimes.com/topic/organizati… ‘Fight Harder,’ U.N. Chief Implores, Rousing Global Climate Ambassadors Listen · 6:12 min 11NOV2026 By Chico Harlan and Lisa Friedman NYT Gift Article link nytimes.com/2026/11/11/clima… Reporting from Antalya, Turkey The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, spoke at COP31, a meeting aimed at reducing emissions, amid a sharp drop in attendance by world leaders. “Fossil fuel interests keep making a killing while killing our planet,” António Guterres, the United Nations secretary general, said at COP31 on Wednesday. Credit...Khalil Hamra/Associated Press

COP31 kicks off as planet faces imminent overshoot of 1.5 °C climate target 09NOV2026 By James Dinneen nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Scientists say governments must commit to carbon dioxide removal if world is to bring temperatures back down to safer limits. The United Nations annual climate meeting starting today is the first to take place after confirmation that global warming will overshoot the headline limit of 1.5 °C. The aim of keeping warming within 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures was set out in the 2015 Paris agreement. As tens of thousands of delegates and observers arrive in Antalya, Turkey, for the COP31 meeting, some scientists and climate advocates say the 12-day event must discuss how to deal with the overshoot. Along with cutting emissions, this includes practical ways of removing massive volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The UN Environment Programme last month acknowledged that, under all plausible emissions trajectories, the world will surpass the 1.5 °C target agreed at COP21 in Paris. nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Its Limiting Overshoot report is the first UN report to state explicitly that overshoot is now inevitable. It also laid out how to bring temperatures back below the 1.5 °C target this century. In addition to slashing emissions to near-zero levels, the report confirmed the need to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere this century, either using CO2 removal technologies or nature-based approaches such as reforestation. “[K]eeping 1.5 °C within reach requires climate policy to evolve to include the removal of already emitted [greenhouse gases],” the report states. wedocs.unep.org/items/156d07… This idea to limit the “magnitude and the duration” of overshooting 1.5 °C is expected to shape discussion among parties at the COP meeting, says Clea Schumer, a research associate at the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and advocacy organization in Washington DC. Some language on limiting overshoot was included in the final decision of the COP30 summit last year in Belém, Brazil, but CO2 removal has mostly gone unmentioned. unfccc.int/sites/default/fil… Most governments “are happy that they finally don’t have to pretend any more that we will make it” to 1.5 °C, says Oliver Geden, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin. They now want to limit overshoot, “but how we actually do that, nobody is talking about”, he adds. Steve Smith, a climate researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, agrees. CO2 removal has sparked controversy in the past over concerns that it might distract from the need to cut emissions. But it is possible that CO2 removal could move up the agenda amid discussions about the necessary return from overshoot, he says. Environmental advocacy groups, such as New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), that had been skeptical of CO2 removal, have now changed their position. A report from the organisation in September called on environmentalists to support CO2 removal in the same way they supported renewable energy and electrification. "It is now time to set the stage for another—an industry that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—to contribute to the fight for climate stability," the report says. However, so far, no country has included clearly quantified CO2 removal targets in climate commitments submitted to the UN, says Smith. Such targets would be necessary to achieve the large scales of CO2 removal that could bring warming back below 1.5 °C. “We really want governments to cut emissions and set out clear plans for scaling up CO2 removal," says Smit COP31 kicks off as planet faces imminent overshoot of 1.5 °C climate target 09NOV2026 By James Dinneen nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Scientists say governments must commit to carbon dioxide removal if world is to bring temperatures back down to safer limits. Delegates arriving at the UN COP31 climate conference in Antalya for 12 days of talks. Credit: Sandro Basili/Shutterstock

Bill Gates, author of How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, now argues that the world’s fixation on emissions and temperature change is diverting money from saving lives. via @Newsweek & @MichaelEMann

The Biggest Surprise of Election Night nytimes.com/video/opinion/10… For the columnist Jamelle Bouie, the story of the midterm elections was a “transformation of the partisan landscape in the Deep South.” In a live conversation for “The Opinions,” he breaks down the most surprising wins across the South and explains how the organizing power of Black voters is reshaping the region’s politics. November 9, 2026 Transcript The Biggest Surprise of Election Night For the columnist Jamelle Bouie, the story of the midterm elections was a “transformation of the partisan landscape in the Deep South.” In a live conversation for “The Opinions,” he breaks down the most surprising wins across the South and explains how the organizing power of Black voters is reshaping the region’s politics. I think for me, the story of the night is the apparent kind of transformation of the partisan landscape in the Deep South. And I don’t think — if you tell me today, if any of you people out there say to me tonight, oh, yeah, I totally thought Scott Colom was going to become a senator from Mississippi, I swear to God, I’ll be very upset. No one could have predicted that. That Louisiana was within a point or two. -Crazy. -Even Florida. I mean, Angie Nixon, who is a — came out of nowhere — extraordinarily talented politician and candidate, but is a self-identified member of the Democratic Socialists of America, comes within two points of winning in a state that has become over the past decade, like a sink for America’s chuddy as seniors. So —— It’s going to be that kind of night. I can see. So this is all to say that there were these things happening below the surface. It isn’t just candidates. It’s organizing. It’s activity. It’s the fact that Black voters in the Deep South responded to both the administration and the Supreme Court as if they were, and I’d say they were, existential threats to their political freedoms. And what has happened is for the first time, really since the ’70s, there’s meaningful partisan competition in large parts of the South.

California Voters Reject Billionaire Tax That Divided Democrats Listen · 5:10 min 10NOV2026 By Laurel Rosenhall NYT Gift Article link nytimes.com/2026/11/09/us/ca… Reporting from Sacramento The outcome could hinder the wealth tax movement in California and across the country in future years. California voters rejected a billionaire tax, The Associated Press determined on Monday, rebuking a measure that would have created the nation’s first wealth tax by targeting the assets of residents with a net worth beyond $1 billion. nytimes.com/interactive/2026… Under the tax measure, Proposition 40, the state would have imposed a one-time, 5 percent tax on the personal assets of billionaires and devoted most of the revenue to health care. The Democratic voters who dominate the California electorate generally support the concept of making wealthy people pay higher taxes. But Democratic leaders were divided over the proposal — Gov. Gavin Newsom opposed it while the California Democratic Party endorsed the tax. And some of the California billionaires who stood to pay the tax contributed heavily toward a campaign that slammed the proposal with attack ads on TV throughout October. Proposition 40 also suffered from having a weak coalition of supporters who could not compete with those ads and relied on cheaper methods, such as social media and influencer campaigns, to rally support. The race was not called until almost a week after the election as California counted mail ballots at a deliberate pace. Though the vote gap shrank as more ballots were tallied, the measure ultimately failed to get enough support despite it being a hugely successful election for Democrats and left-leaning candidates. As of Monday night, Proposition 40 only had 47 percent support with an estimated 83 percent of the votes counted. The failure of the billionaire tax in California, a liberal state, is likely to be used as evidence for years to come that Americans will not stomach similar wealth taxes. The concept is expected to come up during the 2028 presidential campaign, and Mr. Newsom has already said he would be interested in a national wealth tax but not one only in his own state. Supporters of the tax blamed the failure of Proposition 40 on their vast campaign spending disadvantage and considered the initiative’s failure a sign of oligarchic power. During a news conference on election night, proponents pointed to the astronomical spending by the opposition, led by Sergey Brin, the Google co-founder who gave more than $100 million toward defeating the wealth tax. His group has raised more than $300 million this year, based on the most recent campaign finance records. Dave Regan, the head of the health care workers’ union that put the tax on the ballot, said the billionaire-funded attacks produced “a lot of confusion and a lot of second-guessing among people who really in their hearts know what the right thing to do is.” Mr. Regan vowed to pursue another billionaire tax in 2028. His union had argued during the campaign that revenue from billionaires was necessary to offset cuts to health care programs that President Trump signed into law last year. nytimes.com/2025/06/29/us/po… Without the tax, millions of Californians would lose health insurance and hospitals would close, said the union, the Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West. It garnered support from prominent liberal economists and national progressive leaders, including Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, who called Proposition 40 “the most important ballot item in the country.” But the measure divided labor unions and Democratic politicians in California. nytimes.com/2026/10/23/us/se… Mr. Newsom and Xavier Becerra, the Democrat who will replace him, opposed the tax, arguing that it would drive away entrepreneurs, and said a one-time surge in tax revenue wasn’t worth the potential long-term harm to the state budget. nytimes.com/2026/01/13/us/ne… Teachers, firefighters and Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California joined them in arguing that the tax would ultimately reduce the money available for many government services. “You don’t pass a landmark progressive tax increase that is a change to how America has historically done anything by dividing up the progressive coalition,” said Thad Kousser, a political science professor at the University of California, San Diego. He noted that the union behind the tax moved ahead with it before securing sufficient support from key allies. “The policy substance was much harder to sell because of this key strategic choice at the beginning to go it alone,” he said. The billionaires have said very little publicly about their ballot efforts and have relied on Democratic-leaning organizations and Mr. Newsom to be the face of the opposition. On behalf of doctors, the California Planned Parenthood branch, school boards and health clinics, opponents said voters made the right decision to protect California’s fiscal health and called the ballot initiative “a reckless experiment conducted on our state’s economy.” Orlando Mayorquín contributed reporting from Los Angeles. Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times. Read 90 comments ________________________________________ More on the 2026 Midterm Elections ________________________________________ White, Working-Class Voters: White voters without a college degree, a cornerstone of the Republican base in the Trump era, shifted left in the midterms. We asked them why. nytimes.com/2026/11/07/us/po… Republicans Point Fingers: Following their party’s huge midterm losses, Republicans have entered their most uncertain moment in years. nytimes.com/2026/11/08/us/po… Some have called for moderation and cleaning house, but that will be difficult with President Trump still in the White House. Our Interview With Gina Hinojosa: The governor-elect helped break the Republican grip on Texas, but in her first interview with The Times since her victory, she made it clear that changing how the state was governed would not happen overnight. nytimes.com/2026/11/08/us/gi… 10 Ads That Defined the Midterms: In a Democratic landslide election, here are the ads that stood out. Some were effective, while others backfired. nytimes.com/2026/11/07/us/po… Counting California’s Ballots: The state is once again processing mail ballots at a deliberate pace. Only about 65 percent of the votes had been tallied as of Thursday. nytimes.com/2026/11/06/us/el… Elon Musk: Behind the scenes, the world’s richest person spent a record amount over two years to bend the country’s politics to his will. He couldn’t. nytimes.com/2026/11/06/us/po… Turning Point USA: Candidates backed by the right-wing activist group did not fare well, and the results set off recriminations from establishment Republicans. nytimes.com/2026/11/07/us/tu… California Voters Reject Billionaire Tax That Divided Democrats Listen · 5:10 min 10NOV2026 By Laurel Rosenhall NYT Gift Article link nytimes.com/2026/11/09/us/ca… Reporting from Sacramento The outcome could hinder the wealth tax movement in California and across the country in future years.

Nature has rights — it is time the world recognized them 08OCT2026 By Juan Carlos Navarro & Callie Veelenturf nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Existing legal frameworks have not halted planetary crises. Recognizing the rights of nature could offer a different path. Wildfires, heatwaves and unprecedented weather events are no longer breaking news, they’re our permanent backdrop. Yet again this year, we are facing the grave effects of a climate system that we have destabilized. We are watching the world experience painful and deadly climate extremes, while our collective response remains ‘too little, too late’. Although we’re in need of hope, hope is never a plan. As a global society and as citizens of Earth, we urgently need a tangible shift in how our legal systems treat the living world. Recognizing the universal rights of nature is the answer. The natural world has too few legal protections. Credit: Damocean/Getty

China’s extraordinary rise in science and how it will change the world 14OCT2026 By Xiaoying You nature.com/articles/d41586-0… The nation is on a trajectory to lead the world in science, a development that will reshape technological advancement, innovation and the balance of global power. China’s President Xi Jinping is betting big on science. At a high-level meeting in Shanghai in April, he urged regional governments, universities and research institutes to strengthen the country’s fundamental research. “We must seize opportunities, rise to challenges, put basic research high on the agenda,” he said. Xi’s directive is part of a broad and long campaign by China to up its game in science and technology. Just a month earlier, the country’s leaders highlighted the importance of science in China’s latest five-year plan. That policy blueprint calls for substantial investments in fundamental research and innovation, and pledges to accelerate the development of frontier technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum applications and controlled nuclear fusion, by the end of this decade. Illustration: Jasiek Krzysztofiak. Photos: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg/Getty; Shawn Thew/EPA/Bloomberg/Getty; AFP via Getty; Inst. Plasma Physics at Hefei Insts of Phys. Sci., Chinese Academy of Sciences; S. L. Chen et al./Sci. Rep. (CC BY 4.0); VCG via Getty(2)

The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs Transcript 0:00 to 19:54 Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University 29JAN2025 youtube.com/watch?v=Aqor91e-… From climate change to inequality, public leaders grapple with some of the biggest crises of our day. Addressing them requires multi-sector approaches that rebalance the interrelationships between corporations, governments, and civil society. Christopher Marquis of the Cambridge Judge Business School and author of the book The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost, explored economics-driven assumptions of our world from a sociological perspective at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, moderated by Center faculty affiliate and Harvard Kennedy School professor Matthew Lee. The event was co-sponsored by the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and Social Innovation + Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. Ask Get answers, explore topics, and more Ask questions Chapters View all Transcript Follow along using the transcript. Show transcript Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University Chapters Transcript 0:00 good afternoon thank you for joining us my name is Matthew Lee I'm an associate professor here at the Harvard Kennedy 0:07 School and it's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Bloomberg Center for cities for this afternoon's event uh 0:12 with Professor Christopher Maris Christopher Marquis is the senior professor at the judge business school 0:18 previously he was a professor at the Harvard Business School and the Cornell Johnson school he's an award-winning researcher having published countless 0:25 articles in leading journals on issues related to corporate social responsibility insti Theory and on 0:31 business and Society issues in China his productivity across a wide variety of topics is the stuff of Legend Among Us 0:37 management Scholars on a personal note I'd add that Chris is a generous friend and Mentor who had a major impact on my 0:43 own development as a co-author and academic mentor of mine uh when I was a doctoral student at HBS so this 0:50 afternoon's program will proceed as follows we'll start with Chris giving a brief summary of his book The propers 0:57 and remarks about um the ideas that he velops in his new book we'll then have a conversation uh between Chris and I 1:04 about a few questions that came up for me as I was reading the book finally we'll reserve the last 20 minutes or so 1:10 for questions from the audience uh and with that let me hand it over to 1:20 Chris he uh well thank you so much Matt for the kind introduction thank you all for coming really wonderful to be here 1:27 at the kendi school in this space I I actually spent 2017 and 2018 here as a 1:32 visiting faculty member and there wasn't anything uh like this so it's so really amazing to to see this um I mentioned 1:39 that because actually a lot of the ideas that I've developed in this book actually I think I can trace to some of 1:44 my time at the Kennedy School and particularly around the critique of business and the need for systemic 1:51 change so my book is called the profiteers how business privatizes profit and socializes cost uh I'll 1:57 present a couple ideas uh from the book obviously 20 minutes I'm not going to present um the whole thing I can't talk 2:04 that fast but um but a couple things so first of all regarding the title uh so 2:11 it's very much a critique of our current uh business and economic system however 2:19 if the publisher would have let me I would have had a little bit of a longer title and sort of after how business 2:25 privatizes profit and socializes cost would have and what we can do about it because 2:30 a lot of the book as well is trying to understand how businesses in many cases 2:36 working with policy makers and uh the NGS can actually help reverse some of 2:43 the systemic problems um that we have so we need these changes now because you 2:49 know the world is in a tremendously dire situation you probably hear this and see 2:55 this all the time so I won't Bel labor you with all the headlines here but from climate inequality issues of systemic 3:02 discrimination you know there are really big challenges that we have in the world and business I think many times gets 3:08 blamed for them and I think rightfully so however as well I think that business 3:14 can help provide some solutions although you know I want to don't want to sound like a Pana but I want to say that 3:20 actually working very much hand inand with uh with policy makers as where 3:26 where we're going to end up a major critique that I think is in many cases right on target as to why uh we're in 3:34 this situation is that you know the neoliberal um system that is really 3:39 dominant nowadays has focused on uh an economic system where companies 3:45 particularly publicly tra publicly traded companies are beholden in a very short-term fashion to their shareholders 3:53 so in order to actually deliver quarterly returns they sacrifice on a lot of environmental and social goods 4:00 and this has led to huge levels of inequality over the past 50 years and lots of environmental degradation I 4:06 generally think this is at some level a a reasonable and you know accurate critique but why I wrote the book and 4:14 and where I think that a lot of the solutions have gone wrong is that 4:20 they've been focused on an idea that business shouldn't just focus on its shareholders but should focus on a 4:26 broader set of stakeholders I think that sort of makes sense you know like okay let's just not focus on this one limited 4:33 group but actually open it up and focus on a broader set of them however you know as I'll say a little bit about I 4:39 think this also introduces a lot of really serious problems that we need to be uh thinking differently about so you 4:46 know this idea of stakeholder capitalism businesses focusing on stakeholders you know is really famously been introduced 4:54 by these leading organizations like the world economic Forum The Business Roundtable you know equally as Elite 5:00 this is the trade group of the 200 largest US firms uh huge press coverage 5:06 on their you know statement around business being responsible to all or committed to all stakeholders uh I you 5:14 know at the time thought you know I'm not really sure if they'll actually follow through on that but at least it gets it in the public conversation but 5:21 actually I don't even think it's worth it getting in the public conversation based on sort of the progress that that 5:27 is that has occurred uh you know the problem is I think these actors have found is that when you say something 5:34 people will check later on if you actually do it and you know this uh 5:39 stakeholder capitalism idea of the business round table has really turned out in my opinion to be a big giant 5:45 greenwashing effort so very early on there were a number of case studies that 5:50 journalists mostly picked up upon that really show the inconsistency so you have this example here in the New York 5:57 Times where Marriotts a signatory to the business Round Table 6:02 sort of in aide is that Marriott is actually very uh involved at Cornell in its Hotel school where I used to 6:08 actually be a faculty member and the CEO of Marriott is always talking about their you know commitment to the 6:14 business Round Table however as this article very I think as astutely and 6:19 accurately portrays uh when Co hit you know of course Hospitality businesses 6:25 have to make hard choices you know you can't necessarily keep employ everyone 6:30 um but they were very quick quicker than many competitors in laying people off 6:36 cutting benefits uh again I you know willing to be open-minded about this it's it's a hard time however at the 6:43 same time they increased their dividend and gave their CEO arrays so this 6:48 dichotomy I think really points to the sort of inconsistencies of these um 6:53 stakeholder capitalism uh pronouncements so now we're five years into this and there's 6:59 been number of academic and journalistic investigations of this you probably SE 7:05 the I think the business week Bloomberg Business Week had something uh the guardian um uh a number of academics 7:12 have analyzed this pretty rigorously so I I have a quote here from a study uh that's published in a finance Journal by 7:19 some academics at Yale in Colombia and you can read this quote here relative to 7:24 peers signatories violate environmental and labor laws more frequently have higher carbon commissions rely more on 7:31 government subsidies and are more likely to disagree with proxy recommendations on shareholder proposals which are 7:36 frequently around you know a variety of social good areas I read that because it 7:42 is really even surprising to me that they are doing worse on all of these 7:50 stakeholder focused topics than than their peers uh and I would have maybe 7:57 not thought they would do worse I thought maybe they just would do about the same um another uh paper that that 8:03 analyzed this actually tries to explain this you know why are they actually doing doing worse uh and it and they 8:10 refer to it as like a moral licensing problem so you know this idea is more 8:15 prevalent in Psychology you know many of you I see some some head shaking are familiar with it you know the idea that 8:20 if you do something good you feel licensed to do something bad so you know I sort of got up early and worked out 8:27 this morning so I you know had a donnut after after lunch I felt totally I felt licensed to do that so you know these 8:34 companies by saying that they're you know stakeholder focused actually feel emboldened to actually you know violate 8:40 that in more substantial ways which these very rigorous analyses have shown uh I won't belabor you at the point but 8:47 also a lot of the um you know governmental efforts over the past 8:52 decade for companies to be more sustainable they've also worked very hard to block as well as um undermining 9:00 a variety of other programs so so so you could one on the one hand say the 9:06 Business Roundtable large companies you know these are sort of bad apples these are companies that you know they're just 9:13 really focused on short-term profit so you know of course you know you can't um you know you sort of can't trust them uh 9:20 but I think the bigger issue is that this idea of stakeholder capitalism uh that they're supposedly following and 9:26 that is widespreadly believed there 's actually uh almost 10,000 studies in the 9:33 academic literature that look at this idea and how um you know being more 9:39 stakeholder oriented is good for for companies so this is an incredibly widespread um you know set of ideas but 9:46 I think it's actually problematic for a couple reasons one is I think it it it encourages firms to 9:53 greenwash not although there might be some greenwashing in a traditional sense where they're just communicating things 10:00 and not doing them I think this is a greenwashing uh in a term of 10:05 selectively uh doing positive things to distract from other negative things so 10:10 it's like oh I'm doing this sort of shiny stakeholder capitalism thing ignore the fact that 10:16 I'm doing all these um negative things so some of my academic research has looked at similar uh processes I'll 10:23 example that in a second I also think it it relies on very questionable 10:28 assumptions that doing well uh excuse me doing good leads to to doing well uh 10:35 this is also something you hear a lot about when you're talking to businesses about sustainability and clearly there 10:42 are examples where you know companies have environmental they they install LED 10:48 lights and they have some environmental savings and and this is like good for their bottom line and good for the 10:53 environment uh but those examples are minuscule compared to the big problems 11:00 that business cause and I think that you know relying on this doing well by doing good actually distracts from much more 11:07 fundamental um uh reforms which are totally necessary uh and I think this business Round Table example in 11:14 particular is one where you know if they're able to actually convince the 11:20 public and lawmakers which I think they generally have that oh this is in our 11:25 interest you know we have this win-win we're going to do well we're this will lead to you know or excuse me do good 11:31 this will lead to us doing well that there's much less pressure on them to do 11:37 um you know sort of negative or do do uh sort of uh real reform you see this 11:42 today interestingly in AI company governance uh um a lot of the AI 11:48 companies from anthropic and open Ai and and xai Elon musks um Venture are 11:55 organizing as benefit corporations which are companies that have governance that 12:01 that supposedly tie them Beyond shareholder Primacy and I think that a big reason for this is they're trying to 12:06 avoid um avoid regulation so an example of this a 12:12 little more concrete is Pepsi so Pepsi is a company that is lotted for its 12:20 focus on stakeholders it wins Awards you can see this just Capital uh you know seal they have here for being on the 12:26 just Capital 100 uh which is based on sort of a stakeholder logic they get 12:32 written up for for buying B corporations uh and I'm sure they do 12:38 great things in whatever they're be they're being rated on however like the 12:43 fundamental business of Pepsi is pretty destructive in my opinion uh sure you 12:48 know of course we should all be able to drink you know soft drinks if we want but the focus they've had on um uh on 12:57 the ingredients uh around high fructose corn syrup which has been tied to being 13:03 a carcinogen their Fredo division has actually has been exposed for actually 13:10 making food more addictive um and these are practices which they actually Lobby 13:16 the government to um to be able to continue perpetuating so um so that's 13:22 sort of one issue also with pollution is another uh another big issue and plastic 13:29 is a huge problem in our world as as many of you know and recycling of 13:35 plastic really is not working uh very effectively but they're very actively telling people how they should recycle 13:42 PL uh Etc okay uh a a second issue that I mentioned is this wiwin logic there's 13:48 been a lot of debunking of studies that have focused on this idea that doing well by doing good very thin uh evidence 13:57 so I think that the stakeholder logic around business reform is 14:04 insufficient you know of course businesses should do well by their employees they should do well by their customers I'm not saying that we should 14:09 ignore you know sort of ignore stakeholders but this is a logic to actually sort of improve and reform and 14:15 make the world better I think is very lacking so I think that that businesses should be much more accountable for 14:22 their underlying business model and what that business model actually delivers to the world and that means that we don't 14:28 just look at selective positives but we actually dig into the negatives uh that 14:35 result from uh from from the business production so the subtitle of the book 14:40 how business privatizes profit and socializes cost focuses on uh the concept of externalities which I I 14:48 unpack a lot in the book and you can see here it illustrated by this um by this 14:53 nice little graphic uh from a New York Times article from a couple months ago that I highly recommend very good uh 14:59 discussion of of how much of you know what we eat and consume and buy actually 15:04 has huge amounts of externalities uh in the costs and you can see here for beef 15:10 you know people pay $5 dollar but actually um you know lot lots of lots of external costs from emissions and and 15:17 land use Etc so when I've briefly introduced the book 15:22 to to various uh faculty and friends in economics uh no offense to any 15:28 economists in the room you know they say oh you know we've have externalities figured out we're we're economists um 15:34 and I well anyways there's a lot of good Insight from economists on externalities I don't want any hard questions from you 15:40 later uh but uh but I think we need to do a lot more uh in a couple ways so one 15:48 is that the systems that are usually um sort of articulated like that cow beef 15:55 externality diagram are focused on the a that we can actually really accurately 16:02 price uh an account for externalities through some um you know sort of Market 16:07 or pricing logic certainly I think trying to dig into that is really really important but I think that just focusing 16:13 on the economics and accounting aspect misses how socially and politically constructed uh these ideas 16:20 are uh companies are very actively lobing and doing PR and communication uh 16:27 uh PL programs to actually deflect uh attention from many of the the uh areas 16:33 that they uh focus on a big focus of the book I have a whole chapter on these in 16:38 misinformation strategies I won't go over them in detail but but a lot of work um from companies like pepsy in the 16:45 packaging industry uh have been on you know socializing ideas of the litter 16:50 buug and individual carbon footprints that actually transfers the 16:56 responsibility of waste and emission to individuals as opposed to companies and I think this is something we need to you 17:02 know sort of reverse and actually understand how um you know how these you know our our ideas of what a responsible 17:09 company is uh have been shaped by those companies themselves in a way that very is very 17:14 self-interested I think it also ignores how endemic the issues around 17:21 externalities are uh and there's a semi list there the environmental ones are 17:27 ones that actually get a lot of headlines but there's a lot of socially oriented ones around income and wealth 17:33 inequality and discrimination and most of these costs 17:38 are actually being borne by people you know very far away from where we are here and living in very different 17:45 circumstances uh than than we are here and so you know we have these sort of wonderful lives that are you know not 17:52 almost completely but very substantially um underwritten by people living in very poor uh conditions and I 17:59 think that is something we need to put a lot more attention on so that in general 18:06 is you know some of the critique um what I think looking more positively I am 18:12 actually pretty optimistic um and and and and sort of Reform Orient reform 18:17 thinking person uh and I do think that actually unpacking this idea of 18:22 externalities and the societal uh and political processes underlying that actually help businesses 18:30 identify uh areas for Innovation uh and also how Collective 18:36 action is important uh in in this as well let me give you one example of this is a company I studied called Grove 18:42 collaborative actually one of The Inspirations for this book uh was in an interview that I did with uh the co 18:49 co-founder and chair uh who's there Stu lansberg who's now a pretty pretty good friend uh and he described to me how 18:57 when they his company when he found founded this thought about responsibility it was about eliminating 19:03 plastic and you know you think about this business I I should tell you what they do I guess I guess first so they 19:09 are like a HomeGoods and cleaning supply and health and beauty uh company and 19:15 produce all kinds of products that are traditionally delivered in liquid form 19:20 which means that actually plastic is a pretty important material because to to 19:25 to sort of ship um uh and and deliver to consumer this liquids you need some non-porous 19:31 type container so he said you know we are not focused you know we're certainly 19:37 focused on our employees and communities Etc but we realize that if we want to be a responsible company we have to focus 19:43 on the externality that most stems from our business and that is plastic and 19:49 this actually Focus has led to an amazing set of Innovations and business 19:54 process re-engineering within the firm for instance as someone uh who grew up in the 1970s and 80s you know I did not

The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profits and Socializes Costs Transcript 0:00 to 19:54 Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University 29JAN2025 youtube.com/watch?v=Aqor91e-… From climate change to inequality, public leaders grapple with some of the biggest crises of our day. Addressing them requires multi-sector approaches that rebalance the interrelationships between corporations, governments, and civil society. Christopher Marquis of the Cambridge Judge Business School and author of the book The Profiteers: How Business Privatizes Profit and Socializes Cost, explored economics-driven assumptions of our world from a sociological perspective at the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University, moderated by Center faculty affiliate and Harvard Kennedy School professor Matthew Lee. The event was co-sponsored by the Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University and Social Innovation + Change Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. Ask Get answers, explore topics, and more Ask questions Chapters View all Transcript Follow along using the transcript. Show transcript Bloomberg Center for Cities at Harvard University Chapters Transcript 0:00 good afternoon thank you for joining us my name is Matthew Lee I'm an associate professor here at the Harvard Kennedy 0:07 School and it's my pleasure to welcome you here to the Bloomberg Center for cities for this afternoon's event uh 0:12 with Professor Christopher Maris Christopher Marquis is the senior professor at the judge business school 0:18 previously he was a professor at the Harvard Business School and the Cornell Johnson school he's an award-winning researcher having published countless 0:25 articles in leading journals on issues related to corporate social responsibility insti Theory and on 0:31 business and Society issues in China his productivity across a wide variety of topics is the stuff of Legend Among Us 0:37 management Scholars on a personal note I'd add that Chris is a generous friend and Mentor who had a major impact on my 0:43 own development as a co-author and academic mentor of mine uh when I was a doctoral student at HBS so this 0:50 afternoon's program will proceed as follows we'll start with Chris giving a brief summary of his book The propers 0:57 and remarks about um the ideas that he velops in his new book we'll then have a conversation uh between Chris and I 1:04 about a few questions that came up for me as I was reading the book finally we'll reserve the last 20 minutes or so 1:10 for questions from the audience uh and with that let me hand it over to 1:20 Chris he uh well thank you so much Matt for the kind introduction thank you all for coming really wonderful to be here 1:27 at the kendi school in this space I I actually spent 2017 and 2018 here as a 1:32 visiting faculty member and there wasn't anything uh like this so it's so really amazing to to see this um I mentioned 1:39 that because actually a lot of the ideas that I've developed in this book actually I think I can trace to some of 1:44 my time at the Kennedy School and particularly around the critique of business and the need for systemic 1:51 change so my book is called the profiteers how business privatizes profit and socializes cost uh I'll 1:57 present a couple ideas uh from the book obviously 20 minutes I'm not going to present um the whole thing I can't talk 2:04 that fast but um but a couple things so first of all regarding the title uh so 2:11 it's very much a critique of our current uh business and economic system however 2:19 if the publisher would have let me I would have had a little bit of a longer title and sort of after how business 2:25 privatizes profit and socializes cost would have and what we can do about it because 2:30 a lot of the book as well is trying to understand how businesses in many cases 2:36 working with policy makers and uh the NGS can actually help reverse some of 2:43 the systemic problems um that we have so we need these changes now because you 2:49 know the world is in a tremendously dire situation you probably hear this and see 2:55 this all the time so I won't Bel labor you with all the headlines here but from climate inequality issues of systemic 3:02 discrimination you know there are really big challenges that we have in the world and business I think many times gets 3:08 blamed for them and I think rightfully so however as well I think that business 3:14 can help provide some solutions although you know I want to don't want to sound like a Pana but I want to say that 3:20 actually working very much hand inand with uh with policy makers as where 3:26 where we're going to end up a major critique that I think is in many cases right on target as to why uh we're in 3:34 this situation is that you know the neoliberal um system that is really 3:39 dominant nowadays has focused on uh an economic system where companies 3:45 particularly publicly tra publicly traded companies are beholden in a very short-term fashion to their shareholders 3:53 so in order to actually deliver quarterly returns they sacrifice on a lot of environmental and social goods 4:00 and this has led to huge levels of inequality over the past 50 years and lots of environmental degradation I 4:06 generally think this is at some level a a reasonable and you know accurate critique but why I wrote the book and 4:14 and where I think that a lot of the solutions have gone wrong is that 4:20 they've been focused on an idea that business shouldn't just focus on its shareholders but should focus on a 4:26 broader set of stakeholders I think that sort of makes sense you know like okay let's just not focus on this one limited 4:33 group but actually open it up and focus on a broader set of them however you know as I'll say a little bit about I 4:39 think this also introduces a lot of really serious problems that we need to be uh thinking differently about so you 4:46 know this idea of stakeholder capitalism businesses focusing on stakeholders you know is really famously been introduced 4:54 by these leading organizations like the world economic Forum The Business Roundtable you know equally as Elite 5:00 this is the trade group of the 200 largest US firms uh huge press coverage 5:06 on their you know statement around business being responsible to all or committed to all stakeholders uh I you 5:14 know at the time thought you know I'm not really sure if they'll actually follow through on that but at least it gets it in the public conversation but 5:21 actually I don't even think it's worth it getting in the public conversation based on sort of the progress that that 5:27 is that has occurred uh you know the problem is I think these actors have found is that when you say something 5:34 people will check later on if you actually do it and you know this uh 5:39 stakeholder capitalism idea of the business round table has really turned out in my opinion to be a big giant 5:45 greenwashing effort so very early on there were a number of case studies that 5:50 journalists mostly picked up upon that really show the inconsistency so you have this example here in the New York 5:57 Times where Marriotts a signatory to the business Round Table 6:02 sort of in aide is that Marriott is actually very uh involved at Cornell in its Hotel school where I used to 6:08 actually be a faculty member and the CEO of Marriott is always talking about their you know commitment to the 6:14 business Round Table however as this article very I think as astutely and 6:19 accurately portrays uh when Co hit you know of course Hospitality businesses 6:25 have to make hard choices you know you can't necessarily keep employ everyone 6:30 um but they were very quick quicker than many competitors in laying people off 6:36 cutting benefits uh again I you know willing to be open-minded about this it's it's a hard time however at the 6:43 same time they increased their dividend and gave their CEO arrays so this 6:48 dichotomy I think really points to the sort of inconsistencies of these um 6:53 stakeholder capitalism uh pronouncements so now we're five years into this and there's 6:59 been number of academic and journalistic investigations of this you probably SE 7:05 the I think the business week Bloomberg Business Week had something uh the guardian um uh a number of academics 7:12 have analyzed this pretty rigorously so I I have a quote here from a study uh that's published in a finance Journal by 7:19 some academics at Yale in Colombia and you can read this quote here relative to 7:24 peers signatories violate environmental and labor laws more frequently have higher carbon commissions rely more on 7:31 government subsidies and are more likely to disagree with proxy recommendations on shareholder proposals which are 7:36 frequently around you know a variety of social good areas I read that because it 7:42 is really even surprising to me that they are doing worse on all of these 7:50 stakeholder focused topics than than their peers uh and I would have maybe 7:57 not thought they would do worse I thought maybe they just would do about the same um another uh paper that that 8:03 analyzed this actually tries to explain this you know why are they actually doing doing worse uh and it and they 8:10 refer to it as like a moral licensing problem so you know this idea is more 8:15 prevalent in Psychology you know many of you I see some some head shaking are familiar with it you know the idea that 8:20 if you do something good you feel licensed to do something bad so you know I sort of got up early and worked out 8:27 this morning so I you know had a donnut after after lunch I felt totally I felt licensed to do that so you know these 8:34 companies by saying that they're you know stakeholder focused actually feel emboldened to actually you know violate 8:40 that in more substantial ways which these very rigorous analyses have shown uh I won't belabor you at the point but 8:47 also a lot of the um you know governmental efforts over the past 8:52 decade for companies to be more sustainable they've also worked very hard to block as well as um undermining 9:00 a variety of other programs so so so you could one on the one hand say the 9:06 Business Roundtable large companies you know these are sort of bad apples these are companies that you know they're just 9:13 really focused on short-term profit so you know of course you know you can't um you know you sort of can't trust them uh 9:20 but I think the bigger issue is that this idea of stakeholder capitalism uh that they're supposedly following and 9:26 that is widespreadly believed there 's actually uh almost 10,000 studies in the 9:33 academic literature that look at this idea and how um you know being more 9:39 stakeholder oriented is good for for companies so this is an incredibly widespread um you know set of ideas but 9:46 I think it's actually problematic for a couple reasons one is I think it it it encourages firms to 9:53 greenwash not although there might be some greenwashing in a traditional sense where they're just communicating things 10:00 and not doing them I think this is a greenwashing uh in a term of 10:05 selectively uh doing positive things to distract from other negative things so 10:10 it's like oh I'm doing this sort of shiny stakeholder capitalism thing ignore the fact that 10:16 I'm doing all these um negative things so some of my academic research has looked at similar uh processes I'll 10:23 example that in a second I also think it it relies on very questionable 10:28 assumptions that doing well uh excuse me doing good leads to to doing well uh 10:35 this is also something you hear a lot about when you're talking to businesses about sustainability and clearly there 10:42 are examples where you know companies have environmental they they install LED 10:48 lights and they have some environmental savings and and this is like good for their bottom line and good for the 10:53 environment uh but those examples are minuscule compared to the big problems 11:00 that business cause and I think that you know relying on this doing well by doing good actually distracts from much more 11:07 fundamental um uh reforms which are totally necessary uh and I think this business Round Table example in 11:14 particular is one where you know if they're able to actually convince the 11:20 public and lawmakers which I think they generally have that oh this is in our 11:25 interest you know we have this win-win we're going to do well we're this will lead to you know or excuse me do good 11:31 this will lead to us doing well that there's much less pressure on them to do 11:37 um you know sort of negative or do do uh sort of uh real reform you see this 11:42 today interestingly in AI company governance uh um a lot of the AI 11:48 companies from anthropic and open Ai and and xai Elon musks um Venture are 11:55 organizing as benefit corporations which are companies that have governance that 12:01 that supposedly tie them Beyond shareholder Primacy and I think that a big reason for this is they're trying to 12:06 avoid um avoid regulation so an example of this a 12:12 little more concrete is Pepsi so Pepsi is a company that is lotted for its 12:20 focus on stakeholders it wins Awards you can see this just Capital uh you know seal they have here for being on the 12:26 just Capital 100 uh which is based on sort of a stakeholder logic they get 12:32 written up for for buying B corporations uh and I'm sure they do 12:38 great things in whatever they're be they're being rated on however like the 12:43 fundamental business of Pepsi is pretty destructive in my opinion uh sure you 12:48 know of course we should all be able to drink you know soft drinks if we want but the focus they've had on um uh on 12:57 the ingredients uh around high fructose corn syrup which has been tied to being 13:03 a carcinogen their Fredo division has actually has been exposed for actually 13:10 making food more addictive um and these are practices which they actually Lobby 13:16 the government to um to be able to continue perpetuating so um so that's 13:22 sort of one issue also with pollution is another uh another big issue and plastic 13:29 is a huge problem in our world as as many of you know and recycling of 13:35 plastic really is not working uh very effectively but they're very actively telling people how they should recycle 13:42 PL uh Etc okay uh a a second issue that I mentioned is this wiwin logic there's 13:48 been a lot of debunking of studies that have focused on this idea that doing well by doing good very thin uh evidence 13:57 so I think that the stakeholder logic around business reform is 14:04 insufficient you know of course businesses should do well by their employees they should do well by their customers I'm not saying that we should 14:09 ignore you know sort of ignore stakeholders but this is a logic to actually sort of improve and reform and 14:15 make the world better I think is very lacking so I think that that businesses should be much more accountable for 14:22 their underlying business model and what that business model actually delivers to the world and that means that we don't 14:28 just look at selective positives but we actually dig into the negatives uh that 14:35 result from uh from from the business production so the subtitle of the book 14:40 how business privatizes profit and socializes cost focuses on uh the concept of externalities which I I 14:48 unpack a lot in the book and you can see here it illustrated by this um by this 14:53 nice little graphic uh from a New York Times article from a couple months ago that I highly recommend very good uh 14:59 discussion of of how much of you know what we eat and consume and buy actually 15:04 has huge amounts of externalities uh in the costs and you can see here for beef 15:10 you know people pay $5 dollar but actually um you know lot lots of lots of external costs from emissions and and 15:17 land use Etc so when I've briefly introduced the book 15:22 to to various uh faculty and friends in economics uh no offense to any 15:28 economists in the room you know they say oh you know we've have externalities figured out we're we're economists um 15:34 and I well anyways there's a lot of good Insight from economists on externalities I don't want any hard questions from you 15:40 later uh but uh but I think we need to do a lot more uh in a couple ways so one 15:48 is that the systems that are usually um sort of articulated like that cow beef 15:55 externality diagram are focused on the a that we can actually really accurately 16:02 price uh an account for externalities through some um you know sort of Market 16:07 or pricing logic certainly I think trying to dig into that is really really important but I think that just focusing 16:13 on the economics and accounting aspect misses how socially and politically constructed uh these ideas 16:20 are uh companies are very actively lobing and doing PR and communication uh 16:27 uh PL programs to actually deflect uh attention from many of the the uh areas 16:33 that they uh focus on a big focus of the book I have a whole chapter on these in 16:38 misinformation strategies I won't go over them in detail but but a lot of work um from companies like pepsy in the 16:45 packaging industry uh have been on you know socializing ideas of the litter 16:50 buug and individual carbon footprints that actually transfers the 16:56 responsibility of waste and emission to individuals as opposed to companies and I think this is something we need to you 17:02 know sort of reverse and actually understand how um you know how these you know our our ideas of what a responsible 17:09 company is uh have been shaped by those companies themselves in a way that very is very 17:14 self-interested I think it also ignores how endemic the issues around 17:21 externalities are uh and there's a semi list there the environmental ones are 17:27 ones that actually get a lot of headlines but there's a lot of socially oriented ones around income and wealth 17:33 inequality and discrimination and most of these costs 17:38 are actually being borne by people you know very far away from where we are here and living in very different 17:45 circumstances uh than than we are here and so you know we have these sort of wonderful lives that are you know not 17:52 almost completely but very substantially um underwritten by people living in very poor uh conditions and I 17:59 think that is something we need to put a lot more attention on so that in general 18:06 is you know some of the critique um what I think looking more positively I am 18:12 actually pretty optimistic um and and and and sort of Reform Orient reform 18:17 thinking person uh and I do think that actually unpacking this idea of 18:22 externalities and the societal uh and political processes underlying that actually help businesses 18:30 identify uh areas for Innovation uh and also how Collective 18:36 action is important uh in in this as well let me give you one example of this is a company I studied called Grove 18:42 collaborative actually one of The Inspirations for this book uh was in an interview that I did with uh the co 18:49 co-founder and chair uh who's there Stu lansberg who's now a pretty pretty good friend uh and he described to me how 18:57 when they his company when he found founded this thought about responsibility it was about eliminating 19:03 plastic and you know you think about this business I I should tell you what they do I guess I guess first so they 19:09 are like a HomeGoods and cleaning supply and health and beauty uh company and 19:15 produce all kinds of products that are traditionally delivered in liquid form 19:20 which means that actually plastic is a pretty important material because to to 19:25 to sort of ship um uh and and deliver to consumer this liquids you need some non-porous 19:31 type container so he said you know we are not focused you know we're certainly 19:37 focused on our employees and communities Etc but we realize that if we want to be a responsible company we have to focus 19:43 on the externality that most stems from our business and that is plastic and 19:49 this actually Focus has led to an amazing set of Innovations and business 19:54 process re-engineering within the firm for instance as someone uh who grew up in the 1970s and 80s you know I did not

Protecting nature means valuing biodiversity 14OCT2026 nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Appeals for extra money are failing. Fundamental changes are needed to safeguard the planet for future generations. The words of Canadian-American singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell’s 1970 environmental anthem Big Yellow Taxi will be echoing in the halls of the United Nations biodiversity conference (COP17) in Yerevan, Armenia, that begins on 19 October. Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone They paved paradise And put up a parking lot. “Nature is in freefall,” according to the Living Planet Report 2026, published on 7 October by conservation charity WWF. Between 1970 and 2022, the sizes of vertebrate wildlife populations that WWF research teams have been monitoring decreased by 73% (see go.nature.com/4zy2zxd). Almost four years ago at COP15 in Montreal, Canada, countries agreed on targets to stop and eventually reverse biodiversity loss by 2050. The goals included protecting 30% of land and water habitats by 2030 (also called the 30 × 30 target) and to substantially increase annual funding for conservation from public and private sources — to at least US$30 billion for low-income nations and small island states — by the end of the decade. Although these goals are not currently on course to be met, official figures could be underestimating the global amount of protected land, suggests a study published on 14 October (H. M. K. O’Neill et al. Nature doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-1…; 2026). The Living Planet Report notes that some species are no longer considered endangered — including the Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) and the green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas). But if the global decline in biodiversity is to be halted, a much more fundamental change is needed: the value of natural capital and ecosystem services must be factored into nation's decision-making. Joni Mitchell performed her environmental anthem Big Yellow Taxi at the 1970 Isle of Wight Festival, which attracted around 600,000 people. Credit: Tony Russell/Redferns/Getty

Does the decline of book reading mark the end of rational thinking? BOOK REVIEW 12OCT2026 David Adam nature.com/articles/d41586-0… Smartphones and artificial intelligence are undermining our ability to follow a complex argument, with grave consequences. The New Dark Ages: The End of Reading and the Dawn of a Post-Literate Society James Marriott Bodley Head (2026) The thriller novelist Dan Brown writes books that some critics complain are for people who don’t read books. The journalist and former rare-book seller James Marriott has now written a book for people who read books about people who don’t. That must have been an interesting sales pitch. What’s next — a 3.5-hour-long radio documentary about declining attention spans? A literary cliff edge: people enjoying the written word on World Book Day in Hunan, China. Credit: TPG/Getty