Sustainability Series II - Why Companies Should Lobby for Climate and How Employees Can Help

Why Companies Should Lobby for Climate and How Employees Can Help

Climate legislation is at a historic turning point as the Senate debates the Build Back Better Act. But the fight over climate policy in the US is disproportionately dominated by fossil fuel companies and their allies. Big Oil expends nearly 50% of its lobbying power to obstruct climate legislation and has historically outspent pro-climate forces by a factor of10 to 1. As a result of this asymmetry we are losing the climate war.

ClimateVoice aims to shift this imbalance of power by moving a new lever - the workforce. Their vision is that employees and students will demand climate advocacy from top employers and create a tipping point for policy change. To drive accountability they released a Corporate Scorecard evaluating where 20 large US companies stand on the Build Back Better Act. They found that zero companies are fully endorsing this historic climate legislation, 10 are offering cautious support and 10 are obstructing. Fast Company captures the disconnect between corporate rhetoric versus action in this article about the report: Why companies that claim to be "pro-climate" aren't pushing for Biden's climate plan.

Join us for a dynamic conversation about climate advocacy with Bill Weihl and Jennifer Allyn from ClimateVoice. This conversation will be moderated by Kate Sackman Roski ’82 with Kevin Jiang P’25.

Bill Weihl started his career in computer science on the faculty at MIT.  In 2005, he decided to focus his career on climate action, and in 2006, was lucky enough to get a job at Google as Green Energy Czar, leading climate and clean energy work.  After 6 years at Google, he spent 6 years at Facebook as Director of Sustainability.  In 2020, he founded ClimateVoice to mobilize the voice of the workforce to urge companies to go “all in” on climate, both in business practices and policy advocacy.

As Director of Programs & Campaigns for ClimateVoice, Jennifer Allyn is responsible for planning and implementing strategic initiatives to push companies to go “all in” on climate policy. Prior to working on climate, Jennifer was a Managing Director in Diversity and Inclusion at PwC. She  designed strategies to retain, develop and advance women, minority and LGBT+ professionals at the firm. Jennifer graduated from Brown University and earned her Masters’ in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a proud recipient of the 2016 Ted Childs Life Work Excellence Award.

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