NY AG Letitia James’ JBS Lawsuit Exposes Risks To Other Companies’ Net-Zero Promises
When New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against beef giant JBS Foods, alleging deceptive practices over its commitment to achieve net-zero emissions.
She might have inadvertently given companies another reason to resist ESG commitments. [emphasis, links added]
Consumers’ Research, a consumer advocacy nonprofit, sent letters to three major companies that have made similar commitments to warn them they are exposing themselves to potential litigation.
Now, attorney generals in four states are contacting those companies to say the comparisons between their statements and those of JBS are “stark” and “raise real concerns.”
No proven practices
JBS Foods advertises its commitment to have its operations reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2040. This includes reducing emissions in all JBS facilities by 30% by 2030 and using 100% renewable electricity by 2040.
In her complaint, James states that the company had no plan to reach net zero by 2040, and even if it had, JBS “could not feasibly meet its pledge because there are no proven agricultural practices to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero at the JBS Group’s current scale.”
The complaint also argues that offsetting those emissions would be very expensive, to an “unprecedented degree.”
In other words, according to the lawsuit, JBS [can’t produce beef] at the scale the company does without producing emissions, and any plan to eliminate those emissions would be cost-prohibitive. This is precisely the argument net-zero critics are making about all big industries.
Many companies, however, make such commitments, and climate activists are pushing back against what they call “greenwashing.”
Greenwashing, according to the anti-fossil fuel NRDC, is “the act of making false or misleading statements about the environmental benefits of a product or practice.”
James’ lawsuit unintentionally raises the question: should companies make sustainability and ESG commitments if they cannot produce their products at scale without emissions, and will go bankrupt if they try – and get sued when they can’t?
Virtue signaling
Consumers’ Research has been raising concerns about how ESG commitments potentially harm agricultural operations and drive up costs, which they argue ultimately get passed down to the consumer.
In July, the group launched a six-figure advertising campaign to raise awareness of the impact ESG has on America’s farms and Americans’ grocery bills.
After James announced her suit, the group noticed that there was nothing unique about JBS’s ESG commitments. Many other food companies have made similar statements.
So Consumers’ Research sent letters to a few of these companies warning them that if JBS can get sued for its sustainability commitments, any company with similar commitments may be exposing itself to litigation if it cannot live up to those promises.
“They shouldn’t have taken on, for virtue-signaling purposes, a promise that they can’t meet. But now is the opportunity for them to walk that back. And that’s why we wanted to send those letters to help them understand the consequences,” Will Hild, executive director of Consumers’ Research, told Just the News. …
Growing concern
Hild said that the goal is that consumers don’t get double charged for ineffective investments in trying to reach net zero, then possibly for the costs of litigation when they get sued.
The arguments Consumers’ Research made in the letters got the attention of the attorney generals of Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Tennessee.
The AGs sent letters to the same companies, warning them of the “growing concern” surrounding companies making misleading statements and the state’s consumer protection laws.
The AGs also ask the companies to confirm whether the statements Consumers’ Research cites reflect their current commitments and to supply any commitment or pledges to meet net zero that the company has in effect. …
Full retreat
Many companies are quietly retreating from sustainability commitments. Net Zero Tracker cheered when the number of companies with net zero targets rose 40% between June 2022 and October 2023, surpassing 1,000 companies from within the Forbes Global 2000 list of the world’s largest companies.
The problem is that it’s very easy to promise net zero, and it’s another thing entirely to actually deliver.
The same study also noted that only 4% of those companies demonstrate any clear plan to reach those goals.
A survey by Bain & Co. found that with CEOs, sustainability has taken a backseat to concerns about inflation, artificial intelligence, and geopolitics.
Morgan Stanley, Bloomberg reports, quietly omitted an ESG pledge to facilitate the prevention, removal, or reduction of 50 million metric tons of plastic waste by 2030.
A Bloomberg Intelligence analysis found that most U.S. companies have significantly scaled back their discussions of ESG and similar topics in quarterly earnings calls.
Google this year stopped claiming to be carbon neutral
See more here Climate Dispatch
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