{"id":4795,"date":"2025-01-16T17:50:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T17:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/global-social-challenges\/?p=4795"},"modified":"2025-01-20T18:50:38","modified_gmt":"2025-01-20T18:50:38","slug":"how-corporations-could-be-destroying-our-planet-and-using-us-to-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.manchester.ac.uk\/global-social-challenges\/2025\/01\/16\/how-corporations-could-be-destroying-our-planet-and-using-us-to-do-it\/","title":{"rendered":"How Corporations Could be Destroying our Planet and Using Us to Do It."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Article by\u00a0Daisy Mardell<\/strong><\/p>\n

Photo by Frugal Flyer<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

As consumers, we often feel it\u2019s our responsibility to change our spending habits to tackle the climate crisis. We are urged to go vegan or vegetarian, to \u2018shop sustainably\u2019, to use public transport, but don\u2019t fly, to buy reusable cleaning products and stop using plastic straws. But what if we hold no power over our consumption habits? What if corporations are influencing our spending habits in a way we can\u2019t control, to generate profits at the expense of our environment?<\/p>\n

Corporations must be understood as fundamentally reliant on society. As Joel Bakan<\/a> (2004) sets out; because corporations rely so heavily on being accepted by society and operate in the legal, political and economic framework set out by society, they must be a social institution. Considering the main goal of the corporation is to generate profits, this framework results in a society where firms are fighting for the attention of society, to create trends and influence spending habits without much consideration of our environment. Joel Bakan (2004) also points out the bizarre structure of corporations in the USA where corporations are considered, through legal framework as \u2018persons\u2019. This means corporations can acquire assets, employ workers, pay taxes, and go to court to assert their rights and defend their actions (Bakan 2004). The idea that corporations have free speech and share other rights with people has detrimental impacts on advertising. It is well established particularly by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein<\/a> (2009) that behavioural economics impacts many of the decisions we make, without us even realising it, especially through advertising. Behavioural economics combined with the corporation\u2019s ability to act as a person and be a social institution creates a situation where consumers hold little to no power over their own consumption decisions.<\/p>\n

Of course, corporations being social institutions means society, through protests and boycotting, has an impact on how corporations act. The economic system corporations operate in also means firms are incentivised to innovate, perhaps towards the wants and needs of society and therefore to the benefit of society or the environment, such as Musk\u2019s innovation of electric cars and the trend setting Tesla. However, it may be argued any attempt corporations make to combat climate change is driven by government policy and not by following the demands of society. To stick with the Tesla example, California requires net zero emissions vehicles be sold in the state, this policy was adopted by many other countries and allowed Tesla to benefit<\/a> (Forbes, 2022). Furthermore, Tesla also relied on selling regulatory credits to other car manufacturers, profiting off their emissions and received vast subsidies and other government support (Forbes, 2022). This demonstrates how corporations are not driven by the demands of society.<\/p>\n

It is clear to see corporations hold vast power over the spending, consumption habits and trends of society and society holds very little power over the innovation and production of firms. This means firms can create framework that can be detrimental to our society and the environment. John Urry<\/a> (2009) sets out various systems in which corporations work with the consumer to harm the environment. One of these systems is the High Mobility System which demonstrates that as high carbon travel becomes cheaper and more accessible, people want to move further and further every day. This perpetuates consumerism and creates what Urry (2009) described as the mobility complex where consumers believe this is a normal way of life, increasing emissions. This system combined with behavioural economics demonstrates how corporations are fuelling a mobility complex and therefore fuelling climate change. Urry (2009) also discusses excess capitalism which is the idea that the high carbon society of the \u2018rich north\u2019 is a product of late 20th<\/sup> century capitalism. This further demonstrates how corporations could be manipulating our consumption habits.<\/p>\n

It is clear that corporations and capitalism have a great impact on how we spend our money. Through advertising, trend setting and creating harmful products to make our lives more convenient, corporations are contributing, more than any individual to climate change. Through driving excess capitalism, high carbon societies and high mobility systems, corporations are destroying our planet by influencing our consumption habits. These theories and systems don\u2019t even take into consideration the harmful impacts of single use products that corporations sell to us and tell us we need. Any attempt to argue corporations innovate to listen to the demand of their consumers is drowned by the lack of control the consumer has over their spending habits.<\/p>\n

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