Corporations Can’t Deliver on Climate: Toward Global Public Goods

COP26 convenes at a time when vastly different visions of climate transition compete for supremacy. Large corporations around the World Economic Forum (WEF) are promoting a “Great Reset” where “stakeholder” capitalism replaces “shareholder” capitalism and are calling for a “resilient energy transition” that “delivers inclusive growth and long-term prosperity.” Larry Fink of BlackRock backs the idea and says he has a public-private climate finance strategy to fund the transition, which on closer inspection asks taxpayers to assume the risks while bankers and speculators take the profits.

Working to Organize the Alternative: Unions + UNCTAD

UNCTAD has articulated the “Geneva Principles for a Global Green New Deal” which combines its longstanding developmental agenda with a “Global Public Goods” agenda that “rebuilds the rules of the global economy toward goals of coordinated stability, shared prosperity, and environmental sustainability, while deliberately respecting the space for national policy sovereignty.”

Many unions (including national centers and global bodies) support a “Global Public Goods” approach because it expresses the need for vital public services to be protected and expanded, and because it has the potential to address the climate emergency through the extension of local public ownership and control of key sectors such as energy, transport and the financial system.

This second session explores how “public-public partnerships” can cultivate the global cooperation and momentum necessary to secure long overdue structural transformation, address rising emissions, respond to “extreme weather events” and advance the dignity and rights of people everywhere. (The first session is available here.)

Moderated by John Treat. Presentations by:

• Sean Sweeney, TUED
• Richard Kozul-Wright, UNCTAD
• Roz Foyer, STUC, UK
• David Gobé, International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF)
• Josua Mata, Sentro, Philippines
• David Boys, Deputy General Secretary, Public Services International (PSI)