Up to a Point: Corporations, the Profit Motive and the Climate Crisis

18 May 2025

By Robert C. Hinkley

The world needs a way to stop the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The fossil fuel companies and their largest customers aren’t going to be shamed into it.  A solution will need to be in the form of laws that make them stop.

The problem is complicated by the fact that it is a global problem.  Emissions anywhere contribute to global warming everywhere.  There is no one legislative body that has the authority to pass a law that every corporation must follow.  That means, to avert the crisis, the necessary prohibitions will need to be enacted almost everywhere.  This seems like a big ask.

However, if we step back to get another perspective, it may not be as daunting as it first appears.  The climate crisis isn’t upon us because every emission of GHGs is a problem.  It’s looming over us because, for a long time, a few emitters emitted large quantities each day and each day those emissions continued.  The effect has been that the amount of carbon in the atmosphere has accumulated beyond safe levels.  The threat has grown to become severe.

Corporations aren’t going to stop so long as they continue to have large amounts invested in the businesses responsible and those operations remain legal. The people running those businesses aren’t going to voluntarily make them stop and incur the write-offs that would result.  Indeed, existing law encourages (if not, requires) them to continue.  It tells them they must pursue “their company’s best interests.”

We know this directive to pursue self-interest as the profit motive.  It’s the basis for all major corporate decisions.  Our economy, in fact our civilisation, runs on it.  The wisdom behind it goes largely unquestioned. 

As long as it does, the climate crisis will continue to become more dire and other corporate abuses of the public interest will appear and also inflict severe harm.  The development of artificial intelligence may turn out to be the next example.

In a democracy, all behaviour is permitted unless a law is enacted requiring it to stop. Laws are usually only passed to protect the public interest after the need to do so has been identified by some one or some thing inflicting harm on the planet or others.  However, this system can be thwarted.  Big corporations and their lobbyists have become proficient at frustrating such laws when they would cause great expense to a business’s operations.

It is now obvious that some corporations (including, but not limited to, the fossil fuel companies and their largest customers), can forever delay and frustrate the passage of laws which would make them stop. 

This leads to human beings sharing a world alongside powerful institutions which have (i) tremendous capacity to harm the public interest, (ii) no obligation to protect it, (iii) a legally endorsed inclination to continue and (iv) the ability to obstruct the enactment of new laws which would require them to stop. 

In his 1983 book, Statecraft as Soulcraft, the columnist George Will wrote, “The most important four words in politics are ‘up to a point.’” He elaborated: “Are we in favour of free speech? Of course — up to a point. Are we for liberty, equality, military strength, industrial vigour, environmental protection, traffic safety? Up to a point.”  

To this I would add, “Are we in favour of corporations having a profit motive?”  Of course—up to a point.  That being said, the totally unrestrained pursuit of self-interest by powerful corporations sooner or later had to result in unbearable damage which would outweigh the public benefit the abusers generate.  

With regard to GHG emissions, we have reached that point.  When emissions threaten: the value of trillions of dollars of property, the lives of millions and maybe even the existence of human life on Earth, something has to be changed to make them stop. 

No corporation should have the inclination or right to continue behaviour it knows is causing severe harm.  Allowing it to continue, is beyond irresponsible.  It’s uncivilized.  There must be a way to turn it off as soon as it is discovered. 

It shouldn’t take decades waiting for government to pass new legislation or  novel legal theories to work their way through the courts.  The people in charge, directors, should have an overriding duty to stop the harm their company is causing. 

The solution lies in trimming the profit motive to make it clear that the pursuit of a corporation’s best interests doesn’t include operating in a manner that causes severe damage to the environment.  Luckily, there is a way this can be achieved. 

To kerb GHG emissions, there needs to be a change in the way corporations think.  The way to do it is to change the way existing law requires how directors make their decisions.  Currently, the law tells them all major decisions must be made in “the company’s best interests.”  We now understand how that can become a problem.

This law needs to be changed from requiring directors to run their business in the best interests of their company to requiring them to act in the best interests of their company “without causing severe damage to the environment.”  It’s that simple.

Once this change is made, everyone will know that a director’s obligation to his or her company, has limits.  When a company is discovered severely damaging the environment, everyone will know the directors’ primary duty shifts from pursuing their company’s self-interest to protecting the environment (regardless of the financial consequences to the company). 

That’s not too much to ask. By the time they’ve been discovered inflicting severe harm, they’ve gone beyond the point where their pursuit of the profit motive is a net benefit to society.  

Making the change will not eliminate the profit motive.  It will just put a sensible boundary on it. Later this week, I’ll have more on the wisdom of tying our economy and society to the unbridled pursuit of corporate self-interest.