How candy can save the planet
Companies stand by climate accord,
Just where Donald Trump stands on climate change seems more uncertain than ever now that he’s acknowledged to The
New York Times that he sees “some connectivity” between human activity and increasing global temperatures.
Trump’s remarks last week followed his disregard of climate change during his election campaign, including his pledge to pull the U.S. out of a 2015 agreement with nearly 200 other nations to keep temperatures from rising to catastrophic levels.
As for that accord struck in Paris last December, Trump now says he’s keeping “an open mind to it,” according to the Times, whose publisher and editorial staff met with the president-elect at the newspaper’s headquarters in New York.
But while only time will tell whether the U.S. government will remain a leader in confronting climate change during the Trump administration, corporations here and around the world are making clear their determination to curb their emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases that most climate scientists blame for global warming.
“I think you are going to see the corporate sector stepping up,” Barry Parkin, the chief sustainability officer for Mars, one of the world’s leading food companies, told me recently. “More and more, companies are driving this forward, irrespective of what governments choose to do.”
The name over familiar candy brands — M&Ms, Snickers, Twix and Skittles among them — Mars also owns other well-known items such as Uncle Ben’s and Wrigley’s gum.
From Nov. 7-18, Mars and more than 360 companies large and small reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris accord during a round of international climate negotiations in Marrakech, Morocco, urging President Obama, Trump and other global leaders to stick with the agreement, as well. “Climate change is a world issue and a long-term challenge,” Parkin said by phone from Marrakech, where he was attending the climate talks. “To put it in Mars terms, we produce in 140 factories in more than 40 countries. So, for us to meet our commitments to zero greenhouse-gas operations, we have to act in 40 countries.”
Mars’ pledges include an ambitious one of eliminating its greenhouse-gas emissions by 2040, which means steadily reducing its reliance on fossil fuels at its facilities in the U.S. and elsewhere while continuing to build its business.
So far, the McLean, Va.-based company is largely keeping pace with its climate agenda, having met a target of cutting GHG emissions by 25% as of 2015 compared to 2007 levels, though it fell short of its goal of reducing its fossil-fuel use by the same percentage. Still, the company managed to check its reliance on fossil fuels by 18%.
Contributing substantially to that initiative is Mars’ wind-energy farm in Mesquite Creek, Texas, a 200-megawatt, 118-turbine facility that produces electricity equivalent to 100% of the company’s power needs in the U.S.
Similar wind projects are underway in the United Kingdom and Mexico to match Mars’ energy requirements in those two countries.
“The reality is renewable energy is now cheaper in many parts of the world than fossil fuels,” said Parkin, whose privately held company’s openness on sustainability contrasts with its legendary secrecy on most other business matters.
Mars is among the founding members of an international organization called RE100, which encourages major companies to commit to using 100% renewable power. The 2-year-old group includes 83 companies, among them Bank of America, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Hewlett Packard, IKEA and Johnson & Johnson.
Parkin predicts that “hundreds more” will join RE100 over the next year or so.
As for Trump’s climate agenda, Parkin, like others, says he has “no idea” what lies in store.
But of this he’s certain: “Administrations come and administrations go, and the problems and the solutions will outlast them.”