Today, most companies disclose the environmental impact of their operations, even when they’re not required to by law. But corporate climate policies, and how hard companies fight for them, may be even more influential than carbon dioxide emissions. A new report has come up with a way of quantifying which companies are trying hardest to push for or against policies that would lead to less pollution.
The analysts are trying to simplify a tricky problem. By definition, people and companies with influence and power have more leverage than other individuals to change public policy. This power is notoriously difficult to quantify. People or institutions “have” or “hold” power, but not the way they have or hold physical objects such as pencils or cupcakes. Power can “flow” away from these people and over to those people, but not the way that hydrologists calculate the moving volume of a river.
