Thirteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

While many states have absented themselves from playing a constructive role in addressing climate change, proving either unable to overcome domestic political gridlock or unwilling to place climate change ahead of other policy priorities, some of the world’s most powerful companies now not only acknowledge it as a major business risk, but also are doing more to address it than is legally required. I present a theory of emergent consensus to explain how companies came to understand and treat the low-carbon future as inevitable, despite limited regulatory pressure and their uneven perceptions of the near-term risks and opportunities posed by climate change. Drawing on empirical evidence from the United States, Germany, and India, I consider the conditions under which non-national actors may come to address this kind of transnational risk in the absence of state action.