Deloitte training all 330,000 employees on climate

I find this story to be just remarkable – and it’s truly the kind of thing that needs to be happening on a large scale basis. Here’s the intro para from this article from “ESG Today”:

Professional services giant Deloitte announced today the launch of a new climate learning program for all of its 330,000 global employees. The program, developed in collaboration with World Wildlife Fund (WWF), is designed to engage employees on the impacts of climate change, inform them about how Deloitte is responding to the climate crisis, and inspire them to take action.

On the other hand, you can almost always find something to criticize because it’s so hard to get everything right all at once. Raz Godelnik weighs in on Deloitte’s PAC and how it’s still donating to politicians obstructing climate policies. Here is Raz’s note:

Deloitte’s plan to educate all its workers on the climate crisis is a good step, and I hope every company will do it. While it will be interesting to see what this education includes, it will send a strong signal to the employees about the importance of the issue.

At the same time, I would say that even though Deloitte has a reasonable climate plan of its own, as long as it continues to donate money through its PAC to politicians obstructing climate policies, the message to the employees is far from being loud and clear.

On the one hand, Deloitte’s Global CEO says: “By educating and inspiring all 330,000 of us, we can help drive collective action at the scale required to help address climate change.” On the other hand, the company’s PAC donates money to politicians doing everything they can to stop policies that will fight the climate crisis at scale. So, which one is it? This is one more reason why we need to hold companies accountable also for their climate policy & political impact (i.e. scope zero), not just their emissions.