How corporations and governance can act together effectively in the urgent global call for climate action.

Global businesses have reached a critical juncture. If they do not act and contribute to solutions on climate change it could be too late to avert the worst consequences of climate change. Neither corporations themselves nor regulation or global norms and market pressures alone will be able to achieve the substantive climate action that is required. In Corporations at Climate Crossroads, Lily Hsueh illuminates how the world’s largest corporations have taken proactive action on climate change during the years leading up to and after the Paris Agreement.

The author uncovers how corporations and their leaders are key players in a nested structure of climate change governance with interactions between bottom-up and top-down institutions and incentives involving firm, regulatory, and global governance. Sophisticated large-N statistical analyses of global businesses’ climate mitigation and performance from 2011 to 2020 and illustrative company case studies substantiate the demand for, and supply of, global businesses’ climate mitigation, across sectors, and in developed and developing countries. The book shows that by acting together, corporations and governments can be synergetic and effective.