Pto achieve the Paris agreement [en 2015]greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by around 4% per year until 2050, while they increase by 1.2% per year in the world.
For comparison, they fell by 7.6% when the world was at a standstill in 2020. If we want to achieve carbon neutrality, we must put capitalism at the service of this objective by placing collective interest and “common” above individual interest.
In fact, by seeking to systematically maximize the creation of value for a single category of stakeholders – shareholders – neoliberalism necessarily desacralizes all the others by remunerating them at a much lower relative value and, in fact, does not allow the social responsibility of businesses to exercise its original role as a social and environmental stabilizer.
According to the Global Dividend Index calculated by Janus Henderson, which measures dividends paid by the world’s 1,200 largest listed companies, 2023 was the record year for profits, dividends and share buybacks. At the same time, with 6% of the active population in January 2024, European unemployment was at its lowest level in decades. Germany and the Netherlands were even at full employment (7.5% in France). Yet, the rate of people at risk of poverty was 21.6% of the European population in 2022, and this rate even reached 25% among young people.
Historical profits
To summarize, Europe is close to full employment and, despite this, the rate of people at risk of poverty is very high. Which means that, even while working, the population is becoming poorer while companies are making historic profits. How can companies pride themselves on their CSR commitments? [responsabilité sociale des entreprises] in these conditions ?
In fact, this simply means that work is not paid its “fair price” and that it is high time to reflect on its true value in a social context which risks becoming more and more explosive.
Instead of paying sky-high dividends to their shareholders, wouldn’t it be more reasonable for companies to invest massively in the transition today in order to smooth out their future profits and dividends?
And what about those who, instead of fighting against inflation, took advantage of the ambient geopolitical chaos by increasing their commercial margin indecently to the detriment of wages, thus largely explaining the inflation of 2022 and causing an unprecedented drop in the real purchasing power of their own employees ?
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