1

THE EARTH COULD SUPPORT BILLIONS BUT NOT BILLIONAIRES

By: Abdullah Husaini Bin Mohamad

In the wake of the latest awareness on the climate change and how to reduce waste,
people are now starting to realise that their efforts to reduce the impact of climate change went
down the drain as it was revealed that a conglomerate could produce in a day, the same amount
of carbon footprint normal people produced in a lifetime. The picture or meme above
sarcastically criticising wealthy upper-class of the society being satisfied with themselves while
doing not even the bare minimum. We can see an ironic example as well, when all of those
international conferences, meetings and conventions that are supposedly aimed to discuss about
being “green” and “sustainable”, but, all of the participants, be it world leaders or company
representatives came by taking flight to go across the world which definitely left big amount
of carbon footprint. They could just take an initiative to do it online.
The question to really put on forward is that what causes them, the political elites, and
the business conglomerates to be so blind on important issues like the environment which could
decides the future for the upcoming generations?
The answer is rather simple which is for profit maximization. However, it becomes
more complex in the sense that it is rooted to the economy and hard to just put an end and halt
such exploitations and impacts. Going back to the introduction of the shareholder primacy
theory in the 70s which stated that the fundamental responsibility of businesses is to make as
much money as possible to maximise shareholder value or stock price. Such contribution to
the society like charity is considered as hypocritical and it is just using somebody else’s money.
Such practice though seems quite outdated and archaic, it is still rather popular in practice for
a lot for company especially small businesses and start-up. The size and uncertainty in the
future just does not allows them to practice and integrate corporate social responsibility (CSR)
in their business model. Company also decides to maintain in the defensive state as changes ill
cost them as big amount of money and they would not want that to stay competitive in the
market.
Julie Stuckens, a Climate Change and Sustainability Services Manager at Ernst and
Young highlighted that CSR is not only about environment and is sadly not the only issue that
we have to deal with in relation to the big capitalist enterprises. A lot of those company that
deal with billions of moneys are also closely related with accusation and lawsuit regarding
2

mistreatment, being unethical and insincere. For example, the current issue of Balenciaga, a
famous luxury brand under Kering, as accused of promoting paedophilia. This was during their
latest campaign that had multiple children holding a bear with bondage theme as well as on the
publication online where documents regarding child abuse was included in the frame. This
issue fumes the netizens condemning the company to be unethical.
On the other side, Twitter, a social media platform was also criticised online on the fact
that they fired around 50% of their workers. Such lay off practised could be considered as
mistreatment on their employees as they would lose their main source of income.
With the examples and the comprehension on the said topic, how do we deal with the
problem? We cannot just stay mute on this issue and let the rich continue to exploit the world.
We need a win-win solution because that is the only way that companies could compromise. A
lose-lose situation is a no brainer for them to avoid and a zero-sum situation is what we have
now. So, in one hand we have the company that seek for profitability and on the other hand we
have the public laymen that would like a liveable environment, humane working condition etc.
To solve the issue what could be done is awareness for company on the importance of
CSR in their business model. Based on a research paper by Uzun, 2019, it was stated that a
company that practices good CSR policies have a less risk of bankruptcy while the ones that
does not, have a higher risk for bankruptcy due to the awareness of consumers and the workers.
Such thing is considered a threat to a business and any business would try to remove threat that
would reduce their profit. Therefore, by explaining that in the future, adopting CSR policies is
the most profitable move, tons of businesses would not even hesitate to change and could
consider the cost of CSR as an investment.
Moreover, the initiative could also be promoted through social media which is sort of
a valuable and strong force in today’s world. The media plays a huge role in business brand
image and consequently, brand image affects the company profitability. A good brand image
equals a higher profit. According to Shamim et al. (2017), they founded that brand image
influences profitability from both an intended and unintended, more or less, early or late, or
another standpoint. Therefore, by convincing the conglomerates and companies that the CSR
is a key to a company image and not abiding to it could harm the business through its image be
it short-term or long-term.
Furthermore, the role of the government also plays a huge part in ensuring that company
begins to shift from a stage to another stage in the CSR stages. From defensive to compliant,
from compliant to managerial and up until the final stage of civil. Amending laws could enforce
companies to change and reduce their impact to the environment, people and society. As Peter
Vanham, a journalist at the American business magazine, “Fortune” stated that the future for
CSR is collaboration between government and business. The fact that people are now looking
further down the line towards long term and not just immediate effect means that government
has to work on it. The more demand from the people the more a democratic government going
to act upon it. Activities like lobbying has indeed made the environment suffer, just to fuel the
greed of oil companies’ owners.
To conclude from this article, a constructive, active and creative actions need to be done
to ensure that the future for our next generations is going to be bright, opening an opportunity
for them to be at peace with the nature, people and businesses. We should prepare a world that
supports billions of people and not just billionaires. As Stephane Ballèvre, an executive at
Sodiaal, a French dairy cooperative said, the future of CSR is that it is a danger but also an
opportunity. He go it from the word crisis in Chinese that could be separated and understood
by the word “danger” and “opportunity”