Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #43: Eric Orts

Another Thursday, another EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode: This week, Eric Orts from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and David Spence talk about Eric’s research on “Climate Change and the Ethical Obligations of Business.”

Eric argues that major fossil fuel companies—the “carbon majors”—face a dilemma: they face an ethical imperative to address climate change but they also face a market imperative to maximize their profits. He argues that one way to address this dilemma is for the carbon majors to push governments to adopt stricter greenhouse gas regulations. If governments adopted a legal framework that adequately reduced carbon emissions, then energy companies could compete within this framework without violating their ethical imperative. Eric also argues that the investment community must accept that it is ethically bound to reduce carbon emissions and can no longer focus solely on maximizing economic returns.

The conversation builds on a working paper that Eric has written with Brian Berkey, which is titled “The Climate Imperative for Management.”

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