“Corporations at Climate Crossroads”: Roundtable on Business, Markets, Policy, and Norms in Climate Governance

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This author-meets-critics roundtable brings together leading scholars at the intersection of environmental, energy, and climate policy and private governance to discuss Lily Hsueh’s forthcoming book, “Corporations at Climate Crossroads: Multilevel Governance, Public Policy, and Global Climate Action.” (MIT Press, 2025). Hsueh’s book provides a launching point for a broader conversation about the role of business, markets, stakeholders, norms, and regulation, in light of contemporary politics and policy as well as APPAM Fall Research Conference’s theme of “forging collaborations for transformative and resilient policy solutions.”

With the Earth undergoing unprecedented warming and surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2024, consequences include increases in wildfires, more frequent and intense storms, biodiversity loss, and disruptions to the ecosystem that alter disease pathways, all of which affect livelihoods, communities, and society at large. This warming is attributed to fossil fuel burning and the share of global carbon emissions due to fossil burning have grown over time. Global firms represent close to 70 percent of annual global industrial carbon emissions, and a majority of the emissions are emitted by 100 firms and producers of fossil fuels and cement.

With climate risks mounting, climate action facing political headwinds in many countries, and international cooperation increasingly strained, Lily Hsueh’s new book sheds light on how the world’s largest corporations have taken proactive action on climate change during the years leading up to and after the Paris Agreement. Drawing on insights from economics, political science, and management, Hsueh's political economic framework centers corporations and their leaders as key players in a nested structure of climate change governance. Hsueh shows that corporate leaders' climate actions are shaped by bottom-up and top-down institutions and incentives involving firm, regulatory, and global governance. Corporate responses to the climate challenge are therefore an interplay of internal firm leadership, complementary capabilities in adjacent areas, and strategic and proactive engagement with regulatory process 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 roundtable will be chaired by Sanya Carly (University of Pennsylvania) and will include commentary from Sanya Carly, Dan Matisoff (Georgia Institute of Technology), and Jorge Rivera (George Washington University) after a presentation of the book by Hsueh. Panelists will assess Hsueh’s ideas and arguments in light of their own work on the private provision of public goods, public and private interactions, and environmental, energy, and climate policies in the U.S. and beyond. Next, there will be a roundtable discussion about the varied roles for business, government, and civil society stakeholders in a world where neither regulation, global norms or market pressures alone are able to achieve the substantive climate action that may be required to avert the worse consequences of climate change.

Policy Area

• Natural Resource, Energy, and Environmental Policy

Secondary Policy Area

• Politics, Media, and the Policy Process

Moderator

• Sanya R Carley, University of Pennsylvania

Organizer

• Lily Hsueh, Arizona State University

Speakers

• Daniel Matisoff, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Jorge E Rivera, George Washington University

• Lily Hsueh, Arizona State University

• Shanti Gamper-Rabindran, University of Pittsburgh