How can consumers join forces with money managers to force a corporate clean-up?

Big investors regularly cite climate change in meetings with companies in which they invest. They have the capacity to assess whether their green claims stack up. For consumers it’s much harder, James Moore says

Burning issue: consumers need to make their money work for the environment (ANSA/AP)

Last week was a big one for planet Earth, at least if you believe the corporate hype.

BP said it planned to become a net zero carbon company by 2050 and then up popped AXA Investment Managers with its stewardship report, and the suggestion that it would hold the feet of companies in which it invests to the fire. Sort of.

“The next decade will be defined by our ability as an investment and corporate community to turn thoughts, ambitions and desires into tangible action to solve global issues,” was what Matt Christensen, global head of impact strategy and responsible investment (now there’s a title), actually said.

I hope it’s as good as it sounds. Well, to be honest, it doesn’t sound all that good because it’s a bit wordy and corporate. But you get my drift.

And perhaps I’m being a bit mean there. Perhaps we should take Christensen and others like him at the words because they say they’ve been raising the climate crisis a lot in meetings with companies and it appears to be having an impact. Part of the reason for BP, and others, making the fuss they’ve been making about greening up their businesses is because big investors like AXA IM have been making a fuss too.

When you have investors with billions of pounds, euros and dollars to deploy doing that, when they’re knocking at your door and saying “not good enough”, you’re inclined to listen because you need them.

Ideally, we as consumers would be able to join the party. On the one side you’d have investors, on the other you’d have customers. You might call it a pincer movement after the military tactic which has had some success down the years.

The problem is the consumer doesn’t have the resources of an AXA IM or a Legal & General, or one of the other big-money managers that have cottoned on to the fact that the investment returns which feed them are going to cool down dramatically if we don’t do something to stop the planet from heating up.

They have the capacity to employ researchers to assess whether the claims of companies like BP stack up, whether they are really going green or just indulging in greenwashing.

Thanks to its research L&G, for example, regularly updates a naughty list of companies whose resolutions it votes against, and which its Future World funds refuse to invest in.

It’s a lot harder for the average consumer to assess the truth of what they’re being presented with.

Sure, there’s the Advertising Standards Agency. This column recently covered the telling-off it gave to Ryanair over the latter’s green claims.

Unfortunately, the offending ad campaign had ended by the time it had issued its ruling.

Ryanair also responded to the watchdog by blowing a big raspberry and saying it was still a super green airline. Free speech and all that.

I think most engaged consumers will be sharp enough to understand what the low-cost outfit is all about. But what about BP, which only a couple of weeks prior to its announcement had been outed for lobbying the Trump administration to water down a key piece of environmental legislation?

What about Shell, which made a big hoo-ha about linking its CEO’s bonus to emissions targets but has also been responsible for other less positive news stories?

Most people still drive petrol cars because the electric ones are still quite expensive. Should they use BP in preference to Shell? Or Esso?

How do the claims of supermarkets, which have also busily been trying to outdo each other by eulogising over their deep and abiding commitments to planet Earth, stack up?

It’s devilishly hard to make a call.

We could really do with some kind of independent ratings service, along the lines of that food hygiene scheme the Food Standard Agency operates, to look at the claims and corporate behaviour of big consumer brands. Perhaps we should have, I don’t know, a Green Standards Agency?

It might cause a bit of controversy – just imagine the squealing from the grocer rated one star. But that might be fun too.

In its absence, the best we can do is make more or less educated guesses. That mightn’t be enough.