We all must change. As we enter the new millennium, governments are looking to the world's most powerful economic actors, the transnational corporations, for technological and market oriented solutions to our environmental problems. Many of the most active environmental pressure groups, from the relatively mainstream Environmental Defense Fund to the more radical Greenpeace, routinely discuss the need to steer the private sector toward solutions.
Ethical investors approach the same goal using the persuasion of capital.
The transnational corporations, with their vast resources and technical capabilities, can invent and implement solutions faster than government agencies, perhaps faster than we can imagine. Their behavior will determine our future. Oil produced by Shell alone accounts for more carbon dioxide than most countries in the world. In a world increasingly dominated by transnational corporations, the oil industry is the largest business on earth. 17 Fully integrated corporations such as Exxon Mobil, BP Amoco, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron and Texaco generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue every year.