The environmental crisis is the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced. Now more than ever, businesses need to find ways to make their operations more sustainable. Environmentally ethical business management is a fundamental necessity that every type of business across all industries must prioritize in order to continue operating in the years to come.

Consumers Are Demanding Accountability

Large consumer groups in every sector have become significantly more concerned about how business’ activities impact the environment. Vague pledges about supporting the environment are not going to be sufficient to address the consumers’ concerns. Businesses must be able to make a bold demonstration that they are actively implementing big changes. They have to be able to tell consumers in detail what they’re doing to respond to the crisis and what their plans are to continue expanding their green initiatives.

The need to demonstrate environmentally friendly practices is especially critical in business to business. Because businesses are accountable to their consumers, they’ll be looking to work with others that can best help them advance that mission. In enterprise sales interactions, the vendors and service providers serving businesses will need to emphasize how they can help them minimize their carbon footprint and reduce their waste production. If businesses are unable to adapt to a climate in which sustainability is a must, they’ll inevitably fail to establish new relationships with clients or maintain their existing client portfolios.  

Businesses Must Adapt to the Macroeconomic Need for Change

Some interest groups that are preoccupied with profit have enlisted the aid of a failing political party to perpetuate the falsehood that the earth is not in crisis. Making the issue political has helped to sustain this egregious lie among an alarmingly large group of people. In keeping with the party’s core directive of using various mediums to paint a different picture of reality, they advance mistruths about the crisis and how leaders are working to counteract it. These interest groups are convincing people that making environmental progress will be unaffordable to lower income people and the middle class. In reality, these are the groups that stand to benefit most. Only extremely wealthy individuals including those who reap the most profit from environmental destruction will see short-term financial benefits from negating the climate crisis.

The crisis is likely to become substantially worse in relatively little time. The majority of people will see their cost of living increase dramatically while their quality of life diminishes. Vital resources such as clean water will become increasingly scarce, and the cost of producing food will rise considerably. It is probable that those higher costs will be passed directly to consumers. As people are able to afford less, businesses will profit less. The natural reaction of many businesses will be to raise their prices even further to compensate for their lost revenue, but this could have the effect of driving sales volume down even more.

Property Ownership Will Become Unaffordable

The sharp spike in severe weather events will make owning property extremely difficult for tens of millions and eventually hundreds of millions of people in the United States alone. Insurers will have to raise rates to ensure all real property. Both residential and commercial property owners will have to pay a lot more to insure their homes, which is bad for both individuals and businesses. Eventually, insurance carriers may be unable to continue providing coverage to entire regions. In addition, cities and municipalities will have to raise their property taxes in order to pay for crisis management after increasingly frequent major weather events. Small municipalities will struggle to finance basic necessities such as building materials, waste management, and energy. As entire regions fail, businesses will see their market base evaporate.

Ultimately, going green is vital to businesses’ success. In the long run, making some progress in the right direction will make operations more affordable while also potentially enhancing sales volume. Businesses that cannot adapt will not be able to continue practices that are unsustainable environmentally and economically.