Fixing Business

Chapter 5 Protecting the Environment: An Essential Priority

“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.”

—Mahatma Gandhi

When I started to promote my vision of socially inclusive wealth creation in my early days as Director-General of the CBI, I would always state in speeches how one of the three pillars of my vision was how Business and its wealth-creative process had “to be sensitive, and be seen to be sensitive, to Planet Earth, for this is the only home we've all got”.

Many found these words at odds with some of my other statements in my lobbying efforts. I did not, but I could see the cause for their confusion. I never bought into how climate change was entirely man-made, but neither did I believe that man had nothing to do with the obvious changes to the climates around the world. Climate change is a natural phenomenon but mankind's ignorant, selfish acts against the natural world only accelerate the pace of change and make a worrying situation so much worse.

But I found (and still do) the “thought police” and politically correct attitudes of many of the Green lobby so wrong. Even the BBC were at it now and again and were sometimes hauled over the coals for biased reporting. People were condemned, vilified, for holding views that were at odds with the Green mainstream. And when it was revealed that some climate change zealots had fiddled the data to suit their prejudice, I felt that my instincts were justified. You could be forgiven ...