David Malpass’ no good, very bad week

Here are a few that caught our eye (pro tip for flacks: If you spread this news out over the course of the year, you’ll probably get more coverage):

• Amazon.com Inc. said it would buy enough “electrofuels” (made out of CO2 and hydrogen) to replace 5 million miles’ worth of diesel in its delivery trucks in Southern California.
• Ikea of Sweden AB, Unilever PLC, JSW Steel Ltd, AP Moller-Maersk A/S and GeoPost/DPDgroup said they would “transition” to zero-emission medium and heavy-duty vehicles in OECD markets, China and India by 2040.
• Rockefeller Asset Management, 3M Co., Nestle SA, PepsiCo Inc., Walmart Inc., Unilever and Ikea were among 85 companies signing onto The Business Coalition for a Global Plastics Treaty.
• Seventh Generation Inc. declared the corporate social responsibility report “dead” with the release of its “climate fingerprints” report, which measures not only a company’s actual emissions, but the impact of its ancillary services, including banking, marketing and insurance.
• Voluntary carbon market finance firm Climate Impact Partners put out a study that found 42 percent of Fortune Global 500 companies are committed to some kind of meaningful climate progress by 2030, while 37 percent haven’t yet done anything significant.

We asked one of our favorite corporate sustainability watchdogs for his take. He liked the Seventh Generation report for its focus on the role of policy and of corporate influence on policy. Most of the other corporate announcements, not so much.

“The lack of mention of companies’ role in influencing public policy in almost all of these announcements is striking,” said Bill Weihl , founder and executive director of the nonprofit ClimateVoice, which pushes companies to engage on policy and noted that most took a back seat on the Inflation Reduction Act. “I hope they will continue their amazing work in their own operations, and step up to help pass bold climate policies everywhere they operate.”