Companies Across Sectors Abandon Climate Pledges as Planet Cooks

Peter Ford has seen the promise—and the pitfalls—of corporate climate pledges up close. The 40-year-old Briton recently spent five years at Hennes & Mauritz AB trying to cut emissions from the Swedish fashion giant’s vast supply chain, from Cambodian sewing lines to Vietnamese dye houses. He met with hundreds of suppliers, pushed for energy efficiency upgrades and urged the elimination of coal boilers. And to its credit, H&M invested about $200 million a year in these efforts and recently reported a 24% cut in its supply chain emissions.

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Photographer: Philotheus Nisch for Bloomberg Businessweek

But Ford isn’t celebrating. “As an industry, it’s not working ...