Friday, February 15, 2013

The Unilever CEO's “Global Salvationism”

Peter Foster:
Paul Polman, chief executive of British consumer goods giant Unilever .... confirmed that he ranks as perhaps the world’s foremost peddler of “Global Salvationism.”

... Mr. Polman is not only a co-chair of Davos, he is incoming chair of the WBCSD [World Business Council on Sustainable Development] and a prominent member of the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Mr. Polman’s speech ticked all the boxes of what [is] also called “millennium collectivism.” He denigrated business short-sightedness, promoted climate catastrophism and suggested that what was needed was a “new model” of capitalism in which giant corporations would sacrifice shareholders in order to solve global problems.

... The problem of the modern corporation is not that it forces single-minded devotion to the bottom line on its managers, but that it gives them too much leeway to dabble with dangerous fads. Meanwhile, those who spout about a “new model” for capitalism invariably hold an inaccurate and demonic image of the free-market original, which is still the only truly “sustainable” version.

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