Nearly 900 companies—including dozens of large international corporations—have quietly withdrawn from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), reports Blackout News here. [emphasis, links added]
The move is being touted as an “overdue return to economic common sense.”
The SBTi requires its members to set scientifically validated climate targets, essentially aligning their emissions goals with international standards.
The recent exodus of 893 firms signals a growing discontent. According to the reporting, many companies are questioning the practical feasibility of the initiative’s stringent requirements.
The core argument?
Political climate policies that ignore technical and financial limitations end up jeopardizing long-term economic viability and weakening global competitiveness.
The message to policymakers is clear: excessive regulations often translate directly into higher operating costs, stalled investments, and declining market competitiveness.
For many corporations, their commitment to the SBTi began to feel like “symbolic politics” rather than a sustainable business strategy.
The withdrawal is therefore a strategic move—a shift back toward focusing on operational stability and profitability as the bedrock for any meaningful long-term investment.
Great Britain, the US, and China have seen the highest number of companies ending their participation.
The hundreds of corporate withdrawals mark a pivot toward economic realism and suggest that self-determined, pragmatic strategies are replacing politically mandated ones, asserting that a credible, long-term environmental policy must first respect economic strength.
Bill Gates Calls Off “Humanity’s Demise”
Bill Gates recently called for a “strategic pivot” in climate change, shifting the world’s primary focus from near-term emissions goals and “doomsday” scenarios to improving human welfare, fighting poverty, and preventing disease in the world’s poorest countries.
He laid out this perspective in a recent memo titled “Three tough truths about climate”.
Gates argues that the central metric for global efforts should be improving lives and that climate change will not lead to “humanity’s demise,” and that a “doomsday outlook” is diverting limited resources from interventions that would have the greatest immediate impact on human suffering.
He also stressed that climate and health efforts often compete for funding in national budgets. He gave an example of this pragmatic view by stating he would choose to “let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria” if forced to choose between the two.
Top image via Pexels from Pixabay
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Who knew that major companies would finally wake up and realize they would be destroying the viability of their businesses by trying to reduce emissions for no benefit to the environment (in fact, likely a negative to the environment).