News & Insights

Business Response to the U.S. Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement

On June 1, 2017, President Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate accord, an agreement within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change dealing with greenhouse gas emissions mitigation, adaption and finance starting in the year 2020. The withdrawal sparked reaction around the world from political leaders, companies, business leaders and environmentalists.

Published:

Last Edit:

Building on Weber Shandwick’s ongoing research on CEO activism and advocacy, we assessed how companies responded to the withdrawal. We developed an inventory of corporate responses – 118 in total – and analyzed them using several criteria. We found that 66% of the 118 responses were made by CEOs. 72% voiced a clear, definitive opinion against the withdrawal while 9% stated explicit support (the remaining 19% took a neutral stance). Responses were most frequently made on social networks (64%), followed by statements in the media (48%) and messages on company websites (36%).

Please click here to read more. For more of Weber Shandwick’s CEO activism insights, please visit: The Dawn of CEO Activism (here), Business Response to the President’s Executive Order on Immigration (here) and Advertiser Response to The O’Reilly Factor (here).