Here's The Joke Of A Sustainability Report That VW Put Out Last Year

Now that we know Volkswagen purposefully rigged 11 million vehicles to circumvent environmental rules, releasing an enormous amount of pollutants into the atmosphere, the company’s Sustainability Report from 2014 comes off as a horrible joke.

"It's a jaw-dropper. So unbelievable," Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council told The Huffington Post.

In the report, which was reviewed by consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, the automaker details its commitment to the customer, its employees and, of course, to the environment. “Environment” is mentioned 335 times over 156-pages -- an average of twice per page. 

“The Volkswagen Group has a long tradition of resolute commitment to environmental protection.” -- page 86.

“We intend to put our creative powers to good use for the benefit of people and the environment." -- page 14.

As we now know, Volkswagen put its creative powers to use in a far less noble way, devising software to purposefully cheat on emissions tests and secretly installing it its diesel vehicles. On Wednesday, chief executive Martin Winterkorn was forced to quit his job at the world’s largest automaker in the wake of the growing scandal and in anticipation of billions in fines, lawsuits and increasing customer rage. More firings are on deck.

VW’s report follows a long tradition of companies using self-reported data -- sometimes certified by well-paid consulting firms -- to make broad declarations of ethical commitment, used to reassure the public that companies aren't just profit-seeking monsters. These are called “corporate social responsibility” reports, "CSR" is the biz lingo. This is a huge movement; most corporations produce these things. Here’s Coca-Cola’s. And Ikea’s. And Exxon-Mobil’s.

And, of course, not all of these efforts are mere publicity ploys. Some companies take this stuff very seriously, even tying environmental goals to executive pay -- an extremely sigficant matter. But in the wake of the VW scandal, it’s going to be harder for anyone to believe a word in these reports.

“[Volkswagen] will probably severely tarnish this entire movement,” writes Greer in a blog post. She’s written before about the key danger of CSR programs: that they end up as merely shiny promotional efforts that allow businesses to sidestep true responsibility for their endeavors.

"There are some companies doing good things," Greer told HuffPost. "Oftentimes they're just doing it and not necessarily putting it in a report."

Yet many efforts are sideshows. Companies give money to philanthropies, for example, but fail to examine the core parts of their businesses that need attention.

Volkswagen will probably severely tarnish this entire movement. Linda Greer, a senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Greer is working with Target now on cleaning up environmental issues in the retailer's supply chain. She also commends Apple for dealing with pollution issues overseas. "They have a CSR report, but I think they are walking the walk more than just talking the talk," she said of Apple.

VW’s absurd document follows a long tradition. BP is also notorious for the false promise of its environmental slogans. The oil company won plaudits for acknowledging the reality of global warming and for the slogan “Beyond Petroleum” back in 2000. Then, in 2010, BP caused one of the worst oil spills in history. 

By contrast, Exxon Mobil after the Exxon Valdez disaster became “religious about safety standards,” writes Chrystia Freeland for the Washington Post in 2010. Getting the oil out of the ground and moving it around the world without killing anyone or destroying the ocean is a core social responsibility.

So is adhering to environmental regulations, which VW brazenly decided to forgo.

Companies need to start with those simple goals before moving on to marketing materials.

Unlikely Coalition Forms To Back Renewable Energy

Nine of the country's biggest companies just helped set a new standard for corporate sustainability.

Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Salesforce, Starbucks and Walmart are among the handful of hugely recognizable names that on Wednesday committed to using 100 percent renewable energy, with several expecting to reach their goals within the next decade.

Goldman Sachs set a target of 100 percent renewable energy by 2020, while Nike aims to hit that by 2025, and Johnson & Johnson by 2050. Procter and Gamble set its sights on a short-term goal for 30 percent renewable energy by 2020, while some companies, like financial services firm Voya International and furniture maker Steelcase, are closing in or have already reached a full reliance on renewable energy.

That these Fortune 500 firms have thrown their significant weight behind RE100, a global campaign to cut down on CO2 emissions by turning to renewable sources of energy, suggests a major shift in corporations' awareness of their responsibility to lead their respective industries away from carbon. 

And companies are realizing the business boost gained by placing financial incentives on themselves to use renewable sources. A recent report by the environmental nonprofit CDP, which organizes RE100 in partnership with The Climate Group, found that the number of companies putting a price on their carbon emissions has tripled since last year.

"Lowering risk, protecting against price rises, saving millions and boosting brand is what shaping a low carbon economy is all about," Climate Group CEO Mark Kenber said in a statement.

The corporate sustainability movement is gaining speed: RE100 launched last year with 13 members, including Ikea, H&M, Nestle, Unilever and Mars. That number has since grown to nearly 40, with groups joining from across various industries. Recent members include financial services provider UBS and Dutch sciences company Royal DSM. Ikea, everyone's favorite furniture go-to, has installed 700,000 solar panels on its buildings and last year generated renewal energy to match 42 percent of its total energy consumption. H&M, among the many retail outlets facing pressure for contributing to wasteful fast fashion, plans to cut its electricity usage by 20 percent by 2020. 

Companies are finding various ways to harness efforts to reduce their carbon footprint as an economic opportunity. Under The B Team, a nonprofit led by top business leaders, companies like Unilever and Virgin are seeking to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

And as part of a coalition to promote sustainable business practices, HP expects to hit its emissions target early after partnering with SunEdison to rely on wind power, while L'Oreal is expanding its use of solar panels at various facilities across the globe. Kellogg will implement water reuse projects at one-fourth of its sites and has committed to zero net deforestation. 

Volkswagen Just Nuked The Public's Trust In Companies Trying To Save The Planet

The world’s largest automaker has just given more ammunition to those who don’t trust that businesses are serious about preventing runaway climate change.

How ironic that Volkswagen, which has publicly signed a pledge to be a leader in “consistent, positive business engagement with policymakers on climate issues,” should be caught by the Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly cheating on emission-control standards. 

Martin Winterkorn, Volkswagen's CEO, apologized on Sunday after the EPA accused the company of installing software in its diesel-powered vehicles specifically designed to allow the cars to evade regulators and emit 40 times the legal limit of nitrogen oxide. The chemical adds to the buildup of smog, which is tied to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; but its effects are different from compounds that directly cause warming of the atmosphere. 

In a statement, Winterkorn said that “I personally am deeply sorry that we have broken the trust of our customers and the public,” and ordered an external investigation.

This was equivalent to putting his finger in a bursting dam, given that the German company could face penalties of up to $18 billion for allegedly installing the illegal “defeat devices” to falsify emissions tests. Volkswagen shares plummeted on the Frankfurt DAX index in response to the news.

Apart from saving the reputation of his company, Winterkorn should also think about the damage he has done to the corporate sustainability movement. Volkswagen’s actions will fuel the cynics who believe businesses are just paying lip service when it comes to issues like climate change and resource scarcity.

This is a particularly poignant moment for such reflection, given scores of companies are converging on New York over the next few days to join Volkswagen in making commitments during Climate Week to creating a low-carbon economy.

What the Volkswagen scandal illustrates is that profit maximization is so deeply embedded in corporate culture that when push comes to shove, the vast majority of companies will put the bottom line above any moral case for change, and sometimes even cheat to keep the short-term profits coming in.

The only way this is going to change is if companies create a revolution in the way that staff are incentivized. If businesses really believe climate change is a serious issue, they need to stop paying their staff purely on the basis of meeting their quarterly targets.

It is true that a small but growing number of companies are starting to incorporate sustainability performance into their executive compensation packages, but these often represent a tiny percentage of overall pay and therefore are unlikely to change behavior.

Research by Wayne Guay, professor of accounting at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, found that for those companies that do incorporate sustainability targets, this normally makes up less than 1 percent of overall pay.

A study by Ceres, a nonprofit focused on sustainable business and climate action, found that in 613 of the nation's largest publicly traded companies, fewer than a third had boards of directors formally overseeing sustainability performance. And just 19 companies, or 3 percent, related compensation directly to voluntary sustainability performance targets such as greenhouse gas emissions reductions.

Ceres points to Alcoa, one of the world's largest producers of aluminum, as a leader in the field. A fifth of Alcoa's executive cash compensation is tied to safety, diversity goals and environmental stewardship, including greenhouse gas reductions and energy efficiency.

Our current form of capitalism has been around long enough for us to know the simple truth that people will act in accordance with how you assess their performance. If Volkswagen had spent the necessary time and energy to drive sustainability deep into the corporate culture, and linked this in a significant way to executive performance, it may have avoided the disaster it now faces.

Other companies looking on would also do well to note that as we move into a more carbon-constrained era, they ignore climate change at their peril.

Do you work for VW or own a VW? We'd like to hear from you. Email emily.peck@huffingtonpost.com.

Correction: An earlier version of this post attempted to compare the warming impact of nitrogen oxide (NOx) and carbon dioxide on the atmosphere. However, our comparison used measurements for nitrous oxide (N2O) and not for NOx . The error has been removed.

Europe's Refugee Crisis Spawns A Billion-Dollar Industry

Europe's refugee crisis is not only an urgent humanitarian disaster, but has also spawned an incredibly lucrative industry. Refugees and migrants are spending immense sums of money in attempts to reach Europe, siphoning more than billion dollars a year into an underground economy of traffickers. Likewise, EU member states are increasing funds for border control programs and deportations to stop people from entering their nations.  

Between 2000 and June 2015, migrants and refugees have paid traffickers over 16 billion euros to reach Europe, according to The Migrants' Files, a data journalism organization that has analyzed thousands of payments to smugglers to estimate the size of the trafficking market.

While that figure may seem astronomical, The Migrants' Files says it's a conservative number that doesn't include recent months of record migration.

More than 381,000 people have attempted to enter Europe by sea so far in 2015, dwarfing the number of journeys made in previous years. There were nearly 130,000 sea arrivals in the Mediterranean this August alone, up from around 33,000 arrivals during the same month in 2014. Given the exponential increase, the money traffickers receive likely far exceeds The Migrants' Files' estimate. 

Syrians make up the largest group of migrants and refugees -- accounting for just over half of the people making the trip -- while Afghans and Eritreans are the next most-represented nationalities.  

Traffickers have charged many people thousands of euros for the trip to Europe. Smuggling routes vary depending on the region, and can consist of thousands of miles of travel to get to the Mediterranean. African migrants and refugees often pass through trafficking hubs in cities like Agadez in Niger or Sabha in Libya. Once they arrive, smugglers take them in truck convoys to the Libyan coast.

One of the more popular routes this year runs through the Balkans. Many people travel from Turkey toward Greece and beyond, passing through Hungary to more hospitable countries like Germany and Austria. 

It can cost around 2,500 euros per person to travel from Syria to Germany, according to Der Spiegel, but prices vary according to a person's country of origin. A Libyan smuggler told the Guardian in April that people from sub-Saharan African usually paid less than 1,000 euros, while Moroccans paid no more than 1,500 euros.  

Smugglers often operate within a network, rather than as lone actors. Trafficking organizations have hierarchies for everyone from recruiters and drivers to financiers and organizers, who all carry out specific functions within the group. They're paid through an informal money exchange system that uses banking offices and ticketed receipts, according to Der Spiegel.

Meanwhile, migrants' experiences on their journeys to Europe can be vastly different from what traffickers have promised them. Traffickers often replace proper transport with overloaded, rickety boats that frequently capsize or leave people stranded, or with cramped trucks in which they can suffocate to death. Some travelers face violent armed robberies while at sea.

While there is still no comprehensive policy for addressing smuggling networks and the refugee crisis, European leaders have noticed the growing human trafficking industry.

This year, the EU has ramped up anti-trafficking measures, which included launching a new naval operation this summer in the Mediterranean. But while the deepening crisis has highlighted the importance of Europe's response to smuggling, European nations have already spent billions over the past decade and a half to secure their borders in a policy informally known as "fortress Europe."

The Migrants' Files report finds that the EU and European states allocated more than a billion euros for walls, guard equipment and coordinated border security efforts between 2000 and 2014. This doesn't include more recent projects, like Hungary's 109-mile border fence.

During this period, the EU also publicly funded 39 research and development projects to enhance border security, at a cost of 230 million euros. 

Finmeccanica, a company that handled 16 of these projects, came under fire in 2012 for delivering a shipment of radio equipment to the Bashar Assad government in Syria while the country's revolution was underway.

European countries spent an additional 11.3 billion since 2000 on deportations alone, although The Migrants' Files notes that this is an estimate, because only Belgium keeps a full record of its spending on deportations.

Europe is spending money to combat a trafficking industry it actually helped create, rights groups and migration experts say. They argue that European countries' restrictive border policies have forced refugees and migrants to turn to dangerous trafficking routes.

"Such policies only serve to open a new and lucrative market for smuggling rings, a market which could not exist without this prohibition,” François Crépeau,a U.N. expert on migration, stated in June.

While countries such as Germany and Austria expect to take in hundreds of thousands of refugees this year, other countries and EU officials have balked at the suggestion that they have a humanitarian responsibility to accept asylum claims.

EU ministers are set to meet on Sept. 14 to discuss how to address the crisis, with nations calling for a unified asylum policy.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, called on Wednesday for sweeping reforms that could open up legal channels for migration and overhaul border control policy.

Also on HuffPost:

Obama To Unveil Plan To Bring Overtime Pay To 5 Million More Workers

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama this week will propose a plan to extend overtime pay to 5 million American workers who are currently excluded under federal law, according to sources.

The president will recommend updating overtime rules so that salaried workers who earn less than roughly $50,400 per year would be guaranteed time-and-a-half pay when they work more than 40 hours in a week. Under the current rules implemented by former President George W. Bush, salaried workers must earn less than $23,660 per year in order to be automatically eligible for overtime pay.

The president announced his intention to make overtime reforms last year, but the details of the plan have been kept secret until this week. The president is expected to discuss the proposal later this week during a visit to Wisconsin. Details of the proposal were first reported by Bloomberg.

In a blog post on The Huffington Post Monday night, Obama said that "too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve," and that his proposal would help assure that "hard work is rewarded."

"That’s how America should do business," the president wrote. "In this country, a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay. That’s at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America."

With heavy lobbying by business groups, many progressives feared the White House would recommend only modest changes, thereby impacting relatively few workers and employers. Instead, the White House has proposed a substantial reform that has the potential to change pay and scheduling for millions of people.

Employers whose workers become newly eligible for overtime will now face a choice: Either pay a premium for those extra hours worked, or get the employee's hours below 40 per week, likely by shifting the labor to other workers. The proposal would be robust enough to cut across industries, bringing many workers either more pay or more time off, and forcing many employers to grapple with overtime costs that they never had to before.

The proposal must still undergo a public-comment period before it can be finalized and go into effect, but the release of a concrete proposal will mark a major step in what's likely to be one of the president's most far-reaching reforms undertaken without congressional approval. The changes are expected to go into effect in 2016.

Last year, Obama signed an executive order directing the Labor Department to overhaul the overtime rules, setting off a lobbying campaign in Washington. On one side were labor groups, progressive economists and Democratic lawmakers who pressed for an ambitious reform that would reach a large share of the U.S. workforce. On the other side were employers and business lobbies that wanted to limit the rule's effects as much as possible, given the new labor costs they would face.

Under wage laws established during the Great Depression, employers must pay overtime to hourly wage earners and salaried workers who aren't considered white-collar. But the current rules give employers a lot of leeway to classify workers as managerial and therefore ineligible for time-and-a-half pay. As HuffPost reported in 2013, this phenomenon is especially prevalent in the retail industry, where store managers can work 80-hour weeks without any pay beyond their base salary, even though they may be doing mostly manual labor.

Obama pointed expressly to these workers in an interview with HuffPost in March.

"What we’ve seen is, increasingly, companies skirting basic overtime laws, calling somebody a manager when they’re stocking groceries and getting paid $30,000 a year," Obama said. "Those folks are being cheated."

Workers whose salaries fall beneath the threshold are guaranteed overtime pay regardless of what their bosses call them. Although the reforms are expected to hit industries like retail the most, the impact will be felt in any field where the hours are relatively long and the pay relatively low.

Since the threshold hasn't risen alongside American salaries, overtime pay has become something of a foreign concept for most Americans -- something that could now change. According to estimates from the Economic Policy Institute, just 11 percent of salaried workers in the U.S. are covered by overtime law under the current rules. That share would be closer to half of salaried workers under the new proposal, by EPI's estimates.

Read Obama's blog post here.

Uber, New York City Reach Tentative Truce

On the heels of a days-long publicity war, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has tabled his plan to limit the number of new Uber vehicles in the city.

The administration reached an agreement with Uber to halt a City Council bill that would place a cap on the company's cars during a four-month study into the impact of Uber and other for-hire car companies on traffic in the city.

Under the terms of the deal, released by de Blasio's office, Uber will provide new data requested by the city, while keeping its current growth rate steady. At the same time, New York officials will move ahead with their traffic study and conduct a review on the taxi and car service industries' driver and rider protections, accessibility for individuals with disabilities and impact on public transit revenue.

The New York Times first reported the news on Wednesday afternoon.

Last weekend, De Blasio criticized Uber's rapid expansion in an op-ed for the New York Daily News, describing it as a company with “multi-million dollar ads trying to convince New Yorkers that it doesn't need more oversight.”

In response, Uber rolled out a $3.2 million media blitz against the mayor. The company had also earlier released a "de Blasio" feature on its app, which told users to expect long wait times if the mayor went through with his plan to cap growth.

Here Are 9 Unforgettable Richard Branson Quotes

Richard Branson is turning 65 on Saturday.

A high school dropout, the Virgin Group founder began in 1973 with Virgin Records, which became the biggest independent label record in the world. Now, Virgin Group now employs more than 50,000 people in more than 50 countries. Branson's entrepreneurship even led to his being knighted in 1999.

Here are some of our favorite, inspiring Branson quotes:

(via Richard Branson)

(via Virgin)

(via Salesforce)

(via Virgin)

(via Virgin)

(via Virgin)

(via Virgin)

(via Virgin)

(via Richard Branson)