Richard Howitt

speaker

582 appearances 7 recordings 1 series first heard May 2026 last heard 29 Jul

Richard Howitt’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 7 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 4.

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Frankly Speaking - A Podcast on Responsible Business · #114 Bennett Freeman & Chloe Cole: How Have US Corporates Responded to the ESG Backlash? · 8 Jul 2026 podcast

Chloe has a long history working in business and human rights in government, in NGOs, and in academia.

Welcome, Chloe.

Now, Ben, at first, quite simply, what is your intent in doing this?

And, Clary, when we deal with reports on this podcast, it's sometimes difficult to do justice to the depth of them.

So can you begin by giving us a sort of high-level overview of what are the findings that have been produced?

And that point, the good, let's start with the good.

In 8 of 13 companies who responded to you where you did detailed analysis of those responses, in terms of companies continuing to report, in terms of what other benchmarks say, in terms of shareholder votes, you present a lot of evidence in this report that say that many companies aren't maintaining their stance, and that reflects certainly some research I did myself on US corporates last year,

So it's wishful thinking.

We want that to be the case for those of us that are involved in business and human rights.

What's behind that and what gives you optimism when you have done this work?

is possible in today's context when this research was looked at in november there were even more companies maintaining their human rights policies and commitments but this latest research is beginning to peel away so literally the last six months can you detect why that might be happening

I want to get onto some of the broader context of this, but there's also some very sharp commentary in the report that I don't want to overlook.

First, Chloe, you criticise lobbying undertaken by what you call big oil.

What's your criticism?

And that immunity from climate liability passed in Utah, Tennessee, Oklahoma and Iowa, I don't think that's widely known enough across the world.

Slightly frightening, I have to say, from any sort of climate perspective.

You also specifically cite energy transfers lawsuit against Greenpeace.

Once again, I don't remember which of you, please explain what was happening there.

and led to a 345 million US dollar fine.

If there's strategic lawsuits against public participation, I can't think of anything that would more prevent public participation in the fear of getting multi-million pound fines.

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