Business Professor Tom Lyon Tackles Corporate Accountability

Tom Lyon speaks to his alma mater about his research interests, including future washing, which refers to net-zero commitments that are made so far in the future that they lead to little current accountability.

““Net-zero plans will typically have a date of 2050, so we have 27 years in which something is supposed to happen,” Lyon says. “But there’s no possible way to document if the firm is going to achieve those reductions.” Casting the target date so far into the future allows current executives the luxury of procrastination and the means to personally avoid accountability, he adds.”