3M as Metaphor

I realized today that 3M Corporation's current situation is a metaphor of our global climate crisis.

The company has been a place of innovation for a century and a cash cow for investors, retirees, and employee stockholders, consistently paying annual dividends.

But now, as any local news-reader or follower of the stock market knows, the company has been mired in expensive litigation because of those same innovative products, which poisoned the world, particularly PFAS, the "forever chemicals" that have been found just about everywhere and are finally going to be discontinued.

That's the 3M-as-capitalists-externalizing-problems part of the metaphor, which is so commonplace that I wouldn't be writing to comment on it.

The part of the 3M story that made me think about the metaphor was the stockholders' response to the situation. According to the Star Tribune today, there is movement among them to unseat the company leader because their financial return, their precious dividends, are in danger of going away as the company attempts to rework itself to do less damage. 

Like well-off Americans who have personally profited from the greenhouse gas bonanza of the past century, the stockholders want the party to continue no matter what the cost to anyone else.

The leaders "don't have credibility with the market," says one commentator. The all-knowing "market" — of course!

"We find it increasingly unacceptable to be constantly put off in anticipation of a distant better future," says the spokesperson for a large institutional investor.

That sounds like a quote that could come from someone describing their attitude about our shared future within the climate crisis, someone living in denial as if a few tweaks will magically solve it.

3M Corporation has spewed dangerous chemicals into our ecosystem for decades and you all personally benefited from it. Now it's time to compensate other people for the damage, so you don't get to keep getting paid as if you did no harm.

See how that works?