From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy: How Businesses Can Drive Systems Change

Environmentalist Severn Cullis-Suzuki Calls on B Corps to Lead the Way on Climate Justice

Lifetime environmental activist Severn Cullis-Suzuki says the days of fossil fuel supremacy are numbered, and it’s up to everyone — the Certified B Corporation community and beyond — to do what’s needed to usher in renewable energy sources as fast as possible. As the Executive Director of the Vancouver-based David Suzuki Foundation, Cullis-Suzuki leads the foundation in its work to conserve and protect the natural environment through evidence-based research, education, and policy analysis.

Cullis-Suzuki says fossil fuels’ dominance is rooted in extractive colonial practices upheld by racism and capitalism, and understanding this context is part of breaking free from fossil fuel reliance. She says recent years have seen a growing awakening regarding this system and its human and environmental costs. While she sees change as inevitable, the pace of that change is crucial. 

“This system and structure is not going down easy, and it’s going to take all of us,” Cullis-Suzuki says. “All of us in this room and the work that we’re doing, and far beyond even the B Corporation community, to make this systems transformation happen. The speed at which it happens is very important. Every moment we delay results in an increase in the degree of global heating and climate change.”

Cullis-Suzuki spoke at Champions Retreat 2024, a conference for the U.S. and Canadian Certified B Corporation community. The theme of the conference, Restore, invited attendees to explore collective healing and new ways of thriving for people and the planet. Environmental impact is among the core values of B Corps, which strive to advance climate justice by centering the needs and voices of those most impacted by climate change. 

Moving Away From the Fossil Fuel Economy

Cullis-Suzuki has spent her life advocating for the environment and intergenerational justice, or justice for future generations. Her deep concern about the environment as a child led her to start the Environmental Children’s Organization with friends. A few years later, when she was 12, she delivered a speech at the United Nations Earth Summit. Her message from 1992 continues to resonate: “Coming up here today, I have no hidden agenda. I am fighting for my future.” 

In her current advocacy, Cullis-Suzuki continues her fight for the future by encouraging the use of solar and wind energy as more affordable and regenerative replacements for fossil fuels. For instance, she says modeling and research that the David Suzuki Foundation has collaborated on show that Canada’s energy economy can become 100% renewable by 2035. 

“It is totally possible on the municipal and community scale,” she says. “The energy revolution is at hand.” 

B Corp’s Role in Transforming Capitalism

In Canada, she says Indigenous people are leading the way. Indigenous Nations are among the largest owners of renewable energy assets, behind only Canada’s national government and utilities. She says this progress demonstrates that fossil fuels do not have to be the status quo and that B Corp actions are part of the larger unraveling of the system of capitalism and colonialism that fuels fossil fuel supremacy. 

With their work to shift away from a shareholder-focused economy to a way of doing business that incorporates all stakeholders, B Corps are working to reshape those systems to better serve people and the environment, she says. 

“This is a critical time, but it’s also a time of huge opportunity as we see the cracks in the system,” she says. “One of the things that is most important is figuring out not only how these systems are intersecting and broken but what we want to emerge out of the ashes. That is what every single one of you is working on. You’re working on the what then, the what if, and the what can we do?” 

Cullis-Suzuki says when she heard that the mission of the B Corp community involved transforming capitalism, she told herself if that was indeed the case, “then these are my people.” The messages and conversations at Champions Retreat reinforce that B Corps are dedicated to making such change by creating an economy that supports justice, anti-racism, sustainability, and the health and well-being of people and life. 

“The scale of global capitalism has decoupled our time-tested human strategies for survival, examining and understanding cause and effect, and actions from consequences,” she says. “In a few human lifetimes, the system has transformed the face of the Earth and the very identity of our species. Today, as we find ourselves in the sixth mass extinction event and experiencing the beginnings of climate change … this cause is absolutely crucial for our species’ survival. This is the work.”