The role that private actors play in accelerating or preventing progressive climate policy and true decarbonization is a core research interest of global environmental politics. Yet scholars have struggled to measure the political behavior of multinational firms due to lack of transparency about their activities and inconsistency in reporting requirements across jurisdictions. In this research note, we present a new data source—firms’ earnings calls—that scholars might use to better understand the political behavior of major multinational polluters. To illustrate the value of earnings calls as a data source, we construct an original data set of all earnings calls made between 2005 and 2019 by major oil and gas firms. We then code these transcripts, demonstrating that although firms can be classified as more or less pro-climate, there is little evidence of the industry’s public acceptance of decarbonization. These unique data could permit researchers to explore important questions about climate politics, the evolution of private governance, and the relationship between policy and firms’ political behavior. Moreover, we suggest extensions of our approach, including other multinational industries that are amenable to this type of analysis.

How can we explain variation in the volume and character of transnational collective action on climate change? This paper presents original qualitative and quantitative data to document how transnational activism on climate change has changed over time. The author draws attention to the role of transnational social movement spillover—a process by which ideas, activists, and tactics are diffused from one movement to another—in explaining this evolution. The article examines the spillover of the global justice movement to the climate justice movement from 2007 to 2009, linking this spillover to changes in the nature of activism. In contrast to previous approaches, this work shows that transnational social movement spillover can result in the expansion of contention without radicalizing those actors already involved. This case demonstrates the theoretical importance of the spillover process and offers lessons for future climate activism.