The Climate of Business #17: Creativity and climate change = the only way forward?

This week was rather uneventful on the climate and business front, and understandably so as the year comes to an end and businesses are wrapping up their activities. The meaningful news came from the regulatory front with CDP and GRI launching a framework for reporting on biodiversity and the EU launching the MapMyTree tool, mapping tree planting activities in Europe.

Is uneventfulness a sign of the reduced role of the interplay of climate change & business or rather a demonstration that the climate topic has deeply embedded itself into the business-as-usual schedule? I would think it is the latter. With all that happened in 2021 we all with our sustainability efforts on a board, management, but also operational level, enabled the diminishment of the sensation around climate change and made it part of the daily agenda.

In 2022 we have the job to increase the speed on implementation.

Climate Change Reality

Biden is approving more oil and gas drilling permits than Trump (Financial Times)

Peatlands play a key role in storing CO2 - are they better protected?  (Carbon Brief)

A very large increase in photosynthesis globally does not mean that we are slowing down climate change (Independent)

Climate change has a direct impact on instability, conflict and terrorism, says U.N. Secretary General (AP News)

This ‘Black Box’ will hold humanity accountable should we face extreme disasters (Climate Change News)

Scientists are calling for a harsh stop on deep ocean mining for the clean energy transition (Climate Change News)

Western Indian Ocean coral reef extremely vulnerable (Nature Sustainability)

European Commission launches MapMyTree tool with the goal of planting 3B trees by 2030 (EEA)

Business Climate Reality

World Bank loans money to Poland to support its people get off coal heating (Reuters)

It’s the end of coal for Scotland (The Guardian) 

The EU has to put emphasis on carbon border adjustment mechanism for its climate strategy (Reuters)

GRI and CDP initiate a new global standard to hold companies accountable on their impact on biodiversity (Ecotextile)

Governments and companies are increasingly being sued for climate inaction (BBC)

Sustainable investing is mostly about sustaining corporations (Bloomberg)

CEO of Saudi Aramco stress need for fossil fuels to avoid highly probable social unrest  (Financial Times)

Who controls the ESG Market? (Bloomberg)

Fashion should face its systemic waste crisis and adhere to climate pledges  (The Guardian)

New German government’s plans to reduce GHG are not enough (AP News)

Companies are transforming the CO2 they emit into actual products (The Guardian)

Reality Check

A few weeks back I asked in a LinkedIn post what topics would be interesting to cover in the newsletter, and creativity and its role in addressing climate change was one of the best voted topics. So let's get on it.

What is creativity? In the context of climate change, creativity has two parts to play - innovation in developing new processes and technologies, or using existing processes and tech in a new manner, and the creation of art form.

Let's break these two down.

Creativity as innovation vehicle to address climate change

This type of creativity taps into the human potential to reinvent what has been created, expand it and improve it. A favourite book of mine outside of the context of climate, but certainly applicable to the business sphere is "Repeatability" by Chris Zook and James Allen, who share how any technology we find novel, has its roots hidden somewhere in decades of reinvention of a similar product. An example given in the book is the invention of the iPod, which was the granddaughter of the mp3 player and Walkman.

And so we should think about innovation needed for the climate - rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and create some fancy, but not-applicable-to-reality, technology, better look at widely used products and services and find a way to fix them for the planet and for the stability of the economy.

Example of innovation: any project in the Greentech Alliance, our community of 1000+ companies addressing climate change

"Innovations need to overcome the hurdles of affordability, adaptability, scalability, replicability and sustainability. Any new technology or process that does not create a positive change in the lives of people does not really qualify as innovation. The Industrial Revolution 4.0 will open up new avenues for science-driven creativity and innovation. The world must resort to the ultimate renewable resource: human ingenuity and creativity."

Hans d’Orville, Special Advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO

Creativity as art for the planet

Humans are creatures of emotions, a widely known to businesses fact used often for commercial manipulation. Why do Christmas comedies come out exactly some weeks before the holiday season kicks off? Why do ads for a trip to a sunny place show up on your social media app shortly after you saw a photo of a friend indulging a cocktail somewhere exotic?

Emotions drive the show and as much as think we are rational, fact-driven, economically sensible, anyone can be easily tricked to do something if the right emotional tactic is applied.

This is where the transition to a sustainable economy can find an ally. Over the course of the last years I have seen immense creativity applied to the climate change agenda - from fundraising concerts, to art shows translating someone's emotions on the topic, through to activist stunts.

This creative energy is a powerful and necessary tool in our sustainability agenda. Because as we move onto engaging the whole society on the topic of climate change, we will need to activate those uninterested in creative, emotion-led ways. Facts won't work.

Examples: Any project on Kickstarter on the topic of climate change

Carbon Price

The only way is up.