Businesses Against Climate Change: A Call to Action

Climate Change is all too real and time is not on our side

Part 1 of our Businesses Against Climate Change series.

The Facts — It’s real

Climate change is conclusively caused by the atmospheric buildup of humanity’s heat-trapping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We have already begun to see some of its effects, e.g., extreme weather events, rising sea levels and shrinking Arctic Sea ice. Unless we correct our current course no business, person or society will be spared from the even greater consequences to come.

The Future — We need to act fast

The good news is that we can prevent the worst of these consequences if we reduce our net emissions enough to stop our planet’s temperature from rising more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The bad news is that we are running out of time. We are already approaching nearly 1° and last year was the warmest on record (0.87°C).

Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index, as of 2015. Courtesy of NASA’s climate change website.

Moreover, even the Paris Agreement, arguably the world’s most proactive action to-date to keep temperature increases well below 2ºC, is far from enough. The established limit under Paris is 1.5ºC, but the International Energy Agency estimates that global temperatures would rise 2.7ºC by 2100 even if all current national reduction commitments under the Paris Agreement were met. Even that scenario is rosy. The agreement only just went into effect on Nov 4th after the EU’s October ratification, and countries’ current commitments — especially ours — have yet to be tested, let alone any needed future commitments.

An alternate measure of the challenge we face is to look at the aggregate level of CO2 in our atmosphere compared to the maximum level able to sustain our planet’s current climate. That maximum sustainable level is estimated to be around 350 ppm (parts per million, see 350.org), compared with its current level at ~405 ppm as of October. In fact, the amount of CO2 in our atmosphere has not been below that maximum sustainable level since at least 1987 (raw data available here).

Courtesy of NOAA data on NASA’s climate change website

The Problem— The disconnect

There are serious gaps of knowledge when it comes to climate change. Despite widespread scientific agreement (by 97% of climate scientists), a growing number of large multinational companies taking action and a dramatic uptick in companies buzzing about sustainability, few people even know how much greenhouse gases they emit at home, let alone at work.

Only 27% of U.S. adults even agree that there is scientific agreement that climate change is real, even among liberals barely more than half agree (55%) (Pew). Worse yet are the persistence of many myths surrounding climate change, ranging from the basic, e.g., it’s gotten colder in my city — not relevant because it is the global, annual temperature that is increasing. To the complex, e.g., global warming is caused by our planet’s natural carbon cycles — not relevant because, as mentioned above, humanity’s emissions have pushed the amount of carbon in our atmosphere to over 400 ppm. That figure is well beyond the 300 ppm peak our planet’s natural carbon cycle in the past 400,000+ years (see chart above). We know this thanks largely to amazing data from ice cores collected since the late 1990s.

Perhaps then it comes as no surprise that although most of the world agrees that climate change is a problem, most of the world’s highest emitters are not concerned.

The Solution — Businesses

Why

Almost all of our greenhouse gas emissions are connected directly or indirectly to choices made and not made by businesses. Business decisions affect everything from how products are designed, produced, transported, used and disposed (lifecycle GHG emissions) to what employees focus on for at least half of their time awake (8hrs working / 16hrs awake, weekdays). This means that businesses have a heavy hand in influencing how people perceive climate change and GHG emissions.

Call to Action

We’re calling on all businesses, regardless of whether they are net consumers or producers of GHG emissions to commit to

Measuring their direct AND indirect GHG emissions to the maximum extent and frequency possible, but no less than annually (it’s important to measure indirect emissions so that we can express the mutual and inter-dependent aspects of reductions, more on this in a future post); Setting meaningful reduction targets in line with preventing temperature increases below 2ºC from pre-industrial levels, especially if they are currently unachievable; Involving their employees in the fight against climate change by transparently discussing firmwide GHG emissions, providing emissions & climate change training and, ideally, GHG reduction incentives; and Transparently sharing their progress with the public and their employees, regardless of whether they are unable to meet their reduction targets, all while taking special care to specifically note any aspects of their business they are unable to further reduce State the premium they would be willing to pay for a more GHG efficient option re any aspect of their business they are unable to further reduce

Part 2 will be a getting started guide.

Hesitant?

It’s probably too expensive. Not only is it not expensive, it’s profitable. In the short term you can stick to the low hanging fruit: reporting and discussing. Then in the long term, as you gain more employees, clients and customers who like “cool” things, you’ll discover awesome green hacks and might even be able to expand your budget.

We’re already at max efficiency / there is nothing we can do. Nope. Even if you like totally “just run AWS” or “already avoid flying unless I absolutely need to meet mano y mano,” that’s what commitments 4 & 5 are for.

It’s too complicated. Nah. If you can run your business you can save our planet, but if you’re hung up on something in particular, drop us a line and we’ll answer in an upcoming post.

[Adding these next three counterpoints in response to Jeff Glueck’s great feedback, thanks!]

Our company is too small. We agree that you might be too small to go carbon neutral, hire teams of experts to redesign your product/svc to lower your GHGs or give employees hefty bonuses as incentives to reduce their carbon footprints. But small can add up fast. Nearly half of all private sector employment is within firms of 5–999 people (48% as of 1Q 2016, see BLS Employment Statistics). What better way to help people learn about climate change than to show them how what they do for 50%+ of their weekday turns into emissions. Plus, it isn’t expensive to do what you can, see the first point above.

Our footprint is too small. I doubt it’s that small, but anyway it’s not even about the footprint, it’s about the leg. Measuring and publishing your emissions can help society get one step closer to mending the broken link between actions and emissions in the public zeitgeist. The effect is especially powerful when scope 3 emissions (e.g., Employee Commutes and Travel) are included.

Only a carbon tax can save us now. A carbon tax would certainly help, but (a) it’s not the only way we can fight climate change and (b) a carbon tax first requires broad agreement. If there is one thing we learned from the election of 2016 it’s that, for better or worse, if enough voters want change our political system will attempt that change. Imagine if every employee could see their firm’s GHG emissions growing each quarter. Imagine if every consumer and client could see the growing emissions of their favorite companies. That would be just as valuable as any tax and would almost certainly be a necessary predicate to one anyway.

Martin is the Founder & CEO of Craevotieous Inc. and is building a transparency portal called pluto, take a look at pluto.life