Introductory Note
by John Elkington

It’s an uncomfortable fact, but our short human life-spans – coupled with the fact that the entire history of human civilisation as we understand it fits into the span of a single interglacial period – mean that none of us can claim to be truly expert in the management of the full spectrum of climate change. Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, underscored the unwelcome point that human civilisation tends to respond to major climatic shifts by collapsing and then popping up somewhere else. These days, with the human species pressing at virtually every limit of our global ecosystem, there aren’t too many new places to go. Worse, the aftermath of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina suggests that even the wealthiest societies in the world can be profoundly disrupted by the occasional unusual weather events, let alone profound climatic shifts.

And it’s a disturbing thought that I wrote my first report on climate change in 1978, predicting that it would be one of four great environmental challenges by the new century. Interestingly, this was for the Hudson Institute, at the time run by Herman Kahn , who among other things helped devise the nuclear defence doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In any event, his response to the argument that climate change was likely to be a major civilisational disruptor was characteristically blunt. To paraphrase, he said, “The problem with you environmentalists is that when you are headed towards the edge of a precipice, you want us to slam on the brakes and steer away.” And, yes, that was the gist of the report. Contrariwise, Kahn argued, “what we need to do is to step on the gas – and try to jump the chasm.”

It is now just over 20 years since we founded SustainAbility and, over that time much of our effort has involved working with companies and financial institutions to get a grip on climate-related risks and opportunities . The inertia in current markets, corporate cultures, and business models has to be experienced to be believed – although it does feel as if we have experienced some form of tipping point in recent years, with Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth both a symptom and catalyst of the process. In short, we are all now headed into new territory – scientifically, politically, economically, technologically, psychologically. Like others taking part in this 21^st Century Trust convening, I approach the event with a deep sense of unease that we are early on in a profound paradigm shift, in the true sense of that much-abused term, that all bets are off.

The new paradigm

Few things have had a greater impact on my thinking than Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, with its discussion of the nature and causes of paradigm shifts. After reading it in the late 1960s, I saw the world very differently. And I became very wary of using the term outside Kuhn’s definition. However, although he argued that such shifts could only – by definition – happen in science, it has become increasingly clear that we also periodically see profound shifts in our wider worldviews, whether or not we can legitimately describe these as paradigm shifts. Seeing Earth from outside (particularly the Apollo 17 whole-earth image) helped catalyse one such worldview in my own lifetime.

And, whatever scientists may feel about Professor James Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis, just as the underlying theory of plate tectonics radically changed the way we see things like earthquakes and the origins of the Himalayas, so a series of scientific breakthroughs have opened our eyes to the fact that there is a much greater range in environmental conditions on our planet than would be suggested by our experience during the period of civilisation-building. More, it seems that our agricultural systems – for example rice cultivation – have been impacting our climatic systems for at least 8,000 years.

So what comes next? A new paradigm, for one thing, with an accelerating shift to one-planet, sustainability-focussed science, politics, economics, markets and business models. In the process, once humanity wakes up to the degree of risk it faces as the climate shifts, both for natural and human-induced reasons, we will move through – indeed have been moving through – pretty much the same emotional stages that we see in human bereavement, from denial and anger to a more balanced set of reactions. But looking to the past, it seems clear that one early response will be an accelerated quest for technical fixes that will enable business – and our consumerist lifestyles – to continue more or less as usual.

Then, as climate is increasingly perceived as a systemic threat – and the linked opportunity spaces open out – the proposed fixes will proliferate like rabbits. Some will be old solutions competing for new roles, like the nuclear industry presenting itself as the only answer to climate disruption. And some will be new, ranging from engineers suggesting space mirrors to cut incoming solar radiation through to the growing range of start-ups now pursuing such areas as ocean fertilization. Companies like Climos, GreenSea Venture and Planktos are attracting investors with the promise of oceanic fixes. Among the ideas: sprinkle iron filings into the ocean, in industrial quantities, as a way to catalyze blooms of fast-growing plankton that, in turn, sponge up carbon dioxide. Then the hope is that when the algae decompose, they will sink deep into the ocean, sequestering the carbon in deep sediments.

Surprisingly, such ideas – despite their huge potential for unintended consequences – are likely to fall on increasingly fertile ground as the fourth societal pressure wave shapes markets around the world. Here’s why: a series of gigantic societal pressure waves have impacted politicians, regulators, business and, increasingly, the financial markets.

Wave 4

SustainAbility has mapped three great societal pressure waves related to the environmental paradigm shift since 1960 – and concludes that a fourth is now building.

The first wave built from the early 1960s, in the wake of Rachel Carson’s epoch-making book Silent Spring, culminating in the first UN environmental conference in 1972. Through the subsequent downwave a raft of environment ministries surfaced worldwide, followed by a secondary wave of regulation. Industry, on the defensive, was forced to comply with a flood-tide of new laws. And that’s where many companies remain.

The second wave, peaking between 1988 and 1991, was very different. The Brundtland Commission published Our Common Future in 1987, introducing the concept of sustainable development. Having founded SustainAbility a month earlier, we launched The Green Consumer Guide in 1988. It caught the zeitgeist, selling a million copies. Spooked by issues like ozone depletion, growing numbers of ordinary citizens voted for change with their purses or wallets. New faces appeared in the Green spotlight, as political leaders like Thatcher, Bush the First, and Gorbachev made their first green speeches – and Green parties surged in Germany and even, briefly around the 1989 European Union elections, the United Kingdom.

Industry, again, was off-balance, the challenges even tougher. Previously companies could lobby to slow down or gut new laws. Now retailers became market gatekeepers, changing their product specifications almost overnight – often leaving manufacturers and growers months or just weeks to change their product formulations. Lead went from petrol, mercury from batteries, phosphates from detergents, chlorine from paper. Companies scrambled to audit suppliers and, for a time, the game became competitive.

But then things changed again. Capitalism went triumphalist. Through the 1990s, companies reverted to corporate citizenship. Globalization helped drive things along, with key controversies surrounding companies like Shell, Nike, and Monsanto, although one unfortunate result was to position the agenda within corporate social responsibility departments rather than boards. From 1999, the rules of the game morphed further as the third wave peak kicked off in the streets of Seattle with the anti-WTO protests. This time, though, unless their jobs were being offshored, the issues seemed more remote to most people

The 9/11 attacks chopped back that third wave, savagely. Emerging concerns around environmental security were sluiced away in the race to win the misconceived, poorly managed ‘War on Terror.’ No-one disputes the need to address the threat of terrorism, but the evidence of recent years confirms the importance of understanding the real enemy, the role the West plays in creating that enemy, and the critical importance of understanding the political and cultural contexts within which actions are taken.

That said, the evidence also suggests that a new pressure wave is now building, with climate change a key driver of political responses. London Mayor Ken Livingstone and Tory leader David Cameron are UK examples, the mayors of Seattle, San Francisco and Chicago among their US counterparts – while Arnold Schwarzenegger’s market-shaping initiatives in California are the shape of things to come.

Raising our game

Business, however, is still where much of the action is likely to be found in future. Progress is much slower than it needs to be, but some companies and some NGOs are combining forces in groundbreaking alliances like the UK Climate Leaders Group and, in the US, the Climate Action Partnership, to lobby politicians for action . There was an interesting cameo on 15 March 2007, when the chief executives of America’s biggest car companies withstood pressure during a Congressional hearing to belittle the significance of man-made carbon emissions. Bush the Second's McCarthy-like suppression of environmental science is weakening, but we continue to push to make corporate lobbying more transparent. Too many companies remain schizophrenic, spotlighting good deeds in annual reports, then lobbying furiously behind the scenes to stall government action in areas like climate change.

So where next? We’d like to know too, so we recently evolved a set of scenarios exploring both ‘Breakdown’ and ‘Breakthrough’ futures, which appear in the report Raising Our Game.¹ In terms of breakthrough technology and business models, the growing interest of venture capital outfits like Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Myers in the ‘cleantech’ field – with billions of dollars pouring into biofuels, wind energy and solar photovoltaics – is encouraging. But even Kleiner Perkins admit that if the Greenland ice-cap melts the ensuing sea-level rises will drown many of the world’s most populous cities.

Let’s hope, among other things, that business embraces a new WWF initiative, ‘One Planet Business,’ which for the first time will give companies a clear picture of their environmental footprints – and of the yawning gaps between where they are and where they would need to be to meet their growing number of sustainability pledges. The idea is to develop environmental budgets – including carbon budgets – for each major sector of industry, with the automobile industry first in WWF’s headlights.

So let’s focus in for a moment on transport and mobility. If railways replaced horses, and cars replaced trains, what will be the next evolutionary step after the car? Like its counterparts in North America and Asia, the EU auto industry believes the answer is: the car. Some people in Detroit may still hope – against the odds – that their beloved, highly profitable SUVs will long roam the freeways as the vast, lumbering buffalo herds once did the Great Plains. But the evidence suggests that they, too, are doomed.

The answer, again, is that no single fix can save us. Indeed even a bunch of them will likely only postpone the day when Peak Oil considerations mean that urban populations – particularly those in the world’s booming megacities – will have to switch to more sustainable transport, mobility and access solutions and behaviours. True, bringing hybrid technology to SUVs (as Ford did with its hybrid Escape) or developing fuel cell-based vehicles (as GM and others are doing) may improve things at the margins, for a while. We may also see genuine breakthroughs based on e.g. GM’s Volt electric car. But we do seem to be on the verge of an era in which natural resource constraints predicted since the early 1970s take hold to a degree that would have been unimaginable a decade ago.

Endgames

If you – or your board – still need convincing, try reading the recent Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change or the latest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). One of Stern’s key conclusions is that the cost of inaction on climate change is likely to be dramatically greater than those associated with timely, effective action. On the other hand, if the costs of greenhouse gas emissions are properly internalized, the market opportunities will likely run to hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

No surprise, then, that some leading companies are beginning to break ranks – and even switch sides – as the evidence of climate stress builds. Timed to break just ahead of President Bush’s 2007 State of the Union address, the US Climate Action Partnership – an extraordinary coalition of leading companies and NGOs – called for US regulation to limit greenhouse gas emissions to deliver concentrations of CO₂e (the CO₂ equivalent of all greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) which will stabilize at 450-550ppm. Given the current concentration of 430ppm, their sense of urgency is understandable.

As the fight gets nastier, it was no surprise to see the US Administration leaking a key IPCC report – presumably to give climate sceptics time to get their defences in order. Indeed, with the Bush team’s days numbered, climate specialists are increasingly outspoken about the ways in which it has suppressed, doctored or distorted research on climate change and its implications. But however nasty the political endgame may become, endgame it is. The IPCC’s predicted conclusion is that the scientific case for urgent action is hardening, suggesting that the auto and fuel industries – among many others – will face a growing barrage of criticism and, more importantly, increasingly powerful regulatory and market drivers for fundamental change. The answer to at least some of tomorrow’s mobility needs may well be a car, but it may well be Chinese rather than European, a diesel-hybrid rather than petrol-powered, and owned by someone other than the driver.

There are also those who believe that one answer will be to develop new generations of electric car, like the TH!NK or the 0-60mph-in-about-4-seconds Tesla Roadster, but for the moment the big push is towards biofuels. It was no accident that President Bush visited DuPont the day after his State of the Union Address, given that the chemical giant is partnering with BP to develop new generations of biofuel. And on this side of the water, the EU is now vigorously pushing new legislation to force oil companies to blend expensive biofuel into petrol supplies.

Unfortunately, however, a shift to growing our fuels is not going to be any sort of magic wand. For one thing, biofuel production will compete for food crops. While the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has predicted that bioethanol distilleries will require 60 million tons of corn from the 2008 harvest; the Earth Policy Institute (EPI) estimates that distilleries will need 139 million tons – more than twice as much. If the EPI estimate is at all close to the mark, the Institute itself concludes, “the emerging competition between cars and people for grain will likely drive world grain prices to levels never seen before.

The key questions here are: How high will grain prices rise? When will the crunch come? And what will be the worldwide effect of rising food prices? Europeans probably won’t much like horizon-to-horizon crops of genetically-modified fuel plants either, while anyone who grows these crops will face an array of challenges linked to fertilizers, pesticides and water.

Meanwhile, different car-makers are pursuing a confusing number of strategies. Saab has its biofuel-powered cars, Toyota is planning to convert Prius into a sub-brand (sold in Toyota dealerships, but with dedicated teams), and Honda is both redeveloping its hybrids and is committed to taking its full mainstream product line to clean diesel by 2010.

So how do you like your fix?

At a time when the demand for solutions is likely to soar, how do we ensure that the technical fixes adopted are the right ones? There are many elements to the story, ranging from strategic impact assessments through to citizen juries, but it is already clear that some fixes are likely to be true fixes – while others will turn out to be false fixes. Let’s start with the latter:

False (short term, at best) fixes:

True (longer term) fixes:

Conservation: This has to be our number one priority. Simply changing the energy mix and attempting to find technical fixes to reducing carbon emissions is always likely be a second-best option.

Unsexy solutions: As part of that first set of true fixes, we need to focus on areas offering the greatest payback – insulation and building heating and cooling systems. Such areas may be less technologically sexy than space umbrellas, but the paybacks are much more certain.

Regulation: Voluntary measures may help spur early experimentation by business, but the ultimate key to effective, sustained action will be regulation – and enforcement. This message is core to the US Climate Action Partnership agenda.

Incentives: In the mobility sector, for example, auto manufacturers need to be incentivized to redirect technological advance into improving fuel economy rather than performance. If congestion taxes and other forms of road charging were widely adopted, our consumption of energy – and with it our CO₂ emissions – would fall more dramatically and more quickly than by chasing new technologies.

Politics: The biggest challenge is a political challenge, requiring political will, leadership and action. We need to see more US Climate Action Partnerships, working for smarter, more effective incentives for change. Luckily, as Al Gore famously put it, political will is a renewable resource. On the political front, SustainAbility’s recent submission to the Quality of Life Commission called for the establishment of a UK ‘Carbon Treasury,’ dedicated to making the UK ‘carbon positive’ by 2050 .

© 21st Century Trust

Back to Top
List of Conference Articles