Climate Change: Threat & Opportunity with Andrew Winston
In Season One of 12 Geniuses, climate change guru Andrew Winston joined Don MacPherson to talk about how businesses are creating opportunities through the green economy. Since that conversation, a lot has transpired. On one hand, we now have an even clearer understanding of how dire the climate crisis has become, but on the other hand, we have access to more affordable technology to help us fight it. Since the onset of the pandemic, we’ve also seen how changes in the workforce have empowered employees to put pressure on organizations to make strong commitments toward sustainability.
In this episode, Andrew and Don meet again to discuss the many facets of these changes, including the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, new innovations in the fight against climate change and how having a sustainability plan for companies is a key to attracting talent.
Andrew studied economics at Princeton, later earning an MBA from Columbia and a master’s of environmental management from Yale. He began his career advising companies in strategy and marketing before turning to his passion for the environment. His newest book, “Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take,” outlines how organizations can actually profit and better serve their shareholders by fixing the world’s problems instead of creating them.
Resources From This Episode
Buy Andrew’s new book, “Net Positive”
Learn more on Andrew’s website
Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn
Follow Andrew on Twitter
Connect with Don on LinkedIn
Follow Don on Twitter
Transcript
Don MacPherson:
Hi, this is Don MacPherson, your host of 12 Geniuses. In Season One, Andrew Winston joined the show to talk about how businesses are creating opportunity through the green economy. In this episode, Andrew and I discuss the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, new innovations in the fight against climate change, how having a sustainability plan for companies is a key to attracting talent, and his new book, “Net Positive.” This episode of 12 Geniuses is brought to you by the think2perform RESEARCH INSTITUTE, an organization committed to advancing moral, purposeful and emotionally intelligent leadership. Andrew, welcome back to 12 Geniuses.
Andrew Winston:
Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Don MacPherson:
It's been two and a half years since we first talked. What have we learned about climate change during that time?
Andrew Winston:
Well, we've learned a lot about many things in that time. A lot has happened in the world. Climate change, in particular, the science has gotten a lot clearer. The reports out of the scientific community more recently have been very clear, using words like “unequivocal” — which, for science, is unusual to say something like that. They always use “confidence intervals” and “likely,” and they're saying it's unequivocal. I think we've seen actual impacts in the world that we've never seen before, actual record breaking of heat, of storms, of fires, floods, and it's affecting business in a real way.
So in the last few years, since we spoke, I think the buy-in, if that's the right word, for business, in terms of their activity — trying to do something about climate or do something about their carbon footprint — the activity's just grown exponentially. You can see it in measurable changes in the goals they've set, the amount of renewable energy they've bought. It is measurably different than a few years ago.
Don MacPherson:
What new innovations have emerged to address climate change in the last couple of years? I'm thinking about storage or renewable energy. What are some of the remarkable changes that you've seen in those two and a half years since we first talked?
Andrew Winston:
Well, what's remarkable really is, I don't know if it's really new technologies. There's a lot of things that are old. There's things we can do for reducing energy and carbon that are really old, insulating buildings, right? But the newest technologies, powering the grid and powering our lives with renewable electrons, it's just that the cost of them has continued to drop so dramatically. Over the last 10, 11 years, it's 80, 90% cost reduction in wind and solar. That's continued in the last few, as well. It just continues to accelerate. We're seeing that now, in the last few years, in particular, in things like batteries, the cost of batteries — technologies that people said, "Oh, they'll never really get cheap enough." We're starting to see that bearing out, that we're going to see these things coming down fast enough to get to an incredible scale.
We're seeing the commitments from companies based on those technologies. Most of the world's largest automakers have committed to move away from combustion engines over the next 10, 15 years. That's because they're seeing the same numbers we are. They're seeing the cost come down and the demand rise. Things that we weren't sure were feasible, like commercial fleets that are electric, big trucks, not just tiny cars, they're becoming feasible. The cost of renewable energy, globally, in the last few years has basically dropped below the cost of building fossil fuel energy. That's what's flipped. It's finally happened, and it's here. And almost all of the energy we put on the grid globally now is renewables.
Don MacPherson:
One of the things that we talked about in our first conversation was your book, “The Big Pivot.” You talked about five different trends that you're looking at. One was resources. We've seen acute pressure on resources, particularly during the pandemic. I'm curious if you believe we have the resources to fundamentally create this green economy.
Andrew Winston:
There is just a base reality that the planet has so much stuff. We keep finding deposits of things, but they generally are more expensive to get to. They take more energy. They take more resources. And now, getting to the clean economy, there are metals and resources we need for that as well. Lithium for batteries, cobalt, all these metals, there is not an infinite amount. And we're getting better at finding them in some ways. But it all drives us toward this conversation of building a circular economy.
This is why you see so many companies, especially in value chains that are based in heavy industry, talking about, how do we reduce the draw on virgin materials? And how do you keep reusing things over and over again? It's hard to make a perfect circle and cycle a lot of materials, but we do pretty well with some things, like aluminum, steel. There's things that the vast majority gets recycled. We need to build that kind of circularity into a lot of different other materials, like plastics. Or move away from them to bio-based and find the right mix of resource use and reuse, so that we're not draining the system. Because we’ve got almost 8 billion people now. We're heading to 9 or 10. Generally, they're getting wealthier, and we want them to get wealthier. That just means more material consumption. There just really isn't quite enough planet for that, for us to all live at the level that the rich Western world lives.
Don MacPherson:
A couple years ago, the 1.5º Report came out. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released a report in August. The summary words to describe it were, “widespread, rapid and intensifying.” You alluded to it earlier, but what is some of the evidence that can help us understand this summary?
Andrew Winston:
The words that the secretary-general used, I think, was, "Code red for humanity." The 1.5º Report a few years ago was really, I think, one of the more important scientific reports in human history, because it laid out very clearly that the pathway we needed to go down to even hold the world to 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming was going to be aggressive. We needed to reduce carbon by half by 2030. This was a few years ago. We had 11 years at that point. Now we have eight. The time keeps getting shorter. The new report, the level of certainty from the scientific community is pretty profound. I think what's clear is measurable changes in the intensity of heat, of storms, of floods, the scale of them.
There's better and better science on what they call attribution science on, how do you know a given storm is more likely because of climate change? You can never say a given hurricane is because of climate change. It's an immensely complicated system. But the science has gotten better and better to say, this heat wave, where it went to 120 degrees in Canada and the Northwest, was almost impossible before the level of heat loading in the atmosphere. That's what's gotten much better, is to say, this is because of us. It is because of the way we are using carbon and putting it in the atmosphere. And it's getting more and more predictable, not on a day-to-day level, but on a year-to-decade level, what's coming.
Don MacPherson:
Some of the indications, obviously, around the coastal areas, the hurricanes, and in California, or in Colorado where we've had incredible wildfires, or even in Canada there have been wildfires. But in a place like Minnesota, or, I think, one of the states that you mentioned in our first conversation was Nebraska. I think they had had floods around that time. For places like that, what are some indications that things have changed and may be quite dangerous?
Andrew Winston:
There's parts of the country and parts of the world that are getting drier and parts that are getting wetter. There's a zero-sum system of water in the world. We're loading more into the atmosphere. It comes down in some places and not as much in others. I'm seeing it in, where I live in Connecticut in the Northeast, we're seeing more intense storms. I think everybody's experienced this. When storms happen, they seem to happen with much more intensity, like massive amounts falling. We just broke, by a lot, a record of rainfall in Central Park in New York, and in Connecticut where I am, by an inch or more in an hour. It was a huge jump in the record of the amount that fell.
So in every region, it's a little different. We're seeing what species grow where, moving as temperature bands move. Some of the charts I've seen is, over this century, to imagine certain areas becoming more like the way that other areas look like today. Parts of Illinois will look like west Texas in terms of the number of days over say, 90 or 100 degrees. That's a way to get your head around that it's basically, everybody's moving south. A lot of systems aren't built for that. A lot of species, and the trees, and the animals, and us — our cities are not necessarily built for some of the temperature extremes and the ongoing heat. Then some places are just, frankly, going to be underwater. I think we have to deal with some very serious changes that are coming.
I grew up in south Florida. Miami doesn't have a good future. It just doesn't. We're going to have to deal with that as a country and as humanity, places that are going to become unlivable. People have lived in these places for generations. We're going to need some ordered retreat from some places. That's the adaptation part of this, that we are no longer at the point where we can avoid all damaging results. We have to deal with some of it.
Don MacPherson:
We've seen a huge shift in the workplace, and why people are working, and the companies that they're willing to work for. I have seen, personally, sustainability being a metric that companies measure in a way that they never measured before. So my question is, how much has sustainability increased in importance as people are looking for jobs and making choices around “this is where I want to be”?
Andrew Winston:
I think this drive of younger generations to have more questions about who they work for and who they buy from, I see that as maybe the most powerful. That and transparency are these two real driving forces. They go together. The younger generations are on devices. They expect knowledge about everything, about every product they buy, every service. But you see this, and you hear it in companies over and over, that they're feeling pressure from their younger workers. The surveys are very clear that the millennials who are under 40 and Gen Z — I have a couple teenagers — the ones that are coming into college and then into the workforce, their views about the role of business and society are different than previous generations.
They believe companies should be solving societal problems, not just profiting, and those two should not be at odds. They look for values in their workplace. There's just tons of global surveys that prove this. I think companies are going to have to create workplaces where people feel like they are fulfilling some purpose. It doesn't mean every job's going to be fascinating. There's still grunt work in everything we do. But that's part of what it's going to mean to be a relevant business that thrives, is to create positive impact. That's what people are demanding, and especially, the younger ones.
Don MacPherson:
You have a new book coming out. It's called “Net Positive.” It's coming out Oct. 5. Incidentally, that's the date that this podcast episode is going to be released. What can people learn from it?
Andrew Winston:
Hopefully, a lot. I co-authored it with Paul Polman, who ran Unilever for 10 years. It's been really the highest ranked in multiple surveys as a sustainable company, especially for large companies. Our book is about, how do you build a company that serves the world? That improves the lives of all its stakeholders? And not just shareholders — that the company thrives, it profits, it serves shareholders, but as a result of the work it does, as a result of solving the world's problems, not creating them. We lay out in some detail the pathway to this kind of business, where you start with, in many ways, who you are and your mission and purpose. It really starts with a personal view of things and then to organizational purpose, the ambition the company has, the goals it sets, and really builds towards a conversation about partnership and how systematic our problems are.
Things like climate change are just too big for any entity to deal with. So we're helping organizations move towards a deeper sense of partnership, where they work with civil society and governments in a really productive way to solve our shared problems. And then we also ask people to think hard about some of the issues that companies really avoid talking about that are contributing to our biggest problems. Things like not paying taxes in business, or executive compensation being out of control, corruption, human rights and these really tough issues that we don't feel you can be a positive influence on the world if you're not addressing those things and contributing in all that you do.
So I'm very excited about this. I think it's a very robust, aggressive argument for where business needs to go today to be relevant. I'm looking forward to seeing how the world reacts to this take on what it means to be a business today.
Don MacPherson:
What fills you with a sense of optimism related to the fight against climate change?
Andrew Winston:
There's two things that keep me going. One is very tactical and business-y and one's kind of human. On the business front, just the scale of the clean economy, how fast it's coming, the exponential change, and again, the price. The cost of doing business in a clean way has dropped so much that I have no doubt that the grid, globally, will be basically, all renewables at some point, that we will be driving all EVs. It's a matter of how fast. That leads me to the second part, which is, for it to go fast enough we need real human commitment and drive. I think it's hard not to be optimistic about the pressure building from young people, the Greta Thunbergs of the world, 16-, 17-year-olds filling the streets and making their voices heard.
I think this generation of activism, as they're aging into voting age, I think they will be heard. I think the impact they have on companies, as employees, as consumers and the impact they have on their families, their parents, the people who are still in power, the CEOs of the world, the leaders — their kids are asking them really hard questions. You're seeing this happen in lots of different ways. The financial world, we didn't talk about this, but the banks are finally coming around to this ESG discussion and, how do you think about sustainability and investments? A lot of the reason is the private wealth in the bank community, the younger members of rich families, are asking these questions and pushing for impact investing. That's one of the main drivers of this.
So I'm optimistic about what young people can accomplish and how they are able to mobilize in ways it was just not possible. You can get millions of people through Instagram or through Twitter, you can get them in the streets. It's remarkable. So I'm optimistic about that. But it's going to be a fight.
Don MacPherson:
Is there anything that I should have asked you that you wanted to talk about?
Andrew Winston:
One of the things that's evolved in my thinking about what it means to be a sustainable business or a responsible business, that I'm writing about and talking about more and more, is the role of business in policy and advocacy. I just say that the days of sitting on the sidelines or saying, "Oh, that's not our problem" or "We stay out of politics," are really gone. You've seen in the last couple years, companies feeling this pressure and need to speak out on race, LGBTQ rights, religious freedom, abortion bills, just everything.
I think we're going to see more and more companies realizing that they have this role through their voice — through their political voice and power and their advocacy — to help create systemic change in the right direction, not just walk in and look for self-interested lobbying for like a tax break, but to go in and try to change the system. It's what we call “net positive advocacy” in the book. I think it's a really critical shift in how companies think about their role.
Don MacPherson:
Is there a way to measure net positive advocacy?
Andrew Winston:
Well, there's a couple groups like InfluenceMap. There's a couple NGOs and organizations that are doing a pretty good job of at least tracking what companies are doing and calling attention to companies that are disconnected, at least showing how much they're spending or how much time they're spending through their own lobbying versus their trade associations. There is some measurement going on. But it's hard. It's a qualitative thing as much as it is quantitative.
Don MacPherson:
Andrew, I'm so glad we were able to reconnect. Thank you for sharing your time with us, and thank you again for being a genius.
Andrew Winston:
Thank you for having me.
Don MacPherson:
Thanks for listening to 12 Geniuses. During next week's episode, futurist David Houle will join the show again. In Season Four, David and I talked about the future of humanity. This time, he and I discuss how climate change is threatening many parts of the U.S. and other countries around the world. David is calling for a strategic retreat away from many coastal areas, geographies threatened by ongoing wildfires, and places that have unsustainable water supplies. David's episode will be released Oct. 12, 2021. Thanks for listening. And thank you for being a genius.