Lockdown Long Read
The idea that businesses can carry on threatening the very existence of the human species in a post-COVID world is morally and economically wrong. We have been exploring our ideas for the future during lockdown.
“Only on the fringes of an ecosystem, those outer rings, do evolution and adaptation occur at a furious pace; the inner circle of the system is where the entrenched, non-adapting species die off, doomed to failure by maintaining the status quo. Businesses go through the same cycle.”
Stepping up
It has been notable during this COVID-19 pandemic that business has stepped up. Small independent cafes have begun to supply healthcare workers with daily meals in their hundreds. Large corporations have turned their long established supply chains into health focused sourcing machines, providing billions of items of PPE globally. The efforts in some parts have been Herculean.
The conclusion is therefore that business can work hard for the right reasons, beyond just profit generating. And they have indeed proven that there is profit to be made from mission driven enterprise. Chinese online retailer JD.com has been heavily involved in the relief effort, telling the FT that its self-operated delivery service will power it through COVID-19. We know now that we must insist our businesses work hard for climate change, a challenge that makes COVID-19 look like a rain cloud. There is no excuse any longer.
Vulnerability
COVID-19 has left the human race vulnerable and exposed to our failures. We have taken so many aspects of our lives for granted. We have assumed such power over planet earth and all it has to throw at us, leaving us ill prepared for a pandemic. Those who have perished are victims, not of a virus, but of a human race that has focused for far too long on the wrong things. Suddenly we value healthcare workers, when as a doctor, I know that the public throw insults at healthcare workers on a daily basis. Suddenly celebrities are being mocked for being celebrities. The irony of course is that only serves to mock us, the disciples of such a warped adoration.
And so it is that climate change will leave us exposed if we take it for granted. No doubt businesses will be calling for government action post-COVID “to get back on their feet” after this current crisis, parking any notions of greener endeavours for a time when things are less financially fraught. This is the wrong approach, and will see us perish once again.
The Next Generation
Greta Thunberg and her school friends are the workforce of tomorrow. They are the consumers doing due diligence on businesses before they buy their goods. They are the journalists exposing those who care little for their children and future generations. They are the new leaders of nations and organisations who will insist that businesses cannot willingly ignore the greater good.
During this pandemic, we have seen calls for the world to come together to legally enforce nations to be more prepared for the next one. This attempts to prevent the political motivations of leaders who ignore the science. For the climate, The Paris Agreement was a start, but it now needs the legal powers to sanction those nations and organisations who do not comply with it. Businesses that flourish will be those that move towards a greener future before these measures are put in place.
The Human Condition
Loyalty is an overused and misunderstood term. Humans are fickle creatures and when leaders ask for loyalty, they are often asking us to be loyal to the causes that benefit them. During this pandemic business has asked employees to take pay cuts, reduce hours, step up and more. The question now is whether those businesses will reward that loyalty with a greater focus on the future of those employees, and indeed society as a whole.
Loyalty to the climate therefore demands the rational assumption that human beings are not loyal. Certainly not to a cause that does not immediately affect them. Taking steps such as underpinning a company’s articles of association to ensure its current and future guardians are loyal to the climate is one example. B Corporations have blazed this trail, and the rest must now follow.
Failing Forwards
Co-operation and compromise is inevitable and essential in any crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic has dealt a cold hard fact to the human race. Some leaders such as the US President have tried to manipulate this, but it is impossible to escape death on such an enormous scale and pretend things are not at crisis point. We have seen this fact push governments, including the US, to make unprecedented funds available to mitigate the economic disaster facing us. Businesses have rapidly changed processes in order to stay alive, and in some cases have seen major positives to the changes made. However, as a global village, we have not cooperated with one another. This has ultimately led to more death.
“Unfortunately, what is true, is that the world was not able to come together and to face COVID-19 in an articulated and coordinated way. Each country went its own way with its own policy. Each country with different perspectives and different strategies. And this has allowed the virus to spread.”
The level of compromise and co-operation required when faced with the climate emergency is unprecedented. With COVID-19, we have failed. The lessons learnt from this failure are the greatest gift we as people and organisations could have hoped for.
People, Planet and Profit
The COVID-19 pandemic has seen more interest and effort placed towards finding a vaccine for a disease than ever before. Suddenly the demand for scientific progress has not only come from victims and their families, but from governments and businesses worldwide. This is self-interest, not some shift in our humanity.
Climate change is unlikely to affect the leaders of nations and business today. It will affect the very existence of their children and grandchildren. And yet so far this has not been enough to make it front and centre of parliamentary debates and board meetings. It must change with immediate effect. Boards should be demanding results from their employees focused on sustainability. Incentives and bonuses should be measured by overall impact, not sales targets. People, planet and profit must be inextricably linked to results.
Demand Honesty
Trust in politicians throughout this COVID-19 crisis has been at an all time low. And with good reason. In the UK, stockpiles of PPE have not been maintained despite assurances, care home deaths have not been reported, and virus testing promises have fallen well short of expectations.
However, history has proven that business is also guilty of lying to and manipulating the consumer. On climate change, this perhaps was most clearly demonstrated in 2015 with “Emissionsgate”. VW intentionally programmed its diesel engines to activate their emissions controls only during laboratory testing.
Being honest with ourselves is also fundamental. We will have tough decisions to make. This could mean forgoing potential career opportunities, choosing instead a job, an employer and a path forward that addresses climate change fully.
“The world is not a bowl of fruit from which we can just take what we wish. We are part of it, and if we destroy it, we destroy ourselves.”
Rethink Reward
For the COVID-19 Pandemic, the immense success story has been the speed of innovation. Everything from vaccine breakthroughs to everyday food delivery measures. A hackathon in Denmark yielded an app that digitized queuing when shopping, without physically being in line. It allowed people the freedom to shop and be notified when it’s time to go to the counter.
On climate change, society should be in a position to reward this kind of innovation, incentivising teams and individuals to create change.
“Stop waste. Stop waste of any kind. Stop wasting power, stop wasting food, stop wasting plastic. Don’t waste, this is a precious world. Celebrate and cherish.”
Manipulation
Making promises is the first challenge. Keeping promises is the enduring one. UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock is certainly a man who likes to make promises. He hailed his success in reaching a target of 100,000 COVID-19 tests per day. He failed to mention this included the number of tests sent in the post, not actually the number of tests carried out. That number has since dropped.
As ‘being green’ becomes a marketing tool, so increases the chances that business will once again manipulate the consumer into seeing what they wish to see. Businesses must make bold promises. More than that though, they must keep them.
“Evil doesn’t have to be an overt act; it can be merely the absence of good. If you have the ability, the resources, and the opportunity to do good and you do nothing, that can be evil.”
Our Best Chance
In Mark Carney’s recent article for the Economist, the former Governor of the Bank of England sees the potential the pandemic brings of reversing our ill-fated move from a market economy to a market society.
“Amazon is one of the world’s most valuable companies, yet the Amazon region appears on no ledger until it is stripped of its foliage, and converted to farmland.”
Could this crisis really give society the impetus to re-discover our values? To place more emphasis on the things that really matter. At a time when Western governments are in retreat, ignoring their greater responsibilities, business can and must take centre stage.
“Who are businesses really responsible to? Their customers? Shareholders? Employees? We would argue that it’s none of the above. Fundamentally, businesses are responsible to their resource base. Without a healthy environment there are no shareholders, no employees, no customers and no business.”