Greetings from Costa Daurada in Catalonia, Spain, where the weather is balmy and I have spent much of the week cooling down in the kiddie pool with my one-and-a-half-year-old daughter. This edition of the Impact Report will therefore be a bit different, with an overview of what you need to know and read this week.
1. July is on track to be the hottest month ever. This should be a wake-up call for companies.
No month in recorded global history was hotter than this July will have been, the World Meteorological Organization forecasted this week. The all-time record comes on the back of the hottest June ever, and at a time when record-breaking weather seems more the rule than the exception.
The sobering statistic will be another argument for companies to adopt “net zero” transition plans. And it suggests that we’re at the point where climate adaptation is necessary as well.
“We need to adapt in a number of areas in our society,” Julie Arrighi, director of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Center told me last week. “Business is one of them.”
“Chief climate officers” and “chief heat officers” seem poised to become more than a gimmick going forward. They have their work cut out for them: starting with making heat plans, and ending with making contingency plans for company relocations.
2. As Barbie hits the theaters, some real CSO Barbies speak out.
Before there was Barbie, the movie, there was Barbie, the chief sustainability officer doll, made by Mattel as part of a set that also included conservation scientist, renewable energy engineer, and environmental advocate Barbies.
This week two human CSOs, Kate Brandt at Google and Melanie Nakagawa at Microsoft, wrote in Fortune about how it feels to be “real-life versions of Mattel’s Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) Barbie.”
Since the Barbie CSO line was launched, they write, “one of the persistent questions we have received is one that leaves us feeling conflicted, conjuring both a sense of pride but also of concern: What it means to be a ‘woman leader’—in our industry, in the sustainability space, in the C-suite.”
“From Jane Goodall to Christina Figueres to Greta Thunberg—women and girls have been at the forefront of leadership in combatting the climate crisis and environmental degradation,” they point out. At the same time, they say, “we are also sensitive to how the ‘feminization’ of certain roles or types of work can be used as a way to minimize the importance of the work itself, as well as marginalize the women who are doing it.”
CSO Barbie may be a kind of progress, they conclude, but “we also look forward to the day when women’s leadership doesn’t need a special callout because it’s fully normalized within our workplaces and our societies.” Read their full article here.
3. It’s time to talk about impact, again.
When we met at last year’s Fortune Impact Initiative, ESG was still on a high, and common sustainability standards were a pipe dream. What a contrast with the situation today, where ESG is increasingly shunned, and sustainability standardization is a de facto reality. After this rollercoaster year, we’ll gather in Atlanta, Ga., Sept. 12–13 for the annual Impact Initiative.
I’ll cochair the conference with Holly Ojalvo, who edits this newsletter, and we’ll be diving into all of these issues, and many more. This year’s speakers include the chief sustainability officers of Colgate-Palmolive, General Electric, General Motors, L’Oréal, Walmart, and impact and diversity executives from Cisco, Meta, Visa, PayPal, and Walgreens Boots Alliance.
One question we’ll be discussing is how recent legislation in the U.S. is helping achieve the “green transition” and decarbonization of the economy—which would be historically unprecedented if it’s successful. We’ll also talk about board diversity, voter access, and the current state of impact investing, among other topics. You can find a full list of speakers here, and the current agenda here.
If you’d like to join us, register here, or drop a line to Sarah Worob or Elizabeth Tighe at ImpactInitiative@fortune.com.
Peter Vanham
Executive Editor, Fortune
peter.vanham@fortune.com
This edition of Impact Report was edited by Indrani Sen. Holly Ojalvo is back next week.
