Name: What Science Says About The Way Forward For Climate Activism?
Uploaded: 2019-12-11
Duration: 17 min 15 s
Description: How can corporations change their structures and systems to affect policy, and why should they?

We often talk about the climate emergency. We kind of just talked about it being an emergency. And that's really important, but I'm hoping that this conversation kind of move us towards some more solutions. So I'm wondering We have with us. Three of our panelists are working with companies that are really at the forefront of offering different types of technology to address The climate emergency and I'm wondering if they if you guys can just give us a little pitch about what your company offers. DeVito Do you want to start? Sure. So Aquaman is I'm co founder and CEO of Aquaman. We're meeting The urgent global need to for hyper local air pollution and climate emissions data. Today, 92 % of the world's population is breathing unhealthy air. And we need data to really understand the sites of emission, the sites of exposure, to then drive action at the local, city, and community scale. Great. Good night, everyone. Our businesses are quite complimentary. I'm Lauren Penneys. I lead business development and sales for decart Labs. Our company's been out of the US Department of Energy Los Alamos National Lab. That's the nuclear and scientific lab out of New Mexico and the thesis of the business Is that the number of satellites that are going to be launched in the next five years is more than all of history. So the ability to actually bring to bear data sets that monitor the global physical world is really very much coming online. So we work with the largest businesses, most of them very large physical supply chains and energy companies like [ UNKNOWN ]. And we help them understand and monitor their climate resiliency and how to take action from there. Hi, everybody. I'm Sinye Tang, the VP of finance and strategy at Dandelion Energy. We're home geothermal company and our mission is to bring Earth powered heating and cooling to all Geothermal heat pumps have been around since the 1940s as a viable solution for efficiently making sure that folks have heating and cooling in their home. But there hasn't been a standardized accessible offering to consumers and the average homeowner up until hopefully today. Our CEO Cathy thought of really exploring this idea when she was a product manager at Google X. We spun out in 2017, and today in 2019, we're the largest installer of geothermal heat pumps in New York State, having installed more than 250 heat pumps and helping our customers reduce their heating oil consumption by more than 100, 000 gallons a year. Wonderful, so some really impressive sort of technology and solutions on stage here. How your conversation with your corporate partners has changed just in the last several months even. [ UNKNOWN ] Did you want to take that? Sure, and definitely, there has been a shift, I think we've hit a tipping point not only in terms of the public awareness and public demand for action but what I would almost stir some of the courage amongst a growing number of corporate Players, companies like Patagonia have been at the forefront of the movement for years. But we're seeing a new class of company, not just sort of going beyond just sort of the easy wins, like replacing, you know, light bulbs, and going into energy efficiency to actually taking much more broad sweeping action. In our you know, in our own partnerships. We have a multi year partnership with Google and And last year, they committed to scaling our technology across the globe by integrating our technology on Google Street View cars, and in 2020 will be driving and mapping air pollution around the planet. So really taking deep bold action and it's time. Right. Lauren, what about you? Yeah. I mean, I would say, the number one thing I think that comes up that we're exposed to is actually climate change and climate resiliency. It's a financial issue for many businesses now. So I'll give an example last year the Rhine which is the major transportation river and Europe Soybean and understanding those supply chains. It's actually a financial and reputational risk. So I think what we see a lot is I think the conversation is being a bit forced within these businesses themselves for many, many reasons and so the financial Incorporation reputational, and it really becomes front and center. Right? Continue. How is your compensation? Change me with corporations or even your, the consumer that you're reaching? Yeah, I think what's been really inspiring is that we're seeing this great partnership, at least in the geothermal space. Between state governments and city governments, homeowners, utilities and other companies that really want to figure out a solution that will work, both to help us homeowners sort of save money and also help ensure that their home equity increases and that they have an independent solution for keeping warm in the winter. That doesn't rely on someone you know driving a truck out with a bunch of heating oil to fill up their tank and having them light that on fire in order to keep warm, which is an innately absurd idea. And it's it's really promising because a lot of these state governor, government related officials are really excited to figure out how to partner With utilities and with others to figure out the right solution, so we're actually seeing a lot of partnership and problem solving across a wide group of stakeholders around this particular issue. And Hillary, I want to turn to you now you're at Patagonia and for decades Eliminating accessibility to public land. And then there was the you have a pledge to make the supply chain carbon neutral by 2025, which is soon. Yeah. Much sooner timelines and other similar initiatives. And then you have this whole initiative about buying less And that one in particular really sticks out to me because it kind of gets to the mean, you are a company that sells stuff, right? And you are saying buy less stuff. So can you just talk us through how you think about sort of that purpose of Patagonia and then what it has meant for your bottom line? Yeah. I mean, I love that my colleagues are all making solutions to the climate crisis and we're part of the problem. So which we struggle with. It's kind of a constant battle and we're making stuff, we're making stuff that takes a toll on the planet. We're making stuff we admit lots of CO2 and so. From the company's inception, Patagonia was committed to doing everything we could to counter the impact our business had on the planet itself. So, our mission statement is we're in business to save our home planet and that seems to be totally at odds with a company that's growing and that's doing Well the more we make the more our impact on the planet grows. But one other thing we have done in addition to setting goals for being carbon free by 2025 is we have also established a goal that we gonna replace all of our virgin polyester materials. With recycled materials and natural materials by 2025, and it's hard work because we find we're making a ton of progress on that. And then even as we do, our sales are growing and our overall footprint is increasing over time. So and we're going to keep working hard to minimize our impact as much as possible every day and as we do that, We see, you know, grata spurred what was, you know, has been this incredible movement, climate activists all over the world demanding action from not only their governments but businesses and every time in the course of Patagonia's history, we've made a decision that put the planet first. It's also been good for sale. So we Hope that's an example for other companies to do the same and just to incorporate how every business decision that we make has an impact on the planet and the people in it. And it's not easy, right? Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I think it was last week that Patagonia opened its first second hand pop up. Yeah, store. Yeah, it was interesting. Well, yeah, that's a huge part of our strategy, which is to keep the stuff that we make in in cycle as long as possible. So we have a one year program is that's the name of the program that we started where you can turn in your use Patagonia gear and get a credit and then By new values product from our site, so we're gonna hope that that will have a huge impact as well. I like that you acknowledge this is such a hard thing for for companies to sort of bake into their operations and I'm wondering if If all of you could sort of weigh in on if you're a younger company, or you just really haven't made this type of commitment yet, what's like one of the first things you should be thinking about? As you look for you know, what, what goal can I set for myself? Should it be, should it be a sort of a global emissions are carbon, carbon neutral stance or should it be something more local? I mean, a lot of you. With utilities and with others to figure out the right solution, so we're actually seeing a lot of partnership and problem solving across a wide group of stakeholders around this particular issue. And Hillary, I want to turn to you now you're at Patagonia and for decades Perspective but more broadly as it relates to supply chain and the communities you touch. And that's a really hard thing to do if you're starting from day one, but I think understanding where you are, what your baseline is, is a really critical first step, to then determining where you can really have the biggest ROI both in terms of Saving company resources but also in terms of really driving emissions and impact reductions. Learn. Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, I'd very much echo what diabeetus said. I think there are a couple of pretty helpful frameworks and tools in terms of metrics that have been set by broader communities. The task force on climate related financial disclosures, there are ways to think about kind of, best in class ways to quantify these things in the supply chain from kind of day one. That it encourage businesses to think about pricing those things into, you know, ROI calculations from the beginning And then I think the encouraging part in a strange way is that, as these things become more real, insurance companies, agriculture businesses, natural resources businesses, they have to look at this stuff. It's going to force the issue into being more sustainable, there is a strange kind of positive side of all of this, I think when it comes to corporate activities. Right. So I think about that as well. Do you wanna go to questions? Do we have any right now? Springing it on you a little bit. Yeah, right here. [ BLANK_AUDIO ] Hi ladies, thank you for being here. I'm Dominique. I work at eBay. We love Patagonia, circular economy. So come on over and continue to sell stuff with us. But Part of the problem of climate change is the various dimensions and it is complicated for the average person to understand the very basics of what they can do while we wait on corporations to decide to care. Where can the average person go to really learn about what they are doing and the solutions that they can provide? Where can we self- educate? Do we have good resources? Yeah, I mean there are bunch of great non- profits. There's one called Rare that actually has like seven things that you can do even as an individual that would greatly impact your climate, your footprint. Like even take one less flight a year. I mean it's very straight forward stuff but I found that I kind of am always thinking it's always on the top of my mind when you kind of when you look at something like that. Patagonia has a website called Patagonia action works that features all of our grantees all around the world. So wherever you live, you could go and you could look up an environmental, nonprofit working in your community and Volunteer or donate, in fact we're matching donations right now through the end of the year. So if you go on and you make a donation [ UNKNOWN ] will match it. So there are some kind of ways to get involved in kind of effecting change on the ground through non- profits in your community and then just some good resources through [ UNKNOWN ] or as a business series is a great resource too. I don't know if you guys Work at always series and bicep but it's a collective group of companies that have committed to fighting the climate emergency and lots of good policy and advocacy related resources there too. And just to add to that, since we you know, we work with a lot of government agencies and big companies to do block by block measurement of air quality and emissions. And we're on the other side of seeing the power of local engagement and individual engagement and local policy and engaging companies. There's all the individual actions that we can take in terms of our behaviors, but actually direct engagement and asking governments and demanding action We see it it has tremendous impact in mobilizing governments and companies to act. I'll also offer that if you're living in the northeast, or your residential home spends most of its energy and most important missions relate to heating and cooling in some way, shape or form. It is interesting that as we see companies, make these individual commitments it does to some degree feel like it's happening in isolation. There was a really great wall street journal story yesterday about how it even took a year for this one group to decide what recycled meant, like that word. And I'm wondering what Business leaders can do about coming together on the issue and not just, focusing on your own corporate goals, but on the collective effort that we all need. We need to make sure I mean, one area where we've been really impressed. It just happened last week where, companies are directly engaging in asking government to act because there's things that companies can do, but As companies, we need government to set policy that defines a level playing field where we can all engage and engage in building businesses and so last week part of the COP, a coalition of United States Corporate form that requires examining your impact on the planet. You're the workers, the community, and not just maximizing your financial return. So there's a great assessment that looks at your impact on the environment. And, it's a, I think a great coalition of businesses to really working to. Fight for our planet. Right great. We'll have to leave it there but we have some extrable steps to walk away with and thank you all for being here and to sharing your experties with us on this, thank you. [ APPLAUSE ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

What Science Says About The Way Forward For Climate Activism?

Environment

How can corporations change their structures and systems to affect policy, and why should they?