Atelier WeekNotes w/c 6 May 2024
0/DETECTING: Climate is warming well beyond 1.5C; Responses to me loathing a cartoon; 'Now do a sustainability app'; CISL ExecEd. In the Atelier: Influential Trajectories; permission slip.
I am writing newsletter of #weeknotes of starting the Atelier of What’s Next (a studio for initiatives at the frontier of generating a better future). For my rationale for starting the Atelier see here.
This week covers:
0/DETECTING
- Climate is warming well beyond 1.5C, what next?
>News: scientists agree with themselves
>Profound hope comes by working through despair
>TCFD disclosures: not the accelerant we had hoped for
>Adaptation: relocating people
- Responses to me loathing a flawed cartoon promoting climate action
- 'Now do a sustainability app'
- CISL ExecEd Sustainable Finance: mainstreaming in action
In the Atelier
- Imagining Influential Trajectories
- 'What if you already have permission?'
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0/DETECTING
Climate is warming well beyond 1.5C, what next?
News: scientists agree with themselves
This week the Guardian had an exclusive survey of hundreds of the world’s leading climate experts has found that:
77% of respondents believe global temperatures will reach at least 2.5C above preindustrial levels, a devastating degree of heating;
almost half – 42% – think it will be more than 3C;
only 6% think the 1.5C limit will be achieved.
As Glen Peters (a senior researcher in the Climate Mitigation group at the Centre for International Climate Research) said in this twitter thread, that finding is pretty much where the 2023 IPCC Synthesis Report landed:
"Implemented policies result in projected emissions that lead to warming of 3.2°C, with a range of 2.2°C to 3.5°C (medium confidence)"
In other words, the scientists agree with the literature. Which shouldn't really be news. But self-created surveys are news, in a way that global science institutional outputs are not.
Profound hope comes by working through despair
Not surprisingly, Christiana Figueres replied that she understood climate scientists’ despair – and argued that stubborn optimism may be our only hope.
I've not read all of her writings. But that article is the first time that I've read her say that grief is an appropriate response but "grief that stops at despair is an ending that I and many others...are not prepared to accept. We also have the responsibility – and the opportunity – to shape the future differently."
Something is clearly in the ether, because I used a similar formula when reflecting on a climate conference last year:
"it is crucial that people work through their grief. I believe the forced optimism on this side of despair is brittle, and will wilt under the pressure of our times. The other side of despair is a commitment to action which is more grounded in physical and emotional realities, more resilient to events. At least, that's my belief."
At that same event last year we had a huge debate on whether '1.5 to stay alive!' was still useful. Then I was an outlier by saying no, and we needed to be authentic and honest with people that warming is going to go past 1.5C. But every 0.1C matters. I wonder where those same folks would put themselves now.
All this in the same week that south Asia has a massive heatwave (early in the year compared to past norms) and the ocean temperatures continue to set records.
TCFD disclosures: not the accelerant we had hoped for
One of the mechanisms which was supposed to accelerate the transition was the Taskforce on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). A few years ago, this body recommended that companies tell their investors how they were responding to climate change.
The theory of change was that companies would have to really engage with the issue, because getting stuff materially wrong to investors have lots of consequences for directors. And, when companies really engage with climate, they and their investors will realise that their long-term interest is in having a functioning economy, which needs a secure-enough climate. So, companies and investors will become allies for urgent action in the face of the climate emergency. That's the theory.
This week I hosted a webinar on the reality by an ex-colleague, Iain Watt. It was based his experiences, including most recently at management consultancy Accenture. (The webinar was for Forum alumni only, so I can't share it in full here. The following is shared with Iain’s permimssion.)
Iain focused on the strategy disclosures which are supposed to cover the 'actual and potential impacts of climate-related risks and opportunities on the organization’s businesses, strategy, and financial planning, using scenario analysis'.
My summary of his experience:
Companies use the ever-improving data to come up with quantifications of risk but in a very narrow way. These are precisely wrong, because they ignore how features are interconnected and so cannot be considered in isolation. Plus, that the current physical forecasts are too easily understood as a prediction of a particular state (eg wetter) without recognising the increased volatility (wetter on average, but some years massively wetter, other years actually drier).
Key example a beer company who concluded that barley yield losses would be a lower risk in a 3-4C scenario in 2050. You can reach that conclusion by ignoring all the other things that would be happening at 3-4C, including what other uses there would eb for agricultural land which, on first blush, could be growing barley.
Iain's conclusions:
TCFD and various tools around it should indeed be light bulb going off moment for lots of entities out there. We do need to keep waving scenarios in front of people but let's be bold with the scenarios that we put in front of them.
High-level quantification that informs good decision-making should be enough. The downside of 'what gets measured gets managed' is that we focus on what's measurable rather than what matters. Sometimes ballpark measurement is sufficient and learning that when we know enough. Rather than all let's double down and spend another two years working out exactly what the implications of a 3C warming is on our green supply chain.
We should push back against demands to measure specific subsets of complex compounding risks ever more precisely. But Iain fears that's where the world of TCFD is going. Investors are putting a premium in quantification, and the only way you can quantify to the level that the financial community presumes investors want is to pick very small parts of the puzzle and measure those.
We're precisely measuring leaves whilst the forest burns. So wherever and however, we can engage with senior people to think about the forest let's do that.
My build on all of that would be that the key assumption in the original TCFD theory of change was that going through a disclosure process will necessarily mean the material items will get taken up in strategy formulation. My experience is that is not true. The strategy team guard 'their' turf. And disclosure processes are treated as regulatory tickboxes (get it done to the minimum without distracting the real business).
WHAT NEXT
Explore an opportunity. A 'service' to investors or campaigners independently doing the 'ball park' TCFD strategy disclosure (rather than the precisely wrong version). Then investors and campaigners can put pressure on companies to improve their disclosure, and also improve their strategy.
Do ReadingNotes of the latest University of Exeter publications in this area:
With the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries: ‘Climate Scorpion – the sting is in the tail’, which engages with how severe impacts emerging at lower temperatures than expected. The impication is that distribution has shifted; what were once considered 'tail risks' (high impact but low probability events) are now expected.
With USS (the pension fund for university academics) No Time To Lose - New Scenario Narratives for Action on Climate Change – presents these four new climate scenarios. Aim: to present a richer, broader, and more realistic range of possible scenarios on which pension funds can base their investment decisions.
Adaptation: relocating people
In the week I spoke to Prof Jonathan Boston. He is the Emeritus Professor of Public Policy, Wellington School of Business and Government at the Victoria University of Wellington. (I am connected to Aotearoa New Zealand by being an Edmund Hillary Fellow.) He has a long history of working on climate policy. Right now his focus is on adaptation.
I learnt that, Aotearoa New Zealand has the 9th longest coastline, as well as lots of people living on the coasts. Given that we are going (well) beyond 1.5C of warming, the question is what to do.
Jonathan was very much against wishful thinking, and for dealing the grim realities of where climate change is going. Therefore, he is working on policy frameworks for relocating people. That is the first one of these I have heard of.
There is lots of nuance here. For one thing, the UK is more densely populated than Aotearoa New Zealand. So, it might be more cost effective for the UK to defend certain areas, because there is an upside for so many people. Proportionately, Aotearoa New Zealand will probably have to relocate more people than the UK.
But still, there will be tough decisions, with winners and losers. The politics will be tough everywhere, and even more so in a country with a colonial legacy of land grabs and forced relocation.
My guess is that this is an area where Aotearoa New Zealand can be a pathfinder for other OECD nations.
It also reminded of the Climate Majority Project, which is working to accelerate citizen climate action towards system change, and help a mass movement to see its own power.
It was started by Rupert Read, once an Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, because he sees the need to move beyond the radical flank that XR stimulated. (He argues on the need for a 'moderate flank' in climate activism here.)
The Climate Majority Project Theory of Change argues that "local initiatives for adaptation and resilience can build tangible solutions, improve lives and shift consciousness by making real a hitherto abstract issue." They see stimulating adaptation action as a key way of activating the broader public.
Done well, I think these can be actions which sit in the category of 'Deep Transformation' (from the 'Depth of Change' spectrum). That is, my instinct is that adaptation done well is more than just reforming the status quo ('Strong Reform'), and integrates the tough insights of the Radical Resistance, but is a more active and positive stance than 'Make Good Ruins'.
WHAT NEXT. Watching brief on adaptation as an exemplar of Depp Transformation.
Responses to me loathing a flawed cartoon promoting climate action
Back in July 2021, I wrote a short blog here on why I've come to loathe a cartoon. This week I've had the latest in a series of weird responses. First, the cartoon and a summary of what I wrote:
In summary: Many friends who are part of the sustainability movement love the cartoon ‘but what if it’s a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?’. I don’t. Basically, if you think climate denialists shouldn’t lie to get the world they want, then you should think that we shouldn’t imply we’d lie to get what we want, and so you shouldn’t use this cartoon.
We are not creating a better world for ‘nothing’.
Who are we to define what a better world is for everyone else?
Evidence matters.
Most important: being willing to use a big hoax is an atrocious way to influence society.
This post is always the most visited one on my (tiny!) personal website -- four times the next most visited post. I can't really figure out why, or how. It isn't clear where people are coming from, or what they are searching for, which leads them to this post.
What is clear is that, for some people, it strong reactions. Two people have liked it. One person has commented their agreement. Others have a more…negative response.
Two people read my objection to the meta-message of the cartoon as an objection to action on climate change:
"As a conservative ninny it’s no wonder you’ve egregiously disinterpreted the cartoon...To even mention the phrase “natural order” with the tiniest hint that it involves dictatorial rule by white men is so offensive I have no words."
"Bent’s post, when you look at it, prioritizes the resentment he feels from being confronted about his denialism over and above the needs of the planet. He portrays environmentalists as dictatorial in their unwillingness to defer to the corporatist minority."
This week came a comment in the other direction (prompting me to write in the WeekNotes):
"Anything goes, because “a better world” is in the eye of the beholder. While babbling about the danger of climate change. And especially people who promote (=lie about) sustainability are subject to “unconscious proto-fascist undertones” and take their cues from Adolf Hitler. Well, it seems, that you at least got a grasp of you own intellectual predisposition. But don’t project that onto other people."
All of which leaves me rather non-plussed, as all three of these comments are the opposite of what I intended.
For one thing, I write the piece as if I am part of the environmental movement, for instance "We won’t succeed [in global transformation] if we feed a spectre of ecofascism." [emphasis added]
I find it weird anyone could read the piece, look at the rest of the website, and think: here is a conservative ninny who wants to ignore climate change, or someone who wants dictatorial rule by white men.
So, what do I think is going on? Two things:
The writing style isn't clear enough. There's just enough ambiguity that people can mis-read it.
The culture war in the US, which has become anti-ESG / anti-climate action, provides a strong escalator of how people read the piece, making it easier for them to mis-read it.
Of course, these comments are tiny compared to the abuse that many public figures get, especially women, online everyday.
Given the aggressive tone of these comments, and how they so massively miss the point I was trying to make, I've not replied to them. As the maxim has it: "Don't feed the trolls".
WHAT NEXT
Keep not feeding the trolls.
Check my writing for ambiguity.
'Now do a sustainability app'
My youngest (Year 9, or Third Year in old money) has had two school trips to corporates in the last few months. They were sharing with me how the 'fun' exercise in both visits was the same: come up with a sustainability app.
These two corporates are in very different sectors (banking and IT), and very different outlooks (solid with English HQ vs thrusting with US HQ). But still, the same task. What does that tell us?
'Sustainability' is now ubiquitous as something corporates know they should do. Hurray!
But at quite a diluted level, with limited understanding. Darn!
A presumption that young people want to make apps. Lazy!
The people in corporates who organise these school visits struggle to get beyond an experience design which is: talk at them, then give them a task. Weak!
WHAT NEXT
My youngest: "if another visit like this comes up, don't give permission. I don't want to go." Right then.
Keep eye out for more signs of how corporate sustainability is changing.
CISL ExecEd Sustainable Finance: mainstreaming in action
This week had the start of me tutoring a 9 week, online, Executive Education course on sustainable finance from the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership (CISL; don't pronounce it 'sizzle'). The first week is orientation, and the course proper starts on Wed
This is not an initiative 'at the frontier of generation a better future', so it is not 'in' the Atelier.
For me, it is a way to earn money doing something useful while I get the Atelier up and running. I don't expect it to come up much in these WeekNotes, though there may be some 0/DETECTING insights from my interaction with students.
While the course is not at the frontier, it is a very necessary part of creating a better future. I was a tutor on the very first course in 2020. Some 3,000 people have done the course in that time. That's a lot of fundamental understanding of sustainability brought into finance and finance-adjacent sectors.
One insight is the change in the composition of students since that first cohort 4 years ago. Then, it was people hoping to get into ESG or bring ESG into their finance sector employer. Now, they are people who have ESG in their job title. Today's cohort is older, more experienced, more important, have more sustainability-related experiences.
All of which points to a sector which has been embedding sustainability into its operations, at least to some extent. I'm relatively heartened by that direction of travel, while also being frustrated at the attempts to bring in sustainability as a small addition to the existing architecture, rather than responding with more fundamental transformation. Hey ho.
WHAT NEXT. Tutoring and marking. And looking for patterns in what people say which I can bring here as insights.
In the Atelier
Imagining Influential Trajectories
Step: 4/DEVELOPING. Theme: Method; Sectoral Transformation; Governance; Futures.
Reminder: An approach (currently in a development stage) to accelerate change by creating share commitment to investments and initiatives that drive towards ambitious outcomes. The shared commitment follows from imagining different trajectories from today to a future goal together (informed by latest systems transition theories), and testing each to see if the necessary pre-conditions already exist.
Acknowledgment. Very grateful for the opportunity provided by Sustainable Shipping Initiative, and funding from Lloyd's Register Foundation, for the first pilot use in the State of Sustainable Shipping (SoSS).
Another week of designing the nuts and bolts of the method, and getting some early feedback. I hope to be able to share 'minimal viable product' templates next week.
To some extent I am at the stage of some writer friends of mine have been with their book recently. Whatever I put as the first cut is always well short of what I had been hoping for. Far easier to not put anything down, then it can keep the potential, rather than disappointing reality.
Also, had some very encouraging conversations with people on pilotting the method. Reflections:
Updated explanation: from 'how works' to 'why use'. One consequence of explaining Influential Trajectories to people is that I have to get better at explaining it. A shift that has happened over the last week is a from explaining in terms of the steps, to explaining in terms of the outcomes.
The 'Reminder' above used to say "An approach (currently in a development stage) to accelerate change by understanding what is happening now, identifying what will make a difference and inducing coherent action across stakeholders." That is still true. But now I'm saying:
Aim: to create share commitment to investments and initiatives that drive towards ambitious outcomes.
How: imagine different trajectories from today to a future goal together (informed by latest systems transition theories), test each to see if the pre-conditions for exist, and then invest based on the results.
Key insight: people are more willing to commit to investments and initiatives where they have devised the test of whether to proceed themselves. As such, the futures methods are a vehicle (a 'disposable construct' in Riel Miller's description of a mode of futures he calls 'Anticipation-for-Emergence').
Partial evidence of usefulness in different domains. I spoke with people in different kinds of organisations: single issue campaigning; government departments; consultancies; philanthropic foundations; and, impact investors.
All gave positive noises to the Influential Trajectories helping them with a problem they have: how to commit to action in a confusing world.
So that's good news.
But I've only put 'partial evidence' because of a lesson from a start-up entrepreneur. They discounted all feedback until cash was paid for a product. Until then, treat with extreme caution. (Also, for this start up CEO, the assurance on any positive feedback went up further with each repeat purchase.)
Connections to leading academics. I have a very positive conversation with one of the academics in the Deep Transitions Lab. (One had got in touch after reading my ReadingNotes on the Transformation Outcomes, a way of putting the Multi-Level Perspective (aka Socio-Technical Transitions theory) into action.)
Again, a partial validation on the method. Also, an invitation to explore whether we might research together.
WHAT NEXT
Do the darn templates and otherwise the first (disappointing) cut of the method.
Get pilot programme together.
Reach out for expert critique.
Follow up with Deep Transitions Lab.
'What if you already have permission?'
This week I was having a coaching-like conversation with someone. The specific content will stay confidential. But the general logic was: 'the senior people need to do something different'.
Eventually, something clicked for me and I asked: 'well, why don't you just start? What's stopping you from doing these things you want the senior people to do?'. The answer being that they could just start.
All of which reminded me of the tool by Graham Leicester, out-going Director of International Futures Forum. He ends his excellent book 'Transformative Innovation: A Guide to Practice and Policy for System Transition' with a permission slip.
Modelled by something similar by Al Gore while Vice President, the idea is if you can answer these 7 questions with a yes, then you already have permission. So, get started.
Is it good for the people I serve and care about?
Is it legal, ethical and in tune with my professional values?
Am I willing to take responsibility and be accountable for it?
Can I find a friend willing to join me?
Does it embody the third horizon in the present? (Or: does it pre-figure the visionary future I am trying to create?)
Can it get started with little or no additional finance?
Is the answer "yes" to all these questions?
As ever with Graham, there are some subtleties in play. Particularly, if you can find a friend (4), then they will have had to be convinced too. So, that acts as a check.
Afterwards our conversation, I sent them the permission slip. "Like that!", they replied
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