By E. Bruce Harrison
I know, corporate chief. You’ve been hearing it was coming for years. Schwarzenegger told you. Al Gore got an Oscar for telling you. Even I, the guy who is pretty much always in the corporate corner giving you tips between rounds, I whispered it in your ear nearly two decades ago: get ready … global warming’s warming up.
I’m referring not to the science of climate change, of course, but to the political issue.
Science is a baseball game. A lot of pitching, a few hits, some runs, some errors. The people try not to run into other people and hardly anybody gets hurt. The pace is measured and there’s no clock, no time limit, you can play and argue, posture and postulate for hours or until darkness falls or the lights burn out on the field and in the labs.
Climate change science games continue. They stagger on. Rather civilized, science.
Political issues are something else. Toss them into a campaign or a congressional chamber and watch the blood fly. There’s bobbing and weaving, punches landed, fat lips and torn ears, bells clang and it’s a decision or a draw or one guy can’t get up off the canvas. It’s not always a clean matchup and the winner sometimes has to be told to smile.
The climate change political game—that is to say the fight to fix the broadly-perceived carbon problem—is presently coal-fire hot, under the lights in the big arena, and in its final rounds.
But, okay, yes, I have to admit to my C-suite friends, your seer-who-saw-it-coming is a little surprised and chagrined.
I mean—who would have thought this costly anti-carbon issue would land like a sucker punch when you’re reeling from economic blows?
It all came together with the new year in the nation’s capital.
Barack Obama gets to Washington and immediately says the nation is on its knees, weak with a sick economy. In his next breath, he’s announcing the appointment of green activists like the new White House czar of energy, climate and environmental affairs, the progressive and effective former chief of the Environmental Protection Agency, Carol Browner, who dug into climate change in the early days by helping then-Senator Gore write his big book on saving the planet.
Next, Congress screeches back into town to resume the game it had suspended for a holiday break—the biggest domestic giveaway in history to save people and companies from debt and financial ruin—and immediately finds time to push climate change high on committee legislative agenda.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a confident pace-setter with a bigger majority in her corner, flashes a high-profile smile for the aggressive carbon war that will now be waged by the new chairman of the energy committee, who worked the Democratic caucus to depose the veteran John Dingell, a moderate, effective champion of reasoned, give-business-a-chance regulations.
And, in the stands, egging on the main players, a dozen green groups publish a transition agenda with climate change and energy as crisis areas needing first attention, while think tanks that had provided sanctuary for former Clinton Administration stalwarts worked alongside the Obama transition team on the global warming game plan.
The plan is simple. Tie the greening to the bailout.
Or, even better, make climate change responses compatible with economic distress responses.
Show how cutting carbon emissions will create jobs and income.
Display the economic-renewable wisdom of investing in low-carbon (clean, renewable energy) technology, research, development, products, processes, markets.
With some of the billions of dollars in play, relight the “fierce green fire” which the talented New York Times journalist Phil Shabecoff described in his definitive history of American environmentalism 16 years ago.
That’s what’s happening today.
While the build-up has been long and the timing seemed strange, the war on carbon is accommodated, lifted and is about to be felt in virtually every business plan.
Power, fuel, products, carbon footprints find a place on the business strategy table.
And you, corporate chiefs, have been getting ready for just such a time, haven’t you?
In the survey that my team did for Corporate Greening 2.0, we found more than 40 large companies preparing for the changed game of climate change.
You’ve warmed up by trading carbon emission permits when you didn’t have to, just to get the feel of finance with a new commodity, carbon dioxide branded as pollutant.
You’ve found ways to turn carbon-efficiency into a money maker. You’ve dabbled in offset investments.
You’re getting serious about products and product research that fit under the carbon reduction umbrella and thereby qualify for government grants and demonstration projects.
At least, at the very least, you’ve worked with your stakeholders, your market strategists, your government representatives and, very importantly, with your professionals in the communications business, to be sure you’ve got support for your green moves. You certainly don’t want to have your carbon war strategy, or lack of one, turned into a negative on the next investor phone call or the annual meeting.
You know that the political game has begun. Climate change has met with energy and environmental interests in a setting where social and political changes are in play, and where extraordinary economic conditions make taxpayer money available to support change.
This uncommon convergence means climate is in business, and vice versa. You want perfect alignment of your economic, social and political accountabilities.
*
* *
E. Bruce Harrison, based in Washington, D.C.,
is the author of "Corporate Greening 2.0: Create and Communicate Your Company’s Climate Change and Sustainability Strategies," (PublishingWorks Inc., Exeter, NH, 2008). |
