“Aren’t you the security guy? What’s all this global warming stuff got to do with that?
That’s a far couple of questions, and ones that I was asked recently. There’re a couple of ways I can answer, so I ay as well cover off all the bases…
Firstly, in case anyone accuse me of jumping on the latest bandwagon and doing my own little bit of greenwashing, I should say (with all due respect) that anyone who has to ask about my interest in the state of the environment probably doesn’t know me well.
Common sense told me some two decades ago that we were overburdening our environment. I got my first scuba qualification at the age of eighteen, and in the years that followed did a lot of diving off the NSW (Australia) coast. At the time I lived in a small town called Bundeena, completely surrounded by national park, and in a house where the front garden literally bordered onto the bay. At high tide, if you leaned over the front wall of the garden you could spit into the water. Bundeena is situated with the Royal National Park, which is the world’s second declared national park (the first being Yellowstone). My friend Rudi w was trying to start up a dive business based out of Bundeena, and through him and his efforts at building a diver’s ‘community’ I met many retired snorkelers and spearfishermen. They would tell stories lamenting the decline of the marine environment in the bay, compared t their youth. Even accounting for fishermen’s tall tales, there was clearly some truth amongst the stories they’d tell over a cheap schooner (near enough a pint) of beer at the local. Around this time Greenpeace was targeting Caltex over marine pollution from their refinery on the Kurnell peninsula.
A favourite walk of mine was from Bundeena out through the bush to the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. These cliffs, or The Balconies as we called them had a view that stretched from Sydney (North and to the left) to Wollongong (South and to the right). If the midpoint of the view was twelve o’clock then Sydney was at about nine and Wollongong at about 4pm. Over the period of about eight years that I spent visiting The Balconies I saw brown smears that marked both Sydney and Wollongong converge across the vista. The blue gap between the brown of industry’s influence eventually shrinking to the five minutes on either side of twelve o’clock. It seemed that time was running out even back then.
It is said that travel broadens the mind and awakens a sense of social awareness. I’ll be the first to admit that I have done more than my fair share of aeroplane based travel. The eleven plus years of my time with (the software vendor) CA saw me eating more airline meals than I’d care to count. China, India, Thailand, South Africa, North America, all over Europe – been there and got the CO2 footprint to go with it. Sparing the details; suffice t say that I witnessed and absorbed enough sights such that I am under no illusions that the planet can sustain the heaving numbers of people that are already with us today. Anyone who has looked out the window as the aeroplane clears the Asian Brown Cloud cannot fail to appreciate the scale of the pollutants pumped into the atmosphere by human activity.
Of course all of that might be construed as romantic, environmentalism unfounded in either science or business were it not for the depth and breadth of evidence. Anyone who has bothered to educate themselves on the current research, and the forward thinking of various individuals cannot fail to settle on an uncomfortable truth. With the exception of (the UK’s) The Independent most news outlets give climate change and peak oil short shrift. Even The Independent undermines itself through unabashed advertising for tourist flights, motoring and so on. Relying on any of them as a sole source of information will never give a clear view of the serious risk we now face.
On the business front it would be easy to point to the growing ‘greening’ of so many companies as evidence of the direction of the wind. Were it not however for the fact that so many ‘green strategies’ are no more than that – opportunistic strategies brewed up by the marketing and sales divisions to chase a “green dollar”. There is little evidence of strategic thinking, nor of true awareness or embracement of the extent of the problem we face, I wonder how many companies will sacrifice even one dollar of profit in order to stick to their green strategy. Or how many will abandon it when the next market driver that seems to offer larger, quicker profits appears. The acid test of any company’s green strategy is their answer to those questions.
The industry that has nurtured me and paid my bills thus far in my career is guilty of this too. The capabilities of ICT enable so many aspects of the required social change, but imagination, ambition, and a level of seriousness is lacking in the overall approach. More on that later.
I clearly recall a dinner conversation at a conference (NISC – by Sapphire) a few years ago. At my table was a gentleman who was in charge of risk analysis for one of the UK’s major banks. We discussed all the various issues he and his department tracked for the bank, in order=for it to calculate its risk exposure. Amongst the usual suspects were two that stood out for both their insightfulness and the surprising fact of their inclusion. Namely; the chances of London’s Thames Barrier being overtopped and London flooding; and global warming.
This has been a long post, but I will close off with one other thought. I happen to be holidaying on St. Mary’s (largest of the Scilly Isles, off Cornwall) as I write this. I spent today cycling the small island and enjoyed a picnic lunch amongst the remains of a Neolithic village. It was inhabit 3500-4000 years ago. At the time it was built what are now the various islands of the Scilly group were one; the sea level being much lower than today. How strange that so many of us view such things with curiosity and acceptance; tourist curiosities that we seek out and expose ourselves and our children to. How few of us think through the fact that there very existence points to the possibility of dramatic change in human condition and in the planet’s environment.
Am I the security guy? Perhaps, but I prefer to address and manage ‘risk’. Moreover I am a logical, curious, cynical, strategic thinker. I cannot perceive a single larger, more urgent, more important risk to humanity than that posed by the twin threats of anthropogenic climate change and peak oil.
