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NO there is not time for individuals to fight climate change without government regulation by Simon Perry

I’m all for the movie The Age of Stupid. I think it is a clever plot framework for presenting the multi generational challenge that is climate change. I am always mindful that my own children will be fifty-ish by 2055, the year in which the film is set. Note to Franny: can we please have a version that is specifically designed for the ten to sixteen year old audience and their teachers? My aspiring actress daughter volunteers herewith.

I also think that the associated 10:10 campaign has much going for it. Chipping away at the wall of popular ignorance and intransience that has prevented mass awareness of the risks associated with uncontrolled climate change is a task that will require constant and innovative ways of gaining attention and airtime. People love to rally around a cause; and making a pledge, wearing the rubber wristband and joining a Facebook group makes everyone feel involved and even helps encourage some people to take some real action.

The creation of popular rallying foci isn’t however the strategic answer to achieving the necessary changes required to avoid a level of global warming above two degrees Celsius. Like it or not, the pragmatic answer is that we require market intervention in order to deliver the financial incentives and regulatory control that will force individual and corporate change.

Businesses are answerable to their shareholders and private owners and the strictures of legislation, not to moviegoers and the minority of the population that will take a 10:10 pledge. I eat local, organically and avoid all animal products, but my supermarket still sells factory bred chicken swizzles from China, all in the name of “providing a choice to the consumer”. No business will make a strategic or structural change in the way that operate as a result of only popular pressure, where such a change runs the risk of reducing competiveness and material profitability, especially with regard to reducing emissions. Corporate history is awash with examples of profit over purity in areas such as ignoring human rights, general environmental degradation, overfishing, over-extraction of water and production of products that are unhealthy or dangerous.

Meanwhile the long term and multi generational nature of climate change effects, and the necessary duration and scope of our responses requires that the educational curriculum must be updated in order to develop a generation of “emission adepts”. The knowledge of economics, history we teach and the social values we attempt to instil in the citizens of tomorrow must recognise and call out the flaws of reasoning we have thus far applied in our economic systems and commercial approaches - thus bringing us to this brink of catastrophe from which we must retreat. We must teach to every child the skills and knowledge required for them to play an active role in transitioning to a low carbon way of life, starting now. “No child left behind…in a high carbon mindset” ought to be our mantra. School Governors, PTA members, and even the occasional brave teacher may organise a screening of The Age of Stupid, and the school may even pledge to reduce, recycle and reuse the kitchen scraps in the eco garden compost. However the teachers will also follow the set curriculum knowing that OFSTED scores standard tests and attendance records, not CO2 emissions and 10:10 pledges.

It is legislation and governmental leadership that will shape the reality of our future. Given the scope of the necessary changes – wide, systemic, and interwoven; the urgency of the required response; and the need to get this right first time it is almost inevitable that deep market intervention will be required. It is equally likely that the average citizen and business lead won’t like the changes much, given how far they will potentially push us from the status quo. This is of course Catch-22, governments won’t act if doing so has a short term negative electoral effect on popularity while we the governed won’t accept the changes (however grudgingly) unless we are forced to. In this context both the movie and the campaign are helpful – if only everyone who views and pledges remembers their priorities come election day.

Franny Armstrong has demonstrated exceptional vision, tenacity and commitment in making the film and the campaign a reality. How many of our elected leaders will demonstrate the same clarity and courage in order to now make the changes we need a reality? Voluntary and individual action around the edges won’t achieve the necessary emissions reductions – never mind address other pressing environmental issues – in a free choice open market.

At school, I was taught that “mankind consumes two types of resources; renewable resources and non renewable resources”. Vague memories come to me of that being a core aspect of the early stages of either the economics curriculum or that of what was fuzzily called “Social Sciences”. The latter subject embraced everything from geography to politics to society, and if memory serves me was led for a while by one of the more interesting teachers to have chalked the blackboards during my formative years. I seem to recall that a number of prepubescent young ladies found the subject of renewable anything utterly engrossing as long as it was explained by a certain foppishly haired Social Science teacher.

Anywhere, there you have it, we have a group of important people (mankind, one presumes the woman were off doing things like cooking the latest Margaret Fulton pavlova recipe) doing the important things they are destined to do (consume stuff) while the world sits there doing exactly what it ought to do (provide resources for the consuming of). Furthermore, the world either provided all those resources as a one-off (gold, diamonds, hit singles by The Vapors), or in the form of an almost magical cut-and-come-again manner (trees, water, foodstuffs, The Magic Pudding. Thus enlightened a classroom full of eager eyed students were that little bit readier to be sent out to play their parts in the great circle of consumption and commerce that is modern life.

Except for one little oddity: oil.

Oil, which logic dictates ought to be classified as a non-renewable resource has thus far been treated as a renewable. Oil supplies have truly been treated as though they are the Magic Pudding energy supply. However, given that the source of oil is what you get when you compost prehistoric algal blooms for a really long time, under conditions of heat and pressure it stands to reason that oil must be a non-renewable resource. Finite algae = finite algal bloom derived product. QED.

Meanwhile, oil literally powers the engines of commerce, while being the feedstock for diverse products from fertilisers to plastics. The history of the 20th century, and the conflicts and problems of the 21st could not more intimately connected with the history and realities of oil production then they are. We are literally living in an oil based society.

Oil’s status as a non-renewable resource, combined with its unique role as the foundation for society’s structure and everyday actions means that we must ensure that we have a plan for the eventual decline of supply. Now if that eventual decline was a long time off, say 100+ years from now, then we would still have enough breathing space to engineer a switch away from using this resource the way we do today (notwithstanding the fact of oil’s role as principle AGHG pollutant - but climate change is a whole other issue). But if a material decline in supply levels were to be only a short time away, say between 10 and 30 years, then good governance would dictate that humanity ought to be applying some of that unique ability to forward plan that is said to differentiate Homo Sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom. In short, the urgency with which we take action to seek alternatives to oil ought to dictated by how long it is until oil supplies materially decline.

Back in the 1950’s the “science” of calculating just when an individual oil producing field’s production rate will begin to decline was formulated by M. King Hubbert. Hubbert’s seminal work resulted in the concept of what has come to known as “Hubbert’s Peak” - referring to the point at which an oil field’s production peaks and then begins to decline. I’ve written at length on the science and history of Hubbert’s peak here, and here (latter link opens a PDF which provides an introduction to the concept of peak oil). However the fact that we might be approaching the decline in worldwide production capacity in the near term rather than the long term has continued to be treated as a fringe theory by much of the mainstream, and certainly by the markets.

However the Chairman of the International Energy Agency Dr Fatih Birol is an individual one would hardly label as “fringe” or as being an individual prone to conspiracy theories. Therefore his statements as published in UK newspaper The Indepedent are of the “sit up a little straighter and pay attention” variety.

Dr. Birol is quoted as saying “One day we will run out of oil, it is not today or tomorrow, but one day we will run out of oil and we have to leave oil before oil leaves us, and we have to prepare ourselves for that day. The earlier we start, the better, because all of our economic and social system is based on oil, so to change from that will take a lot of time and a lot of money and we should take this issue very seriously,”

How seriously?

The IEA Chairman’s statements come on the back of the agency updating its calculations regarding the health of known oil fields, their remaining capacity, and the potential for there to be significant reserves yet to be found. The IEA recently updated its estimate of the rate of decline for production from 3.7% per year to 6.7% decline per year. That means two things; firstly that the rate of decline is increasing, which would tend to indicate that we are at or near the peak point already (maybe just before, maybe just after the peak). And secondly it means that for oil production capacity to remain steady, we need to find new supplies equal to the capacity being removed from the system through the very natural phenomena of individual oil field decline - at a rate of 6.7% per year. Meanwhile, the global demand for oil holds steady and is forecast to grow as emerging economies such as India and China ramp up their needs.

Business as usual just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense in such circumstances.

Which is why it is both refreshing to see Dr. Birol’s statements being made in the mainstream press. It is also very concerning that 24 hours later it was all as if nothing ever happened. Which perhaps just goes to show that Homo Sapiens might not be that good at forward planning after all. I am betting that there is not a single organisation I will speak to in the coming 12 months that will have flagged this issue as being one that is fundamental to the question of its business strategy, looking forward to the decades ahead. I await the pleasant surprise of a contrary experience. Meanwhile, its back to the fringes of conspiracy theory. At least while there I will have the good company of Dr. Birol, Jeremy Legget, Matthew Simmons and a whole host more.

A little while back I wrote about disclosure. Just a few thoughts trying to articulate a code of mini-corporate conduct by which I am attempting to shape my own little slice of the economic pie.

And so it is with no small amount of surprise, mixed together with what I hope is the appropriate amount of sincere humility that I find that David Tebbutt has said a few words on the subject here in the blog he authors for SmallBizPod.

As I mentioned to David via Twitter today, I’m not seeking to inspire here, just to get my own house in order.

Kicking around some ideas related to what “governance” means to eco/grreen - this is a work in progress.

First up is the observation that it’s really “governance of sustainability” which is more expansive than “eco/green governance”.

When applied to an organisation “sustainability” then encompasses ecological sustainability, and also financial sustainability,risk management, human asset management, and operational management. The following graphic illustrates this idea:

Throughout all of these areas are compliance conformance and reporting needs, project portfolio execution and coordination tasks, and strategic planning.

There are numerous ways in which each of these areas interrelate. While a “eco-governance” is a generally new concept it is clear that you can’t actually achieve anything meaningful if you handle it in isolation.

I’m working this up into a full blown article, meanwhile I’m just thinking out loud…

What isn’t surprising is that America hammered home a ground stake yesterday at the G8 Summit with the declaration that they will commit to an 80% reduction in GHG emissions, achieved by 2050. The idea that the Obama administration would take such a direction crystallised on the evening of October 2nd, 2008 in St. Louis Illinois.

On that evening the then Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin and the current Vice President Joe Biden primped, positioned and even occasionally answered a question during the Vice Presidential (nominee) televised debate. Biden, in response to a question regarding the causes of climate change responded; “It’s man made, it’s clearly man-made. That’s why the polar ice caps are melting”.

For those paying attention, this was a watershed moment – remembering that every answer given in that debate must have been subject to intense preparatory deliberation by an expert team of policy setters and massagers of messaging. Biden’s answer unequivocally nailed a sign on the wall pointing to the direction the administration would take. Here we are, some nine months later, and the bright spark Biden gave voice to that night has gestated in the G8 announcement.

And yet, like a newborn child, there is both an infinity of possibility and the great potential for tragedy all wrapped up in the same bundle. The G8 announcement, designed to spur developing countries like China and India into making similarly far reaching commitments, is problematic in that it fails to set aggressive commitments for interim emissions targets. Climate scientists would like to see developed nations achieve 50% emissions cuts by 2020, on the way to the overall 80% cuts three decades later. The announcement also courted controversy for the failure to concretely specify the baseline year against which relative targets are calculated – “OK…I’ll cut 80%. 80% of what though?” So…dramatic progress, but the devil remains in the details.

If the announcement isn’t a complete surprise then, is there anything that is? There’s certainly no surprise in the fact that 99% of the western world will get up today and do exactly the same things that they did yesterday, even if they read the newspaper headlines regarding the announcement as they crunch through their morning bowl of cereal. They’ll eat the same food, use the same transport method to get to work or drop little Mary-Jane and Muhammad at the local school, and book the same holiday destination regardless. An infinitesimal number of people will internalise the news and begin to think how their lives might be different if conducted such that they generate only 20% (or less, depending on the baseline year) of emissions than they do today.

Similarly, business leaders will generally have the same meetings they otherwise would have had. Focussing not on the method by which they may achieve profitable operations with 80% less emissions, but instead on this quarter and this year. Product Managers, Vice Presidents of Futurology and other foretellers of the future will spend the day dreaming up two-dot-oh this and three-dot-oh that, mashed up, twittered and iPhone ready for all. Ministers of Education, School Principals and Teachers will pull out the same textbooks and all give no thought as to how to enable the room full of fresh-faced 9 year olds with an education suitable to successfully progress and contribute to an economic model that is undergoing a fundamental shift throughout the duration of their future working lives. The 9 year olds of today are the 50 year olds of 2050. They are generation of Emissions Transitioners – the Digital Immigrants of the carbon-down age. Their lives will be defined not by the rhetoric of the 2009 G8 Summit, but by the continued action of many throughout the coming forty years.

Perhaps the surprise then, if there is any, is simply the degree to which the minutia of planning necessary to actually enact structural change has thus far failed to materialise. To have the head and the mouthpiece of the dog bark is one thing, but to have the body react requires specific directions to be sent to the nerves and muscles that initiate and coordinate action. It is high time that detailed consideration is given to how change will be achieved and successfully guided and governed along the way.

Clearly the necessary structures to accommodate and encourage change remain illusive – preceding the G8 announcement by just a few days was the news that an ambitious plan to generate 4,000 megawatts of wind farm electricity in the USA was being mothballed. The project was cancelled, according to the chairman of BP Capital Management due to fact that “transmission issues and the problem with the capital markets make (the scheme) unfeasible at this point”. The country that does achieve such a plan for renewable energy generation and distribution will be the first to lay claim to the pole position in the rankings of countries decoupled from the pollution, profit, violence and warfare associated with oil production in many parts of the world.

A high game of brinkmanship therefore continues to be played amongst the world’s leaders. At stake is nothing less than the shape of the geopolitical stage and the economic ordering of the winners and losers in the “green economy”. Mixed in amongst that is the question of what sort of everyday opportunities and decisions will be available to everyone alive today who is 45 years of age or less – for we are the generations of transitional action. L’Aquila may rumble with the aftershocks of tectonic discontent, but it is the aftershocks from the 80% announcement that will rumble far longer and with far more potential reach.

I’m a big fan of “disclosure” and have been a long time advocate of laws like California’s SB1386 (or for a more formal explanation here) which calls for disclosure of information security breaches that have resulted in leakage of personal data.

Disclosure of company financial performance; transparency into the individual expenses and financial interests of elected officials (and non elected decision makers); the state of corporate risk exposure; and a whole list more are also examples of public and private sector governance and reporting arenas where transparency has proven to be a positive influence on behaviour. Unfortunately, we have learned the importance of disclosure mainly through the numerous examples of the exact opposite. All of which resulted in ultimately ill-advised, unethical, and illegal behaviour by individual, corporations and government continuing due to a very real lack of transparency.

On the sustainability front, the corporate social responsibility report has long added marketing gloss and positioning around a company’s social, environmental, equal opportunity and financial efforts. The CSR report is the Vogue edition of the reporting minutia that is the raft of environmental reports that a company may need to file (depending on their industry) - marketing selected data excerpts dressed up with photographs of happy, successful people doing happy, successful and socially responsible things.

Carbon (emissions) disclosure joined the fray a few years back. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is probably the best known, and the UK’s Carbon Reduction Commitment is a looming requirement for many businesses. Small businesses however will be exempt, while “one man band” home workers such as myself are considered “off the radar”.

However heating, cooling, lighting and generally keeping an an individual’s accommodation habitable and pleasant are collectively the single largest factor in the person’s overall ecological impact, aside from their daily travel and long distance travel habits. So it makes sense to improve the operation and design of our housing stock in these areas all the time in order to reduce the ecological load. It has also been asked (reasonably) whether there is a real net benefit in terms of lower emissions from home-working an employee versus providing them office space in the traditional way, and as a home worker this is a very real factor for me.

Whether it is or it isn’t, figuring it out is perhaps helped by disclosure and transparency. To that end, I’ve jotted down a summary of the ways that I personally attempt to reduce my own ecological footprint. So far, this is qualitative in nature only. A more quantitative calculation (and plan) is something I must get to. What I do today is by no means perfect, however its the best compromise available to me as a worker and as an individual (and as a family member) for the moment.

A later quantitative analysis will provide I hope some good insight as to where I can make further material changes in my own behaviour and resource consumption choices. Along the way I hope to also gain through experience a better understanding of the net benefit of technologies and services that claim to assist in reducing our individual and collective ecological impacts.

You can read a qualitative statement from me regarding my own guiding principles that I follow in an effort to minimise and continue to reduce my own ecological footprint here.

Nod @ DT.

In 2008 when UK retailer Woolworths went bankrupt I observed to a friend, who happens to be an actress, that the defining visual that would instantly anchor any piece of UK film or stage creative work in the desired time would be whether the retailer’s stores in a High Street scene were seen to be open, shuttered, or long abandoned and a distant memory. Of all the rumbling and crashes of that long, grey economic winter that seemed the stomach punch to the British soul. The British may miss their middle class tea shops and wince at record losses posted by BA, but its the death of 99p clearance chains like Woolworths that cut deep.

I am reminded of this today as General Motors files for protection under Chapter 11 bankruptcy laws. America will suck in its collective breath over Merrill Lynch, AIG, a £50,000,000,000 Ponzi scheme and many, many more. But I suspect that it is GM’s humbling that will most of all define the long stumble for the USA, and also provide the clearest indication yet that when all this blows by, the way ahead looks quite different from the view so far. GM will eventually emerge out of Chapter 11 in a new form: GM-II and it will be that manufacturer that will bring to market future products, under a much diminished brand set.

GM’s management failings are many, and a vehicle strategy that was utterly tied to a dependency on cheap oil and little consideration toward pollution was by no means the single largest problem the company had. However a product set that was finally proven to be unfit for the market direction might well have arguably been the final nail in the coffin. Even with all the effort the company has belatedly have put toward their Chevy Volt project a launch date is still the other side of 2009, and that surely doesn’t count any delays incurring from dealing with the Chapter 11 restructuring. Toyota’s Prius will by then be a generation three product with established brand credentials and millions of miles of road use behind them to iron out problems. Not to mention having generated a Yen or two of revenue for Toyota along the way.

Even once GM-II, Ford and Chrylser manage a half decent volume manufactured domestic hybrid, HPEV, or PEV vehicle, they face market challenges for some time. The lack of demand for SUV and similar vehicles is of course one of the market realities that has brought GM to their current state, so we can take the existence of the market’s undesirability for such vehicles as a given. In the short term that has dealt a blow to GM, in the long term there is also a problem of there being a massive stock of existing gas guzzlers already on the road that are depreciating at over the odds rates as people don’t want them either.

Imagine it’s 2010, Mom and Dad have just rolled up in their spanking new GM Volt. They’re proud of the low emissions, they’re proud to buy American, they’re happy they saved money due to federal tax breaks designed to encourage purchasing and use of a low emissions vehicle, oil is at $85 a barrel so the pump price for gasoline is more than they would want to pay anyway. So what are they going to buy for their newly licensed 17 year old kid, Johnny? Well they’re not going to want to buy a second hand SUV, the gas would be a hole in the wallet and the emissions will make little Johnny very unpopular on the hottest dating circuit in town: eco-babes.com. They can’t afford to buy him a brand new Volt of his own (much as they’d like to) - bonuses at work still aren’t what they used to be and redundancies are always on the cards, and there’s a million competitors still out there on the jobs market ready to step in any day. The answer is perhaps a second hand hybrid or HPEV. And that’s going to be a Toyota or bust. So Toyota gets the ongoing parts business, a slice of the services pie, the potential for an upgrade-sell later to an established driver, and meanwhile the value for their second hand vehicles is likely to be strong. GM-II et al, merely face the image of their unvalued old SUV’s being encouraged off the road entirely through a vehicle scrappage scheme similar to the UK’s scheme (see www.vehicle-manufacturers-name.co.uk/scrappage. For example www.fiat.uk/scrappage

GM’s failings therefore serve as testimony to how far many companies have missed the mark as they’ve set their strategies over the last decade, exhibiting an almost feral avoidance of consideration to the needs of the market come a time of rising concern on emissions, together with an end to cheap energy. The transformational nature of such factors is clearly not to be underestimated, while the challenge of effectively dealing with them is multidisciplinary to an almost unprecedented degree. Governing through such transition effectively will bring potential catastrophic market failure if done extremely poorly, allow an organisation to limp through if done middlingly, and place an organisation in a strong to winning market position for the opportunities that lie ahead in a “green economy” if done well. Green, or eco-governance therefore is not simply a trendy turn of phrase, it is a movement that will eventually come define the winners of the green economy.

Organisations seeking to develop a successful sustainability strategy will need to do much to develop and foster a “culture of sustainability” amongst staff. The aim for such an exercise is to develop a consideration for sustainability in all decision making that is second nature. There are a lot of parallels here to the efforts that companies undertake to bed in attitudes towards “putting customers first”, “ethical behaviour”, “thrift and financial efficiency”, “information security and handling practices” and even just the general “winner’s attitude” that is especially valued in sales teams. Developing such cultures involves leading from the top, and ensuring that staff are not simply trained, nor “wacked” when out of line, but rather than they are provided the skills and awareness they need in order to make informed decisions, while being rewarded and encouraged through alignment of organisational goals, compensation models and personal development goals towards that end.

Effectively leading from the top will require executives and senior management to set a direction and tone, and to clearly communicate goals and progress. While detailed measurement of progress will be part and parcel of project management efforts, internal and external reporting and strategic governance, there will also be a requirement for somewhat abstract “high level” signposting of the importance placed on sustainability, and the relative priority given towards achieving related targets.

Setting such a compass is about internalising a simple balanced ratio between the relative importance assigned to profit making compared to that assigned to “treading lightly”; “Economic Sensibility” versus “Ecological Sustainability” ($ES:ES). Imagine you have $/£/€200 to spend in the best way possible to help your business, how much of the money do you assign to “economic sensibility” measures and how much to “ecological sustainability”? $190:10 might be a score for Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (i.e. disproportionately more emphasis placed on revenue generating business as usual and hardly over that placed on safety and sustainability), while an eventual score for on target balanced company might be $105:95, and for one that has a lot to achieve on the green front perhaps $65:135 (note that putting the “$” at the front serves to remind everyone which number refers to profit and which to sustainability.). At a top level, a target $ES:ES score can be set toward which everyone in the chain of command can aim towards as they perform their everyday roles, providing a simple and perhaps more meaningful top level performance indicator than the “traffic lights” so often used.

The scope of change required to meet the GHG reduction targets currently being set is enormous. Targets of 80% reductions (by 2050) are even today being labelled “minimum” as new evidence emerges that the IPCC (et al) calculations, predictions and calls for action err on the side of optimism. Indeed, there is emerging evidence of the need for large-scale sequestration of existing atmospheric GHG concentrations, supporting a “> 100%” net decline in anthropogenic emission rates.

Regardless of whether the required target is 80%, 110% or otherwise, it is clear that given the reliance on emission heavy activities, energy sources and construction materials the degree of required change will be disruptive. Achieving the required GHG cuts will require a mixture of direct and indirect market interventions. Direct intervention will generally be in the form of regulation that controls, limits, and apportions polluting activities. Indirect intervention will be achieved through pricing in and accounting for those factors, which are currently regarded as market externalities. As a result, the current assumptions that make supply chain choices et al what they are today will shift seismically, leading to a new reality. Achieving that new reality involves changing the energy supply/consumption model - creating the requirement for new skills, while inherently also requiring behavioural and system changes in order for the change to gain momentum and to be successful.

The bulk of any country’s school systems are utterly unprepared to adequately equip those currently being educated by it with regards to climate change science, overall environmental degradation, resource depletion. This is largely due to a twin failure of government policy failure and a lack of meaningful parental and social pressure. Due to that fact, almost no schools have given adequate thought toward any potential curriculum changes designed to better provide graduating students with the practical and theoretical skills that will be useful in a world struggling to implement the changes necessary to avoid catastrophic ecosystem failure. In short, the majority of any country’s education systems are failing in their duty to provide today’s students with the skills and knowledge required for survival and success in the future.

The required responses to climate change are framed over the coming four to five decades. Unless the students of today are set on a different path and enabled to actively take part in supporting these changes the time at which social inertia is overcome will be further delayed. Climate change predictions and science indicate that urgent action is required and further delay will be catastrophic.

It is worth being mindful of the fact that the impacts of climate change will be felt over an extended period of time (albeit one measured in very human time scales). The same is of true of the implementation of the required changes to the behaviour of people, to our processes, and our use of technology. Given that the GHG reduction targets are framed over a 40+ year timeframe we would do well to recognise that those individuals in our school systems in 2009 will be the business leaders, workers, and adult members of society of 2050. The skills that they will need to have will be different than those valued today.

The cross-generational shift of valued skill sets is not an unknown phenomenon; society’s history since the industrial revolution is littered with examples of tectonic technology shifts making long valued skill-sets obsolete within a single decade. Over the last 30 or so years we have seen this phenomena within almost every business and organisation – manifesting itself as the widespread use of ICT (Information Communications Technology) has moved from EDP back office processing and academic research to being a ubiquitous face of commerce and daily activity. The terms “digital natives”, “digital immigrants”, and “digital ignorant” have been coined to refer to the various generations moving through the workforces of the 1980s through today, and their relative comfort levels with ICT.

Mirroring the way that we have seen the emergence of the Digital Native, we will see an evolution in the understanding of climate change and effective avoidance strategies in future generations. Such a change however, will not occur by itself. Inherent inertia must be overcome, and a thoughtful and planned approach taken toward guiding the path of development.

Borrowing from this idea of “Digital Natives”, and recognising also that the skills required to enact the changes necessary to meet the GHG reduction targets will be different again from those that will be useful in the longer term, the labels “emission ignorants”, “emission transitioners”, and “emission adepts” are useful ones - capturing the essence of the required shifts in skills sets over time.

Emission ignorants are those who remain unaware of either the facts of climate change, or the scope of the necessary changes. A subset of the Ignorants may be moved to the Transitioner category through education.
Emission Transitioners are those individuals who will play an active role in enabling the necessary GHG emission reductions. They are a visible minority today and their waxing influence will straddle the decades between now and the current emission reduction target date of 2050. The activities of Transitioners will be defined as one of “dealing with change” as they seek to understand the scope of the necessary changes, and then unravel the current organisational and structural behaviours and systems, replacing them with the new.

Emission Adepts will eventually replace Emission Transitioners. Adepts will live in a world where the majority of the necessary changes have already occurred. As the economic externalities of emissions have been internalised, the basic assumptions that drive every day activity will also have changed. In essence, Adepts will have internalised those assumptions and will live within a society, an economic model, and a world that has structurally adapted to the new reality.

Those that are the relative “early transitioners” must apply their individual and collective skills toward to the efforts to better understand our current state, the needs of the future, and the efforts to communicate and engage with the Emissions Ignorants. Co-operation is key between academia, business, and political parties if we are to harvest the skill sets that currently exist in the marketplace, and to move ahead with the pace and accuracy required. An effective sharing of academic knowledge related to climate change will accelerate and broaden awareness and knowledge in society at large, amongst business leaders, and regulators. Meanwhile, academia will benefit from further understanding the evolving needs of the marketplace and therefore in what ways and at what pace curriculum should alter. Nimbleness will be highly important, though it is currently lacking.

Read more here in a whitepaper entitled “Setting the framework for skills change” (PDF format).  Setting the framework for skills change considers the need for an evolving set of practical and theoretical skills amongst the workforce and the broader community in order to support an adequate response to climate change.

Software maker CA (which everyone keeps mistakenly still calling “Computer Associates” - so perhaps that attempted name change was a little less then successful) is amongst those which have more recently found their inner verdant. The NYC headquartered vendor, most famously known for a past period of shaky corporate governance hopes to brings its expertise in IT and Enterprise governance to the world of “sustainability”. More however on the product and go-to-market strategy later.

CA has in fact been prominent through its lack of action toward “green IT”, especially compared to those vendors which the company considers its natural competitors. IBM and BMC have now long had a noticeable greenness to their product marketing messaages, both for existing products which have newly found their environmental benefits, and also in proposed new product developments from the vendors. IBM for instance touts their credentials in regard to the greening of datacentres. Both vendors have highlighted the potential electricity savings that may arise from better server and desktop management, Meanwhile IBM has focused (and delivered on) power efficient versions of their hardware, and OS virtualisation capabilities that are positioned to improve the electricity to performance figures of Wintel servers. Even Oracle, with which CA competes with gusto in the Identity Management arena, has managed to keep Larry Ellison’s mouth shuttered long enough to slip out some green positioning.

CA, meanwhile has been…. ….quietly…. ….up to something….

CA has chosen to find its way forward in the space by first focusing on getting its own environmental house in order. The company has reported under the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP4, CDP5 and CDP6) and has made significant gains in lowering their own GHG emissions, as well as focusing on the ecological footprint of the company’s operations. They do have a long way to go, as do almost all enterprise IT vendors. CA’s sales, marketing and executive staff still travel by plane as a standard part of their business routine. The large footprint and consumptive lifestyles of the average high flying software sales person is still encouraged, again like their peers. Gone however are the dreadful throwaway plastic trays that ALL meals were served in in the company’s HQ staff canteen. From paper waste to electricity usage to water the company has reviewed its position and brought out the knives to trim away excess.

Along the way, CA has learned just how potentially complex the execution of a corporate wide Sustainability Strategy is. Especially one that is being introduced into a multinational company. Such strategies require the balancing of a lot of simultaneously spinning plates.So much so that effective green governance will likely become a major area of concern and effort for the coming years. CA are now taking the knowledge they have gained and are now embedding that into their products, focusing foremost on enabling companies to more effectively understand and manage the overall portfolio of sustainability related projects and initiatives. Meanwhile, expect to see the vendor sprinkle a little green sparkle on their desktop and data centre management product lines.

CA’s inside-outward approach may arguably lost them traction in a fast moving market. At the same time the cautious approach is also a little less cynical than the arguably out and out green-marketing approach taken by an all too long list of IT HW/SW/Services vendors with which CA competes on a regular basis. CA must put no small effort toward communicating its newly minted green credentials in order to make up lost ground, in the meantime its focus on getting its own house in order should win it respect amongst buyers, while its recognition of the need for effective “green governance” should play well for it in the longer term.

A note of disclosure: the author worked for CA from 1996 to 2007. He currently holds no financial interest in the company.