Climate change is humanity’s next roadblock. From empathy to complex problem solving, to move forward we’ll have to evolve into a better version of ourselves. Evolution led our ancestors to wean themselves off bananas, put seeds in the ground instead of their mouths and swap horses for steam engines. Humanity inevitably moves forward. Climate change can be about so much more than just reducing emissions. On the surface it’ll spur needed change, spawning a new role for businesses and their relationship with the public institutions. But deeper down climate change will humble our sense of human and western exceptionalism, questioning the very social fabric we’re so comfortable in.
Evolving our economic narrative
The past 100 years mediated one of humanity’s grand debates around what role business has in ensuring economic growth. Limited Liability and Joint Stock companies have offered us unprecedented economic development and have been one of our most incredible innovations. The new story of capitalism achieved the impossible in bringing millions out of poverty while creating cities and technology that remind us how the future has already arrived. But with it came a new paradigm and arrogance that we’d reached the end of history. As Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics won the war in their global prescription of free and unfettered markets, they’ve left a breeding ground for malpractice in business and politics to grow. But in the Neo-liberal mindset, we’re humbly reminded of how so often yesterday’s solutions become tomorrow’s problems.
Rampant rent-seeking, faulty patent laws, monopoly practices and regulatory capture are only a few of the techniques that have become inevitable and pollute the very purity of capitalism that classical economists are so desperate to achieve. Even by the metric of real wages and productivity, the effectiveness of corporations has slowed. Worst of all, this left us with a new definition of success for business and politics, one of maximizing shareholder value, quarterly earnings, and the next election cycle mindset. Squeezing our perspective of time and incentives away from seeing any bigger picture. From a rusted American dream— stagnant median household income, social mobility, unprecedented wealth consolidation etc—to a seemingly divided world.
While consumers are nowhere near innocent, we must be aware of how international deregulation and globalization have allowed for meta-national companies to escalate the influence of the producer to a scale we’ve never seen. The 2017 Carbon Majors report famously shed light on how the top 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. At a minimum, we must hold these businesses accountable proportional to this scale. As the pressure increases on corporations to acknowledge their impact, they’ll wake up to the new expectations the next generation expects of them. They’ll see a different definition of business and reckless profiteering as neither idolized nor seen as the standard. As of October 2020, 163 of the Fortune 500 have promised to be carbon neutral by 2030, quadruple the number as four years ago. Just look at Amazon, the largest climate pledge to date happened largely impart from historic walkouts and protests internally from employees. Change begins to churn as we speak out against the institutions we’re a part of when they aren’t meeting that definition of success.
The point here isn’t that we all need to work for an NGO, the conversation around climate change has already been plagued by virtue signaling for too long. The point is we need to think deeper about our role in the businesses, institutions and systems we interact with every day and the unique power you have in pressuring them to change.
Redefining Success for Ourselves
Climate breakdown will force us to evolve the accepted definition of success towards what’s meaningful for ourselves, redefining it in a deeply human way. Whether it’s the Beatles, Socrates, Stanford psychology department, or your local church, they all say the same thing—happiness comes from living for something greater than one’s self and making room for the other. Climate change will increasingly nudge us to remember that there’s more than just our own little world out there. That somehow through this intricate global 21st-century web we’ve weaved, my actions are connected to everyone else’s.
But it’s not just me getting preachy and dropping names, according to a 2018 Deloitte report on what work means to millennial’s, 84% of our generation are asking how they can make an impact and feel “it’s their duty to help change the world for the better”. And to that one 60-year-old grumbling to his computer about the naïve idealism of the youth, don’t worry, I don’t blame you for putting us in this situation. The West you’ve lived in has been stuck in a funny spot the past fifty years. In the 1970s, we began to a prescribe a newly invigorated individualistic and neo-liberal definition of success, one of monetary gain and reckless pursuit of individual achievement. Adam Smith presented this definition as inevitable within all of us and we believe “that’s simply human nature”.
All we have to do is look East to see a drastically different definition of success, one that’s deeply rooted in Confucian values and placing society and harmony first. Confucius, who’s principles deeply influence countries such as Korea, Vietnam and China in a way unlike anything we have in the West, even goes as far to say “the inferior man” is one who “understands not righteousness but profit. He is aware of the advantage and seeks notoriety”. We do have the ability to look past ourselves and see the bigger picture, we just need to make it the expectation. A friend recently told me a line that I’m now hearing more and more; “Focusing only on my career just kind of feels like moving furniture around on the Titanic”. Without that dose of meaning, it’s a success that simply won’t matter. Maybe it’s time to look up and steer the boat.
A New Approach
But it all starts by framing the problem. Don’t be overwhelmed, don’t be coaxed into living in your own world, and don’t ever believe problems can’t be solved. Instead let climate breakdown evoke emotions of inspiration, gritting your teeth with a cheeky smile knowing you can be a part of humanity’s next grand challenge. What if we stopped framing it with normative ethics and saw this as our opportunity to nudge humanity forward just an inch by engaging in the evolution of our broken systems and mindset? To finally widen our perspective, not only when it’s convenient for us but in everything we do. To give us the motivation to not only brush aside our trivial pursuits but our trivial values. A challenge that’s collateral includes so much more than just emissions and polar bears. Where ever you are in your career, understanding your role in the systems that surround you and how you can pressure them to set a higher standard is one of most powerful things you can do. In a time so heavily influenced by brands and inter-connectivity don’t ever underestimate your role, from grocery stores to local government, tech companies to insurance. We get to define what is meaningful for us, it’s our turn to put it all in perspective, and evolve past petty politics and narcissistic business practices. In the coming years, questions will be asked of us. The answers will push business and government forward and help us to redefine our definition of success. The answers will be humanity taking a meaningful, crucial step forward because that’s what we humans do.
This is apart of our CFB’s New Framing series where we explore using different vocabulary and value sets to see and resonate with this problem differently. Read more from this series here