February 13, 2024
This post first appeared in SR Inc’s Q4 Newsletter as the Service Leader Comment.
2023 ended with COP28 being at least 28 years late in making it “official”: all the nations of the world agree, they must “transition” from a fossil fuel powered economy. This is a generation delayed acknowledgment of the scientific reality that drove the creation of the field of Corporate Sustainability when corporate responsibility strategists in Europe and the U.S. recognized by the late 1990s that the climate science was clear: business as usual, especially the burning of fossil fuels, was not sustainable1. This elevated corporate “sustainability” efforts beyond an optional part of corporate philanthropy to the level of a strategic imperative appropriately addressed by the Board of Directors.
Most corporate executives did not remotely understand the business implications of what James Hansen, as Director of Atmospheric Science at NASA testified to at a 1988 Senate Hearing that Al Gore Jr. convened. Hansen testified that there was a “99% certainty” that humans were causing dangerous global warming, as reported by the New York Times. Exxon Mobil’s executives were the exception. They were acutely aware of this issue and its importance. Court ordered disclosures have established that Exxon scientists were remarkably prescient in their internal 1982 warnings and modeling that explained to Exxon’s executives that Exxon’s industry was the primary cause of global warming and predicted that CO2 in our atmosphere would climb to 420 PPM by 2020 with concomitant progressive climate breakdown, sea level rise, and extreme weather, according to Forbes. Their science proved spot-on, as we hit 420 PPM in 2020 and Exxon’s scientists recommended raising and hardening their extraction rigs, thereby saving Exxon money.
Exxon’s executive nihilists were not alone in their willingness to study science and reflect on its profound implications, including on business. Bob Massie is a friend and mentor of mine with a Doctor of Business from Harvard Business School and is an ordained Episcopal Priest. From 1996 to 2003, he led Ceres, a non-profit based in Boston and a global leader in sustainable capital markets. At Ceres, Bob founded the Investor Network on Climate Risk and co-founded the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) which has helped shape the field of corporate sustainability and now emerging mandatory requirements for Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting. His 2016 article in Institutional Investor “The ESG Evolution,” is lit with his genius and practical hope.
A decade before Massie invented the GRI, the proto global ESG standard, John Elkington had been laying the groundwork for the new field of corporate sustainability with his founding in 1987 of his London based consultancy SustainAbility. But it remains a field inspired by the work of Paul Hawken’s groundbreaking 1993 “The Ecology of Commerce” and even more so the magisterial critique of unsustainable capitalism, “Natural Capital” which Hawken wrote with Amory and Hunter Lovins. All of this inspired Newton, Massachusetts’s late great Andy Savitz to publish his own implementation focused “The Triple Bottom-line; How The Best Run Companies Are Achieving Economic, Social and Environmental Success” in 2006 which Andy discussed at SR Inc’s first Summit in DC in 2010.
What all these field creating earlier leaders shared was a conviction that climate science indicated sustainability was no longer a conservative objective. Because they knew the best of relevant science indicated capital markets and companies required real change if they were to endure. Although I am confident they each joined me in expecting that more responsible public policy would come more quickly and the obvious, tragic, and scaling manifestations of climate breakdown would come less quickly than it has come.
Paradoxically, the early sustainability leaders who took most seriously the Earth Systems science indicating increasing risks of self-accelerating ecological and, therefore, commercial chaos, were the most willing to embrace the ostensibly benign term “sustainability.” Because they understood conservatives desired to sustain markets, companies, and life but that goal demands ever greater change with each passing year that the demands of sustainability (e.g. the 45% reduction in global GHG the IPCC Special Report on 1.5 C made clear was necessary in 2030, 70 months from now to make is unlikely we will face tipping points to a potential ecological collapse) are not met. And if the demands of sustainability are not met, the transition will only be greater. To an outcome no one wants. As I heard Paul Hawken note to a crowd of more than 20,000 in 2008: “If a history of this time is written, it will be a history of heroes collaborating, creating and overcoming great odds.”
The elegance of that sentence balances its drama. It was enough to send me out of the hall into dazzling sunlight to call my wife, to share with her I had to start a company. Now after COP28 the whole world officially agrees: our sustainability requires a transition to a global economy that has moved beyond fossil fuels. Since fossil fuels are the world’s wealthiest and most politically influential industry, that hardly means we’re home free. Instead, the beginning has ended and the heart of the transition to sustainability can be discussed at every kitchen and every minister’s table the world over. Potentially in time. Because clean energy is healthier, more affordable, more reliable, and more commercially winning before subsidies than fossil fuels, as noted in Lazard’s 16th annual LCOE Report. Now, we will see who has the courage, compassion, collaboration, creativity, and commitment needed.
Footnote 1: It was not until I was invited to attend the Sustainable Innovation Forum at COP26 in Glasgow, that I learned how outstandingly conservative the UNFCC COP process is due to its requirement for unanimity supporting COP conclusions. It does not reflect the aspirations of environmentalists or even climate scientists. Anyone who has sought unanimity regarding a family dinner can appreciate the challenge of getting all the nations of the world to agree on written conclusions. When one reflects on the difficulty of obtaining support for conclusions adverse to the fossil fuel industry from petro-states such as Iran, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, it is no less tragic but it is less surprising it has taken 28 years to “officially” acknowledge the organizing challenge that created the need for the UNFCC COP process itself.
Jim Boyle is the CEO & Founder of Sustainability Roundtable, Inc. For more than a dozen years, Jim has led full-time teams of diverse experts to assist nearly 100 Fortune 500 and growth companies in their move to more sustainable high-performance. Specifically, SR Inc has helped world-leading corporations, real estate owners, and federal agencies to set goals, drive progress, and report results in their move to greater Corporate Sustainability. Mr. Boyle led in the creation of SR Inc’s Net Zero Consortium for Buyers (NZCB), which advises and represents Fortune 500 and fast growth companies across the U.S. and internationally in the development of renewable energy strategies and the procurement of both on and off-site advanced energy solutions. Before founding SR Inc, Mr. Boyle co-led Trammell Crow Company Corporate Advisory Services in San Francisco and returned to his native Boston and Trammell Crow Company’s market leading team in Greater Boston where he received the Commercial Brokers Association’s Platinum Award for the highest level of commercial real estate transactions. Earlier, he advised companies on real estate and environmental matters as an attorney at a large law firm based in Boston. Jim is a graduate of Middlebury College, where he co-captained the football team, and Boston College Law School. Early in his career, he served as a federal law clerk, an aide to John F. Kerry in the U. S. Senate, and on Vice President Al Gore’s campaign for President. Jim lives in Concord, MA with his wife and kids a half mile across the street from Emerson’s house and museum on the route to Walden Pond.
