Too Far Ahead, Until It's Not.
When We Are with Alex Steffen
The Urgency of Climate Action in Business Strategy
This chapter explores the changing viewpoint in the business world regarding climate change, highlighting its transition from a secondary issue to a critical priority. It emphasizes the urgent need for businesses to adapt their strategies in response to the immediate risks posed by climate change, including rising costs and disruptions in sustainability initiatives.
Notes for this podcast:
“Being too far ahead is the same thing as being wrong.” —James Allworth
If you talk about the future, you risk having a market that's still unprepared to see the value in what you're offering to them. But sometimes what was too far ahead becomes exactly what people now need to know.
We're seeing a sea change in climate foresight. An abrupt collision with reality, that is snapping forward a whole set of conversations about strategy, the future and the perils and opportunities of our moment.
One fundamental change that's happening right now is the understanding that the planetary crisis IS our world. This is not an issue, but an era, and planning for life in that era is the only kind of planning that will work.
The suddenly widespread discussion of 3ºC futures is a perfect example. While it is possible we may end up at 3ºC sometime towards the end of the century, I don’t think it’s a very likely outcome. But 3ºC is an attention-arresting number: the magnitude of change it would bring is so large, thinking about it becomes a wind tunnel for testing all sorts of institutional assumptions.
A second change is a spreading realization that accelerating future risks aren't future dangers, they're present losses.
A recent Allianz SE commentary says what I've been saying for 20 years, but it offers an important benchmark about how fast the debate is moving now.
What’s unsuited for the climate we now live in, is worth less than we think. The scale of the brittleness bubble around us, and how, on our current trajectory, without an absolutely massive reallocation of resourses towards climate response, we will see much of the world suffer devaluation and capacity erosion.
A third shift is an abrupt recognition of the scale of the gap between what is needed and what we have.
Our widespread failure to adapt to new conditions.
Trump's chaos attack on the nation’s climate science and risk mitigation capacities.
The growing importance of places being either organically safer than elsewhere (by virtue of geography or luck, or readily ruggedizable, or both).
Why on a three degree trajectory, relative safety becomes the most valuable commodity in the world. (27:48). And right now, it is still seriously underpriced (that won't last forever).
A forth emerging change is the understanding that our encounter with discontinuity is only the beginning.
Why it's incorrect to think that the end of continuity equals collapse.
The kinds of big moves demanded now themselves change the world, undermining the value of the brittle and out-of-date and increasing demand for rugged and responsive systems, communities and institutions.
Effective strategies today make that discontinuous world advantageous.
Huge opportunities that exist within discontinuity. The competition to realize those opportunities is itself a major change dynamic. There’s growing awareness that the prizes to be won in large-scale climate response are of a far greater magnitude than discussions of “green business” or the clean economy would lead any of us to believe.
We're in a new moment, and being “too far ahead” is turning out to be ready for the present.
Thanks for tuning in,
Alex
This is part of my new podcast, When We Are, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast and other podcast platforms around the world. If you found this discussion helpful, please subscribe, rate and review the show so that we can reach more listeners. Thank you!
- Find me on Bluesky.
- Check out my books: Worldchanging and Carbon Zero
- View my TED Global talks on sustainability and cities.
- I’ve spoken with the media hundreds of times. Recently, I was featured in a NY Times Magazine piece, "This Isn't the California I Married." My writing was the jumping-off point for an episode of This American Life titled Unprepared for What Has Already Happened, as well as the podcasts Without; The Big Story; Everybody In the Pool and 99% Invisible’s Not Built for This series.
This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexsteffen.substack.com/subscribe
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