The hidden power of companies to change the game on climate

[Music]

i’m going to talk about

what i’m calling the hidden power of

companies to change the game on climate

you heard from hal and john and i would

agree with what they said about what

what’s needed it’s a whole bunch of

things i’ll get more into that

um i do have what may be a somewhat

unusual perspective so i’m going to

start with a little background on me

priya just gave some of it so i’ll rush

through this so as she said i started my

career as a professor in computer

science at mit

i moved out west in the mid 90s i worked

at digital

in their research labs on computer

hardware and software

then i moved to akamai where i was chief

architect and then cto where i began to

learn a lot about the business side not

just the

technology side of things and then about

15 years ago i

started to freak out about climate and

this was me

all too often at 3 a.m in the morning

when i couldn’t sleep

i wasn’t worrying about or stewing about

you know some hard technical problem or

people problem at work or occasionally

it was kids who couldn’t sleep or

whatever but

this was me thinking about climate

change and what it meant for my future

and my kids future and everyone’s future

and i was putting solar in my house i

bought a prius which was the pinnacle of

clean cars back then

but it was clear that much more needed

to happen than i could do as an

individual in my own life

and that i i decided to change careers

to see if i could find a way to

contribute not just in my personal life

but professionally

on climate i was lucky enough in 2006 to

land a job at google

with the charter to figure out what they

were going to do on climate which was an

incredible

opportunity they took a big risk on me

and and vice versa and i led climate and

clean energy work at google for about

six years

and then i moved to facebook in a

similar role for about six years

and i had the good fortune at both

companies to dip my toes into

a number of the things that are needed

to solve the climate crisis

including research and development

venture investing to fund early stage

queen tech startups project finance

where over time

google starting when i was there but

much more since

they provided billions of dollars in

debt and equity to finance clean energy

projects

using our purchasing power to move

markets

and then collaborating through industry

groups like the renewable energy buyers

alliance re 100 and others to use our

collective purchasing power to move

markets at a much much

bigger scale and i’m really proud of

what i achieved at google on facebook

and

what the sustainability teams at those

companies and many others i’ve worked

with continued to do

and yet i’m still freaking out about

climate

three years ago i was coming to a

difficult realization

that for all the great things that

companies like google and facebook and

many others

not just tech companies are doing we’re

not moving fast enough on climate i mean

i knew that but

you know three years ago as i think

about what you know what do i do next

what does facebook do next what should i

do next

it was really beginning to hit home and

this year it’s even more real this is a

picture my wife took

about a month ago in san francisco

that’s where i live this is what the

skies look like in the middle of the day

in early september

because of smoke from the wildfires we

found out here

and we’re in the midst of an

unprecedented wildfire season in the

western u.s

in unprecedented hurricane season along

the east coast and the gulf coast we’ve

seen many other natural disasters around

the world

in part fueled by climate change and

it’s only going to get worse as as

temperatures

rise so like many of you my roots are in

technology

i started working in technology i

switched at google and facebook to

facilitating and

and scaling technological solutions to

climate change

and we do need new technology to solve

this problem and john doerr made this

point we don’t have all the solutions we

need

he said he thinks we’ve got the

technologies today to get about 70 or 80

percent of the way there

i don’t know what the exact number is

there i think 70 to 80

is probably a good guess we are not

deploying that technology fast enough

and we do need new technology to solve

some hard to decarbonize sectors and to

make the ones we do know how to

decarbonize make that easier cheaper

faster and so on

and we do need companies to step up and

read voluntarily as google

facebook hundreds of others now have

been doing

but what i began to understand several

years ago as i step back and thought

about

where i wanted to go and where facebook

needed to go and where the world needed

to go i really understood that

technological innovation and companies

leading voluntarily in kind of natural

market forces

it wasn’t enough we were winning we are

winning but we’re winning too slowly and

with climate

winning slowly is the same as losing the

ipcc 1.5 degree report from two years

ago

lays out the likely consequences of

warming of two

three or four degrees c and it’s

probably

pretty horrific we know there are

tipping points though we don’t know

precisely where they are which makes the

risk of

kind of not doing not working faster

the uncertainty is high and we know we

have a carbon budget which we are

rapidly blowing

through as we kind of hope for some

solution in the future that will just

suck all that carbon back

out we need to move quickly on climate

really quickly as hal

and john said we need to cut emissions

in half by 2030 and to net zero by 2050

and i really like to focus on that 20 30

number

because 2050 is vital but if we don’t

cut emissions in half or very close to

it by 2030

we’re in deep deep trouble and that’s

what we should be focused on which means

we need to be moving

now so we can create a much cleaner

brighter future but it’s going to take

some work

and as john said and i’ve heard how

harvey say this many times

it’s all about speed and scale it’s

about moving fast and doing it at

enormous scale companies can play a key

role

not just tech companies to be clear

that’s the sector i’ve been in

for my whole life but companies in all

sectors and especially big companies

but they need to do more than they have

been doing all of us

need to help them do it so this coming

to this realization is why in 2018

i decided to leave facebook and earlier

this year i founded a non-profit

climate voice to encourage companies to

step up to the leadership

we need from them in the coming decade

not just what they’ve been doing for the

last decade not just what they

they’re willing to do and find

relatively easy

but what we need them to do

and i said it’s not just technology it’s

not just companies voluntarily cleaning

up their own operations

we need much more than that to solve the

climate crisis

so i like to think of it as kind of like

improv it’s yes and

so we need basic science we need tech

innovation

we need finance lots of money is going

to have to move

what we wanted to do and we’ve seen that

this year with with the various recovery

or stimulus or

or whatever you want to call the the

government

uh uh expenditures um

vast amounts of money but we need to

spend it in a way

that actually drives the solutions we

need not just builds more of the stuff

we’ve been doing

these are all needed to get the massive

deployment

that we need to get clean energy

everywhere to get queen transportation

clean buildings to clean up industry and

so on

and we need behavior change and

voluntary action by individuals

and probably culture change too to make

some of this happen

when most people think about what

companies can do to help with climate

change

it’s these kinds of things innovating

cleaning up their own operations using

their market powers major purchasers to

drive scale and drive down costs

investing in r d

in startups and huge clean energy

projects that’s most of what i and my

colleagues did at google and facebook

and what people have been doing at

hundreds of other companies that are

beginning to really

act on climate but that alone isn’t

enough

to move at the speed and scale required

as hal

said we need public policy smart policy

can underpin

and turbocharge all these other things

it can reduce risk

it can drive much faster investment

innovation and deployment

and one really important point that i

think a lot of people certainly in the

the research world don’t understand i

didn’t until

you know maybe a few years ago

deployment drives

cost reduction because deployment

enables

innovation not of the kind that happens

in the lab necessarily

but the kind that happens as you learn

by doing and as you have the money to

invest in

in improving processes and that is a big

part of what has driven the massive

reduction in costs

in wind and solar in the last number of

years even in batteries which aren’t

cheap enough but they have come down an

enormous amount

but sadly emissions are still rising

maybe not this year with the pandemic

but the overall trend is nowhere close

to where it needs to be and even in the

places where emissions are beginning to

drop

they’re not dropping fast enough as john

doerr said

emissions need to drop on the order of

eight to ten percent a year for the next

decade and then continue that

after that and the reason emissions

aren’t dropping

as fast as they need to is largely

because we don’t have strong enough

policies in place

innovation is happening maybe not at the

pace we need to

deployment is happening definitely not

at the pace we need it to

behavior changes happening nowhere near

fast enough and honestly i think

you know people i don’t believe people

will just change their behavior and

that’ll solve this problem we need

everything and this is absolutely true

in the us

we don’t have strong enough policies in

place it’s also true

in almost all other countries we are

seeing

encouraging signs in some countries in

the eu with the european green deal i

think that’s incredibly encouraging

and in some states in the u.s but we

need to move much faster

everywhere so why don’t we have the

public policies we need and this is

really where i want to focus because i

think how harvey is absolutely right

and i think cal and john are both right

but we need public policy the question

is

why don’t we and here

it’s a little uncomfortable maybe to

talk about this it begins to sound

political

but public policy is about power and

influence

and the dominant business voice on

climate and energy policy today

comes from the fossil fuel industry and

by and large certainly for the last 40

years

they have been fans of going slowly or

not at all

on climate action they’ve promulgated

lots of misinformation to try to

confuse things and make it harder to

pass real climate

policies they want to preserve the

status quo this is beginning to change

with a few of the fossil fuel companies

but most of them are still working

pretty hard to preserve the status quo

and they are really powerful and have

been incredibly successful at stop

meeting progress on climate

now for decades to make this a little

clearer

studies have shown that the fossil fuel

industry in the last

well from 2000 2016 outspent pro climate

advocates

by a factor of 10 in the u.s and we’re

not talking small amounts of money

according to the studies the fossil fuel

industry in that time period spent about

2 billion that’s billion with a b

lobbying on climate almost all of that

to

stop or weaken or delay

useful climate policies and there are

many forms of influence in politics it’s

not just about money spent on lobbying

there are campaign contributions there

are

other ways occurring favor with

politicians and making it clear to them

that they should vote the way you want

because otherwise you can

maybe get them booted out of their seat

but we’ve got the fossil fuel interests

outspending pro-climate advocates 10 to

1 and doing

lots of other things to influence the

conversation

while most other companies are sitting

on the side

so imagine instead a time in the near

future where the influence of the fossil

fuel companies is balanced by other

powerful forces where this is a fair

fight

where that lonely pawn is not just a few

environmental groups actually lots of

environmental groups

and millions of young people around the

world and

and not so young people fighting for

this and people voting but it’s not

enough to counter what the fossil fuel

companies are doing

who could actually get off the sidelines

and make this a fair fight

most companies aren’t invested in the

fossil fuel economy

and many of them are innovating on

climate solutions many of them are

cleaning up their own operations and

their supply chains they’ve been leading

on climate

and that includes tech healthcare

hospitality

biotech consumer goods many other

sectors

they all have influence but most choose

not to use it

or to use it very rarely and we need

them to get off the sidelines in this

chess game

and help counter the powerful forces

that are dragging us

in the wrong direction that means being

strong consistent advocates for policies

that ensure we decarbonize

rapidly across the entire economy

more broadly it means being all in on

climate in

everything they do across their

operations their supply chain

their products and especially their

advocacy for public policy

they should be asking for everything

they do not just what’s the impact on

the financial bottom line but what’s the

impact on our collective climate bottom

line

they’re not asking that question today

the fossil fuel companies to be clear

all in

have been all in now for decades mostly

on the wrong side of the climate issue

though as i said we have seen some

positive signs from some of them

including bp and shell

you might be wondering why all these

other companies that have been good on

climate they’ve been leading why they

aren’t speaking up in favor of bold

action on climate

and the short answer is they’re afraid

they see risk and honestly the risk is

real

climate has been so politicized i think

very intentionally

especially in the us there is real risk

of political backlash

if a company takes a strong stand on

climate policies

and over the last few decades as a

result many companies have decided they

should be apolitical

unless a policy issue directly affects

them actually not just on climate but on

many issues companies have decided

politics is not for them unless they

really need to be in there

so they stay silent and they like to

think of that as neutrality

they say they should stay out of climate

politics because

they’re not an energy company or a

transportation company or construction

company so most climate policies don’t

affect them directly in the near term

and they say that they want them to

focus on where they can do the most good

to use their superpower in their

operations their products their supply

chain

we absolutely want them to use their

superpowers but it’s not enough and i

think that’s been clear from the last 10

or 20 years as companies have been using

their superpowers

emissions is still being owned up given

the extreme imbalance of power in the

climate policy debates

their silence is really complicity

with the powerful forces working

desperately to maintain the status quo

companies especially big companies have

a lot of influence

we need them to use it for the

collective good not just for their own

benefit

this is their hidden power they have

influence we need them to take it out of

hiding they all have it

they choose mostly not to use it we need

them to step up and use it

for our collective future so you might

be thinking gee could this work you know

how do we make companies do this we have

seen situations before in

in the us and i think in other places

but i’m most familiar with what’s

happened in the us where companies were

motivated to speak up on public policy

even when it didn’t directly affect

their own operations and their bottom

line

and one recent and really inspiring

example comes from the lgbt rights

movement

a decade ago there were hundreds of

companies with progressive

internal policies promoting equality for

lgbt employees

but the companies were mostly silent in

debates on public policy around that

in the u.s that changed

and changed over two or three years and

it changed in large part because

employees and students sent a very clear

signal to companies

that it was time for them to speak up so

what did employees do

they organized internally they spoke out

in all hands meetings with executives on

internal messaging boards

in direct conversations with executives

they coordinated with outside groups

the outside groups threatened to make a

public stink about the companies being

complicit through their silence if they

didn’t start to speak up

and the result was amazing companies

spoke up on marriage equality at the

state and then federal level

they spoke up on the religious freedom

restoration act in indiana

and got it repealed they spoke up on the

bathroom bill

in north carolina and got it repealed

and many other state policies other

religious freedom acts other bathroom

bills in other states

and they helped change the outcomes and

they spoke up

because for them lgbt rights went from

being an issue that didn’t matter to the

bottom line

to one that did because continuing to be

silent could affect recruiting

and retention the result was companies

went from

being bystanders we don’t discriminate

to what an anti-bullying literature

people call

upstanders we advocate for equality and

against discrimination everywhere

we actively intervene to change the

system not just being good people

ourselves and we’ve seen a similar

dynamic this year as companies have

moved from being

not racist to trying to figure out how

to be actively anti-racist

in the face of massive protests against

racial equality and oppression

so this is why we started climate voice

earlier this year

companies care about their key

stakeholders their customers their

investors

and especially their employees we’re

mobilizing the workforce to commit

convince companies that now is the time

to speak up

because workers have influence and when

we speak up

especially together we have power

we need companies to make the same

transition on climate from we don’t

pollute

to being actively anti-pollution that

they’ve made on other issues

and to be strong consistent advocates

for public policy on climate

everywhere they operate together we can

make that happen

it’s beginning to work earlier this

spring

in virginia the virginia clean economy

act was signed into law

clean energy companies support it no

surprise there but so did many companies

not in the energy sector some of them

listed here where this law had little or

no impact on their own operations and

bottom line

it’s part of a state-level trend to move

aggressively toward meeting carbon

reduction goals

in the u.s this is the first southern

state with a law like this

and it was our first policy victory it’s

one example of quite a few where we’re

starting to see more companies getting

off the sidelines

and speaking up in favor of climate

policy and it’s making a real difference

i believe this can be a game changer

this can be

one thing that can really start to tip

the balance in getting the kinds of

policies we need

to drive things at the speed and scale

that are needed

so one really important point you might

be thinking well i live in virginia or i

live in

paris or i live wherever why do i care

about policy

halfway around the world it’s not just

people in virginia who should be raising

their voice about a bill in virginia or

in paris about policies in france or the

eu

we need climate action and climate

policy everywhere

it’s not going to be the same everywhere

but we need it everywhere

climate voice can give your voice power

everywhere

because let’s say i worked at google if

you’re a google employee

anywhere in the world you can motivate

google to speak up in north carolina

or anywhere else they operate similarly

if you’re a student

anywhere and google’s interested in

hiring you you can motivate google to

speak up

anywhere they operate so regardless of

where you are

if a company you work for or interested

in working for is too quiet on policies

anywhere it operates you can help change

that

the key is to do this in large enough

numbers they don’t have to be huge but

they have to be large enough for the

companies to notice and care

so we are working to educate the

workforce current and future employees

about the need for companies to get off

the sidelines about the role they

including you can play in making that

happen

and we’re working with groups like

influence map in the uk

which is scoring companies on how they

use their influence on climate

to ensure that employees and students

have information about which companies

are speaking up and which are silent

and then we’re giving them tools to

raise their voices together

so just to wrap up what can you do first

thing is

talk about it you have more influence

than you might think

and there are almost certainly people

around you who feel the same way

together you can change things so talk

to colleagues talk to your box

boss talk to other executives where you

work if you’re a student

talk to other students and make clear at

job fairs and in job interviews

that this is an issue that matters to

you don’t be

silent just like we don’t want the

companies to be silent

we all need to get off the sidelines or

the fossil fuel companies will continue

to dominate the conversation

don’t accept that the situation is

broken and we can’t change it

the business’s usual path is pretty

bleak we can choose a much brighter

future

but we have to choose it and enlist

others to join in making it happen

second ask questions of your employer

or potential employers about what

they’re doing on climate in their

operations their supply chain their

products

and especially in using their influence

on public policy

and here it can get uncomfortable you

need to be persistent

don’t be surprised especially if you’re

talking to a company that’s been leading

on climate if the initial

response feels a bit like a brush off

hey we’re leading we’re doing all this

stuff we’ve spoken out on these three

things

we’re great i would say they’re good we

need them to be great

be polite keep asking push on what they

need to do not just what they’ve done

which may be really good but it’s not

enough

encourage your fellow employees and

students to do the same

third organize with fellow employees to

encourage your company lobbying for

climate

earlier this year we saw over 150

companies sign a joint letter to the

european commission

encouraging them to invest recovery

money in building the foundation for a

low-carbon economy

not just to rebuild what we had before

and we’re seeing signs of hope in the us

with over 30 companies sending a similar

letter to the us congress this summer

and as i said some companies have been

speaking up on state level policies that

can really move the needle

like the one in virginia now is really

the time if we’re going to cut emissions

in half in the next decade

we’ve got to get policies in place in

the next one to two years to

really move the needle especially in the

u.s where i think 2021 will be an

absolutely critical year for policy

change on climate

regardless of the outcome of the

election in november we need to bend the

curve on climate

quickly and we need much more aggressive

public policy to make that happen

fourth and this is a little more effort

take the time to get educated about the

climate policies being debated both

where you live

and in other places where your company

or a company you’re interested in

operates and push your company to

support the decent policies

we don’t want companies so we use

electricity we’ll be involved in

electricity policy but we’re not a

transportation

company so we don’t we’re not going to

get engaged there they need to get

involved in climate

policy all the different sectors and all

the different kinds of policies

and it’s important that the companies

and you

should you shouldn’t be overly

ideological about what policies to

support

climate is complex politics is messy

we need decent policies not perfect ones

a decent policy that drives progress and

that can be improved later

is far far better than no policy at all

which is

not exactly where we are but we’re

moving far too slowly we have way too

little

you can learn more about the kinds of

policies companies should be supporting

in our policy guide for business leaders

if you go to climatevoice.org and click

on resources

scroll down you’ll find it it’s a short

read about eight pages

including the table contents so great

for the beach or wherever else you like

to read you can

get to it i think pretty quickly and

then finally

this is the big call to action add your

voice to thousands of others

calling on companies helping to raise

the bar for companies

to get them to unlock their hidden power

to change the game on climate