THE SECOND MONSTER MESSAGE ON CLIMATE CHANGE: It boils down to frugal competition and personal habits
The cover of the New York Times on November 13, sums up what I mean by we need to do more with less, a mantra of mine — and that of Ben Franklin 300 years before — since I began writing.
As a reliable source the editors of the Times can not mention what the chart shows about its readers as “people of plenty.” Yet the “monster message,” a set of higher facts civilized people would rather ignore, can be inferred by the sane of heart from the article near the end of the 26th year of meetings on Climate Change, and its existential threats, just closing in Scotland. In our past, the death of God, or the avoidance of the choice of faiths, constituted “monster messages”, topics of popular avoidance. Today, it boils down to how you view science, Covid-19, masks, and climate change — they inflame the news, but the solutions that are simple and immediate are ignored as “outside the pale.”
This Saturday the Times reveals in one chart “Who Has the Most Historical Responsibility for Climate Change?” They note it is a small group of rich countries — just 12 percent of the global population today, that produced half of the greenhouse gases in the past 170 years.! That disproportionate impact requires changes in tax codes, luxury habits, and excessive air travel. A quarter of this world impact came from Americans. Period. No wonder there’s an entire national party of deniers and those experts at deferral, both of tax reform of the rich and of the sensible responses to climate change.
Consider this fact pattern:
United States: 24.6 percent of the last 170 years.
Germany, a great industrial engine, another 5.5 of the total in the last 170 years.
Then comes France at 2.3 and the great empire of the United Kingdom at 4.4 percent since the birth of the steam engine and the popular use of fossil fuels. After all the British phrases BTUs, British thermal energy units, as the basis to measure the relations of energy output to industrial need and result.
Now consider the other half of this monster message: More than 150 countries are responsible for the second half of the contributions over the last 170 years of advanced industrialism. I repeat: as others find a way to wealth, they have only contributed half of the impact in 150 nations.
With China leading the pack at 13.9 percent, then India at 3.2.
Another hidden number of consequences made us people of plenty, international transport, which contributed about 2.5 percent of the climate impact, bigger than that of South Africa and Ukraine combined. All others like Russia at 6.8 percent, or my Poland at 1.6 are minor contributors.
Think again about the 24.6 percent number from the States. Why is that not mentioned by Biden, Trump or anyone like Kerry?
Knowing the avoidance of experts and politicians and corporate CEOs, I wrote the opinion below on “the monster message” of avoiding to talk about rate of consumption. I then submitted it to editors that ran my pieces of softer points in prior op ed pages. The rejections were predictable. Several mainstream newspapers — like the LA Times, the Washington Post, and the Baltimore Sun — they all passed on this monster message on consumption. It is the same thing that happened, despite many national newspaper placements on “softer topics’’ being printed, when I wrote about “oil wars.” The mainstream editors know, instinctively, that it is unpopular to print materials on the excessive consumptive habits of Americans. They would say, “well written, but”.
Yet that is the monster message one. Here is a piece I wrote, a bit embellished, and made more personal from the edit of Joel Makower, the founder and impressive editor of GreenBiz.com. Joel had it appear at the beginning of the second week of the COP26 discussions, which I felt just and well timed. Here ran it as follows:
The missing monster message at COP26
High on the COP26 agenda is the future of our planet and the billions of people who live here. But there is a central critical issue that remains ignored and forgotten.
First some praise. With President Biden hitting the G20 and COP26 with a draft $555 billion blockbuster climate response set of actions, America has gone far from when I sat on Al Gore’s White House councils trying to get lift on climate change. This is larger by six times any other American climate program to date, and its reliance on technical solutions will yield jobs. Now to the problem.
The new legislative framework, to be voted on by the Congress before the end of COP26, brings in renewables, EV charging stations and hydrogen hubs. America brings all this momentum into Scotland this month and is hitting the convention site Hope Street strong.
But this still does not address the biggest issue of climate change: personal and family consumption habits. Whatever the many nations decide, and whatever the world’s companies do next, it is the rate of consumption where we must do more with less.
Let’s flip this claim for our people of plenty on its head, in memory of the greats like E.F. (Fritz) Schumacher, author of the 1973 book Small is Beautiful. Fritz would say: “The folly of seeking more science, more medicines and more purely technical fixes is that you never get there.” I remember him saying exactly that as I hosted his days at Cornell University on the Provost’s dime in 1974 — and Schumacher, like Ben Franklin before him, is still right. To ignore this is to become economic fools. You cannot be a competitor of consequence without these new arts of responding to carbon and capital constraints thru competitive frugality. By this I mean a form of globalized high touch capitalism where firms compete efficiently on price, quality and social needs like diversity and inclusion, social innovation, and climate change responses.
I have called this the need for social response capitalism in my books; and my new book, “A New Way to Wealth”, reminds us of these Franklin and Schumacher based basics.
Extend this insight to what’s now a popular concern, climate change, where over 13 percent of Americans and many more Europeans and Asians claim “the climate and carbon excess” the top existential issue of our times. Despite the steps forward in legislative and corporate actions, you never realize you’ve been lucky until you know how to declare, “Enough!” Or “No thanks.” Or simply, “Enough is enough.”
The mantra of “More is More” is a damaging path of excess. It consumes the lives lamented when William Wordsworth wrote, “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.”
The good news: many in youth, in firms, and in maturity, are beginning to note this item is not likely to be mentioned during COP26. This is change, global change, from the ground up! What ails the modern corporation is its robust ability to do too much. While the news will be full of partnerships, gestures at change and profound public relations, this central issue is the one of discomfort and avoidance.
This emphasis on consumption will not sit well, at first, by those in the leisure class, select technical elites fostering idle hopes, such as Bill Gates and company, the undertaxed and the many who would rather imagine a different more self-justifying story. As the world’s population grows from seven to 10 billion people this century, however, intelligent tradeoffs on food and energy will become second nature in a populist way.
Why not start now? In your own firm? In your own family? With your own friends? This makes ESG real, not only an investment strategy. Consider the bleakness of not responding to the carbon and capital constraints in this personal way?
If we don’t reduce the habits of our people in plenty, we share more harm in our combined near future. Avoidance of this climate and capital challenge is not sensible. You can watch the new generations excel in this climate anxiety. Denial is proving no longer tolerable. The scientific community now meeting, and the nations watching, need collectively to be more artful, more competitive, more frugal on these central issues of simple consumption rates per family and region in our century.
Doing more with less allows greater inclusiveness and civic diplomacy than a politics of hate. It would be unfortunate if the commentators do not challenge the experts on consumption rates.
We are facing many opponents who should not be thought of as simply stupid in a superficial way. More science, more medicines, more money, more investments can only go so far into our near future.
Next time, on “monster message three” regarding Climate Change and Rates of Consumption I will weave us back to the points made 300 years ago by Ben Franklin, who ends his his “path of virtue” passage in his autobiography with this masterful comment:
“Nothing is so likely to make a man’s fortune as virtue…I have already thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he forms a good plan, and then makes the execution of that plan his sole study and business.”
My message is simple. I ask you, let’s compare the commonsense of pragmatic existential alertness of Ben Franklin, to the deliberations from COP26 next time.
How will you dedicate yourself to this mission?
I have dedicated my life's work as the founder of a management consulting firm specializing in energy transformation, facilitating world expert councils, and social response capitalism. Since 1981, I have tried to capture the lessons of my www.ahcgroup.com group experiences in my books such as World Inc.
My latest book, “A New Way to Wealth: The Power of Doing More with Less,” will be available this December. You can download a free advance copy of that book, here.
