Post #51
November 3, 2021
Claire Bodanis
As COP26 gets under way, Claire reflects on the essential role corporate reporters have to play in helping tackle the climate emergency
A few years ago I was lucky enough to get a ticket for the launch of Not in God’s Name, a book by the now late Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks. What a thinker; what a writer; what a speaker. Witty, interesting, relevant, thoughtful – but above all profoundly humane and optimistic for the world, despite our species’ many failings.
As the clouds – or perhaps the sunbeams – gather over Glasgow for what could prove a defining two weeks for world history, I find myself wondering what Lord Sacks would say. How optimistic would he be, given the enormity of the climate emergency, and the frightening short-termism and self-interest that seem to dominate so many of those in power? I expect I’m not alone in experiencing a seesawing of spirits between great optimism – yes we can do it! – when I read uplifting stories of the wonderful technologies already available that could save us all, and utter despair when I read stories like the lack of two key votes in the US Senate about to scupper that nation’s ambitious plans to combat climate change. Two votes. Two.
But, in that focusing down of the global to the individual in such a negative way, I also found some cause for hope. If two people can have such an impact for the bad, surely we, as individuals, can each have an impact for the good? True, most of us don’t hold an immense bargaining chip like the casting vote on a critical climate decision for one of the world’s largest carbon emitters. But we do, as corporate reporters, have considerable power in ensuring that the decisions made about tackling climate change are based on accurate, reliable information.
The world’s future is being staked on percentages. As you’ll know, the 2021 climate report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tells us that to keep global warming at 1.5 degrees, we must cut net emissions by 50% by 2030 compared with 2010, and reach net zero by 2050. In pursuit of this, countries and companies are signing up to net zero targets, with percentage reduction targets along the way, and, in some cases, they are already making investment decisions based on how they believe they can get there. So far, many of these announcements are just like carbon emissions – so much hot air.
But that’s changing. Investors and other stakeholders are pushing for better non-financial information and it’s likely we’ll see new standards coming soon; while the Science-Based Targets initiative recently upped the ante with more stringent requirements for corporate emissions targets to qualify as being science-based. And I’m glad to hear it. Imagine if we arrive at 2030, ready to party because we’ve achieved the miracle of reducing global carbon emissions by 50%, only to find that the data wasn’t accurate and in fact emissions went up by, say, 25% instead. If we can’t measure this stuff properly, we’ll only be guessing – and with what I’ve seen passing for data in some quarters recently, such a scenario is all too possible.
Why? There are two challenges to accurate data – a practical one and a moral one. On the practical side, emissions can be difficult to measure, requiring sophisticated systems and meticulous attention to detail. On the moral side, in principle it’s more straightforward, but for some, it’s also more difficult: companies must tell the truth. The data must be correct, but the story told around the data must be accurate too – balancing challenges and successes to give a truthful picture overall.
Personally, I find that rather uplifting. We, as individuals working in reporting, do have a role to play. We can do something meaningful. Every effort we make to ensure that emissions are measured properly and reported accurately counts, because ultimately everything we do rolls up into the global data that will make or break the 1.5-degree target.
Lord Sacks took comfort from humankind’s ability to pull together in a crisis. In 2005, in the wake of a series of natural disasters prompted even then by the world overheating, he wrote in The Times: ‘The language of tears is universal. It needs no translator. That is precisely what makes us feel implicated in someone else’s tragedy… If natural catastrophe has one blessing, it is its ability to make us forget, for a moment, our personal comfort zones and enter into the plight of others.’
I hope those in Glasgow will take that language to heart in the decisions they make for all of us. And let us, as reporters, also take the universal language of numbers to heart so that we may contribute the accurate, meaningful reporting so critical to achieving the world’s climate targets.