Connect the Dots

Years ago I was very involved in the most prominent green building certification program, known as LEED. LEED certified buildings are based on a whole range of criteria, from the chemicals in paint, to the location of bike racks. Discussing it one day, a colleague asked: “Should LEED really just be based on one criterion? How much energy do you use?” He was fundamentally right: energy, and location, are all that really matter in new buildings. Or at the very least, those issues are orders of magnitude more important. In short: let’s focus on the thing that matters. 

That same situation holds for rankings of business sustainability. To be blunt, who cares if you’re putting heat pumps in your factory if you annually dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose policy engagement reflects fossil fuel interest advocacy positions, aligning with the American Petroleum Institute (graded E- by InfluenceMap), and the American Gas Association (which receives an F grade). I mean, seriously? It’s like teaching conflict resolution at your kid’s school while paying the recess bully to beat up your son.

This is why ClimateVoice’s Climate Policy Obstruction Scorecard is so important. It gets to the heart of the issue, which is about duplicity, but also about where power lives and how it is used, and therefore how change ultimately happens.

Now even though I’m arguably jaded, I’m not a cynic or a corporate hater. As an example, I’m a big fan of Starbucks. I’m a pig for dark-roast, and Starbucks consistently delivers that at high quality. I see the place as a refuge on my travels. And I like and respect founder Howard Schultz, who I met once when I gave a talk at their HQ in Seattle. I also would point out that I’m from the business world myself, so I understand the good business can bring to communities and society. But. And this is a big but. I am also, like Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye, viscerally offended by phonies and disingenuity. And the essential problem pointed out by the scorecard is that each of the featured businesses offer bold, expansive statements on their concern about climate change. Here’s Starbucks’: “Our goal is to reduce our water and carbon footprint by half by 2030. Across our company, we are testing and scaling innovative solutions to support partners, farmers and communities in the face of global climate change.” But all of these companies, Starbucks included, then simultaneously fund trade groups whose primary mission is to oppose regulation, in particular climate regulation. So a question: if you say you care about climate, Starbucks, then why are you paying to ensure you can never meet your own goals or aspirations? The reason this sticks in my craw: not only is it a path to uncontrolled warming and resulting human suffering, but such hypocrisy goes against all the basic tenets of ethics, morality, and religion. It is, in short, wrong, and the statements from these companies are, for want of a better word, lies. 

And yet – and this is the value of the report – ALL of these companies skate free from criticism. They get to say one thing, and do another. They get to claim to care about climate, but actively obstruct progress with their dollars and their names. 

Your job is to make that impossible for business to continue to do in the future, and the Scorecard provides the facts.