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Solutions Series: Andrew Winston · Simmer Down

• 0:11
  Kathleen Biggins: Hello, I am Kathleen Higgins, the founder of C Change Conversations, an organization that was founded to generate nonpartisan conversation and understanding around the issue of climate change.
• 0:25
  Kathleen Biggins: Today's topic is the unique and critical role that businesses have to play in addressing this issue.
• 0:31
  Kathleen Biggins: With me today is our guest, Andrew Winston.
• 0:34
  Kathleen Biggins: Andrew, welcome.
• 0:35
  Andrew Winston: Thank you.
• 0:35
  Andrew Winston: Thanks for having me.
• 0:37
  Kathleen Biggins: Andrew is a globally recognized author and consultant who works with companies around the world to prepare for, navigate through, and potentially even profit from some of the greatest challenges to humanity.
• 0:51
  Andrew Winston: That's right.
• 0:51
  Andrew Winston: That sounds good, doesn't it?
• 0:52
  Andrew Winston: Sounds big.
• 0:54
  Kathleen Biggins: So Andrew, tell us a little bit about yourself.
• 0:55
  Kathleen Biggins: How did you get started in helping others face these challenges?
• 0:59
  Andrew Winston: Well, um I went to Princeton, I should probably mention.
• 1:02
  Andrew Winston: That was uh you know where my career started, came out of here in '91.
• 1:06
  Andrew Winston: Uh I worked in business first.
• 1:07
  Andrew Winston: I was um in the business world for over a decade.
• 1:10
  Andrew Winston: I worked for Boston Consulting Group and then was in big media companies doing strategy and marketing and biz dev.
• 1:15
  Andrew Winston: And I wasn't in sustainability.
• 1:17
  Andrew Winston: I didn't really know much about it.
• 1:19
  Andrew Winston: And um I had kind of a value shift where I wanted to, you know, marry my business background with just concern about where the world was going and use of resources, and kind of always had this practical view of um what people call sustainability, um, which is you know, how are we using the world, how are we using resources, are we uh building a thriving future?
• 1:37
  Andrew Winston: And so, you know, I got into this by going back to school and and getting a degree in environmental management and started writing books about companies and how they approach big environmental and social issues, and climate change is really you know the core biggest issue.
• 1:51
  Andrew Winston: And so I've been, you know, for the last 15 years working with large companies, doing a lot of speaking, writing.
• 1:57
  Andrew Winston: I write regularly for Harvard Business Review and put out books and just trying to uh give executives and companies the tools and frameworks and ideas for how to think about their businesses differently and create value in a different way, where sustainability is kind of at the core.
• 2:12
  Andrew Winston: And things like climate change are threats, but also opportunities to uh build your business in a different way.
• 2:19
  Kathleen Biggins: So, how do businesses see climate change?
• 2:22
  Kathleen Biggins: Is there a difference across sector?
• 2:23
  Kathleen Biggins: Do big companies see it differently than little companies?
• 2:26
  Andrew Winston: Well, it's actually, I think, shifted pretty dramatically in the last five or so years.
• 2:30
  Andrew Winston: I think as it has in any survey of, you know, around climate change in the general populace, um, there was a lot of skepticism about talking about climate change in business when I first got into this.
• 2:41
  Andrew Winston: Uh, but I would say in the last few years, the the level of denial or or saying, hey, this isn't an issue for us has dropped to near zero in the world's largest companies.
• 2:50
  Andrew Winston: I mean, every pretty much every large company in the world now has uh sustainability report, has concrete goals that they've put forward, uh, and I work with companies a lot on their goal setting, and they have goals for carbon and for energy.
• 3:03
  Andrew Winston: So there's no denial.
• 3:04
  Andrew Winston: I mean, uh, as as you know, we've talked about, you know, Exxon Shell, all the big oil companies have um a statement that they believe in climate change and think we should do something.
• 3:13
  Andrew Winston: Um but of course it you know it varies by sector, right?
• 3:16
  Andrew Winston: The clean economy or people, you know, companies that are making money by providing solutions, which is a lot of things.
• 3:22
  Andrew Winston: It's not just a Tesla, but it could be uh a company like Ingersoll Rand that makes heating and cooling systems and they make them more efficient.
• 3:29
  Andrew Winston: They make them with refrigerants that are lower greenhouse gas.
• 3:31
  Andrew Winston: That's all climate solutions, you know, companies doing building systems, transportation systems.
• 3:36
  Andrew Winston: So there's a huge range of companies that fall into uh the climate solution realm.
• 3:42
  Andrew Winston: But for others, obviously it's a big threat.
• 3:44
  Andrew Winston: You know, oil and gas, heavily energy-intensive businesses, you know, the move away from carbon that really the world has to pursue for our own safety, um, and you know, providing for a future for eight, nine, ten billion people means that some sectors are gonna have to shrink.
• 3:59
  Andrew Winston: And so the kind of attitudes about it really do vary.
• 4:02
  Andrew Winston: But most companies now see that it's affecting their business directly and that there's tremendous value in slashing their emissions, buying renewable energy, talking to their customers about it, showing their employees that they are dealing with it.
• 4:14
  Andrew Winston: All of that is really good for their business.
• 4:17
  Kathleen Biggins: So you mentioned employees and customers.
• 4:19
  Kathleen Biggins: What role do people have in helping this transition go forward?
• 4:24
  Andrew Winston: Well, look, I mean when you talk to you know top executives or a CEO, they care fundamentally about a few stakeholders.
• 4:31
  Andrew Winston: Investors, clearly, that's who they're meeting with all the time.
• 4:34
  Andrew Winston: But employees and customers, those are the two that really um matter, right?
• 4:38
  Andrew Winston: They and and there's been this swing, a very clear swing, in employees demanding more and more of their companies.
• 4:44
  Andrew Winston: And it's partly generational.
• 4:45
  Andrew Winston: The millennials are now about half the workforce because they're not kids anymore.
• 4:49
  Andrew Winston: The older millennials are approaching 40.
• 4:51
  Andrew Winston: Um, and the Gen Z generation is coming into the workforce as well.
• 4:56
  Andrew Winston: And there's plenty of evidence and surveys showing that these generations have a different view of business and think a large majority think that you know the financial bottom line is not the only thing they should be thinking about, that their the role in society, their values, you know, serving uh the environment, serving humanity are part of what makes a company successful.
• 5:14
  Andrew Winston: So, you know, executives are hearing that.
• 5:16
  Andrew Winston: So employees have a, I think, a very big role.
• 5:18
  Andrew Winston: And when I hear even skeptical kind of companies, they do believe their employees care, and that really drives them.
• 5:24
  Andrew Winston: And then of course, you know, consumers and and customers, you know, business-to-business customers, they matter.
• 5:28
  Andrew Winston: Where are they putting their dollars?
• 5:30
  Andrew Winston: What are the choices they're making?
• 5:31
  Andrew Winston: And you see markets shifting.
• 5:33
  Andrew Winston: You know, there's a shift, particularly in the food arena, to much more sustainable products that's driven by consumer demand.
• 5:40
  Andrew Winston: And there's a rising interest from consumers to know more about every product, know what's in it.
• 5:46
  Andrew Winston: And it's called the clean label movement often.
• 5:48
  Andrew Winston: They want to know what's in it, they want to know the footprint of it, how much carbon, how much water, who made it, where they paid a living wage, you know.
• 5:55
  Andrew Winston: We want that information about products now, and that's driving, I think, a lot of change in business.
• 5:59
  Andrew Winston: So, uh yes, I mean, consumers and employees, we we have a role, all of us, in how we choose to spend our dollars and who we work for and what we demand of our employers.
• 6:08
  Andrew Winston: All of that creates important pressure.
• 6:11
  Kathleen Biggins: But what about investors?
• 6:12
  Kathleen Biggins: We didn't talk about them.
• 6:14
  Kathleen Biggins: Clearly there's a lot of movement to ESG.
• 6:16
  Kathleen Biggins: Are you seeing it providing that impetus to push companies in the right direction?
• 6:20
  Andrew Winston: Well, I you know, I'd say of all the stakeholders, investors on some level have always been the laggard on this.
• 6:25
  Andrew Winston: It it you know, sustainability has been viewed, I think, mostly incorrectly as somehow anti-business, somehow a cost center.
• 6:33
  Andrew Winston: So for the investors, it seems like it it takes away.
• 6:36
  Andrew Winston: Um, you know, for example, when GE launched Eco Imagination like 11, 12 years ago, or more actually, 13 or 14, um, they got hit by the marketplace.
• 6:45
  Andrew Winston: Like the investors thought this was ridiculous.
• 6:47
  Andrew Winston: They were going to go focus on more environmentally sound products, that was gonna take them away from core.
• 6:52
  Andrew Winston: That's changed.
• 6:53
  Andrew Winston: You don't see companies getting hit for that as much.
• 6:55
  Andrew Winston: Um, and there's been this big shift in the institutional investors.
• 6:59
  Andrew Winston: That group, clearly, the really long-term investors like pension funds, sovereign funds, um big index funds like um BlackRock and Vanguard have clearly pushed companies to think more about purpose, about environmental, social, and governance.
• 7:14
  Andrew Winston: Um, and they've made that very clear that this has to be part of their thinking.
• 7:17
  Andrew Winston: I think the analyst side of the financial world has still not moved very much.
• 7:21
  Andrew Winston: And I hear from CEOs, CFOs, investor relations, most of those analyst conversations every quarter, they're still the same conversation.
• 7:30
  Andrew Winston: They're not really asking about sustainability.
• 7:32
  Andrew Winston: I think we're starting to see some shift in that, but it's still kind of lagging.
• 7:35
  Andrew Winston: Um but what we are seeing is banks starting to launch different funds, you know, their own products, investment funds focused on more sustainable companies.
• 7:44
  Andrew Winston: And that's because they're feeling pressure from customers, mainly from what I've seen, private wealth, you know, wealthy individuals, and the younger members of those families.
• 7:52
  Andrew Winston: The millennials, again, pushing for more options for impact investing to see their money go to good.
• 7:59
  Andrew Winston: So that's starting to shift the thinking, I think, in the finance world.
• 8:03
  Kathleen Biggins: So we're hearing a lot about other parts of the world where central banks are taking a primary role in trying to force through greater care and analysis of how climate change will impact institutions' viability.
• 8:17
  Kathleen Biggins: That's just beginning in our country.
• 8:19
  Kathleen Biggins: Are you seeing any kind of momentum around that?
• 8:22
  Andrew Winston: Well, certainly you've seen um Mark Carney in the UK, who's, you know, the Bank of England has been incredibly vocal, and he launched with Michael Bloomberg here this TCFD, this task force on climate disclosure.
• 8:35
  Andrew Winston: They they launched a program and developed um guidance for companies on how to talk about climate as a risk and possible opportunity for their business in the way they talk in 10Ks and in their annual reports about material issues.
• 8:49
  Andrew Winston: And that is something companies are adopting, this this set of guidelines on how to talk about climate.
• 8:54
  Andrew Winston: So you're you are seeing some of these central bankers and these big voices, again, the ones who think about systemic risk.
• 9:00
  Andrew Winston: If you're a central banker, you're thinking about the economy-wide risk, and they're getting that climate is becoming just a risk to humanity and a risk to the economy.
• 9:08
  Andrew Winston: Um I I don't know if we're seeing it as much in the US.
• 9:12
  Andrew Winston: I think you know uh you know, we're not at a place where the Fed is really worried about this too much.
• 9:17
  Andrew Winston: Um but I think it will become a bigger issue.
• 9:20
  Andrew Winston: As I said, the institutional investors, maybe at the state level, uh certainly are asking more and more questions.
• 9:25
  Andrew Winston: So it's it's shifting.
• 9:27
  Andrew Winston: It is it is beginning.
• 9:28
  Kathleen Biggins: So it seems as if the market hasn't yet really factored in the full risk of climate change.
• 9:34
  Kathleen Biggins: Um it's been noted that a bond from Miami is probably rated the same as one from Charlotte, which has much less risk.
• 9:41
  Kathleen Biggins: But how can investors protect themselves when it's not transparent at this time?
• 9:47
  Andrew Winston: It's a really interesting question.
• 9:48
  Andrew Winston: I think I think the bond issue it could shift.
• 9:51
  Andrew Winston: I know Moody's has has put out public statements saying um cities need to have kind of climate and resilience plans and they will change their they could change their ratings.
• 10:01
  Andrew Winston: They've said some of this to companies in private as well.
• 10:03
  Andrew Winston: Um but it's true, we're not really pricing in just yet.
• 10:07
  Andrew Winston: Um I think it's like it's hard for investors to know where the risks are.
• 10:13
  Andrew Winston: But I think you're gonna see, you know, some kind of natural shift in where assets go, where investment is.
• 10:19
  Andrew Winston: I think you know, property values in Miami Beach are gonna start to fall as people think the future is gonna be difficult for them.
• 10:26
  Andrew Winston: And so you'll see it in certain markets like real estate.
• 10:28
  Andrew Winston: I think they'll natural naturally be pricing.
• 10:30
  Andrew Winston: And part of that will be built in because the insurance companies, you know, they have a big role in what what assets are valuable.
• 10:37
  Andrew Winston: If they're they're not gonna um insure some of these properties anymore, which makes them much less valuable.
• 10:42
  Andrew Winston: So I I think we'll see it in kind of these uh different ways as these different players like insurance companies and reinsurers start to change kind of the dynamics of what they'll insure.
• 10:52
  Andrew Winston: That affects kind of the values of assets.
• 10:55
  Andrew Winston: But you're right, it's not particularly priced in.
• 10:57
  Andrew Winston: I think this is why you know something like a price on carbon is so critical to moving the economy and moving the the world at a fast enough pace, because then you start to price it into everything.
• 11:08
  Andrew Winston: Carbon-intensive things cost more, cleaner things cost less.
• 11:11
  Andrew Winston: That's how you you know start to have a a sense of where you should be putting your money.
• 11:16
  Kathleen Biggins: Right.
• 11:16
  Kathleen Biggins: And the price on carbon has been really championed by economists around the world.
• 11:21
  Kathleen Biggins: Yeah.
• 11:21
  Kathleen Biggins: But the question is how high should that price be?
• 11:24
  Kathleen Biggins: Yeah.
• 11:25
  Kathleen Biggins: I think the World Bank suggested it should be at $75 per ton.
• 11:29
  Kathleen Biggins: Do you see that happening in our country?
• 11:32
  Andrew Winston: Look, I I think it's there's no country that's done anything that high yet.
• 11:36
  Andrew Winston: Well, Sweden, I think, is somewhere in the $100 range, and they built it over time.
• 11:39
  Andrew Winston: I think you you need to put something in place and have a very clear, transparent plan for accelerating it.
• 11:45
  Andrew Winston: And there's always this concern of, oh, if it gets to $100, it'll cost so much.
• 11:49
  Andrew Winston: Well, no, the point of that is that you move away from the things that get taxed.
• 11:53
  Andrew Winston: So you're so nobody's paying the $100 at that point, right?
• 11:56
  Andrew Winston: Like you you've shifted your grid, you've shifted your cars and your you know infrastructure because of those those amounts.
• 12:03
  Andrew Winston: Um I don't know if it'll happen in the U.S., but there are countries all over the world, and there's regions and states within North America that have been doing this.
• 12:12
  Andrew Winston: British Columbia has a price on carbon.
• 12:14
  Andrew Winston: There's you know trading schemes amongst states and sub-national players, China's got a price in in parts of their economy.
• 12:21
  Andrew Winston: So it's growing in different places.
• 12:24
  Andrew Winston: The number does have to be high.
• 12:25
  Andrew Winston: I mean, let's let's be honest.
• 12:27
  Andrew Winston: The social cost of carbon that people use is something like 75, 100.
• 12:31
  Andrew Winston: That really encapsulates all the damage it does to our health and to our future ability to thrive.
• 12:36
  Andrew Winston: So it would need to be high, but you don't do that immediately.
• 12:39
  Andrew Winston: You start it and you ramp it up.
• 12:40
  Andrew Winston: But the longer we wait, the closer we get to some of these kind of deadline dates on how much carbon we need to cut from the world, the faster we're gonna have to go and the more painful it's gonna be.
• 12:50
  Andrew Winston: So we've been delaying so long that the the timeline's getting more and more accelerated.
• 12:55
  Kathleen Biggins: So the that argument of it's too expensive to deal with now, keep the economy strong and let future generations handle it seems to be losing some steam as the evidence is more clear around us.
• 13:08
  Kathleen Biggins: It it seems as if there's a lot of discussion now about the cost of inaction.
• 13:13
  Kathleen Biggins: As you talk about these social costs, the greater chances of these natural disasters is indeed getting to be much greater than the cost of action.
• 13:20
  Kathleen Biggins: Right.
• 13:20
  Kathleen Biggins: Are companies recognizing this as well?
• 13:23
  Andrew Winston: Yeah, I think they are they are starting to realize that because they're getting hit directly.
• 13:26
  Andrew Winston: And it is true.
• 13:27
  Andrew Winston: I mean, there's been this statement that it's it's going to destroy the economy to do something on climate or to price carbon.
• 13:32
  Andrew Winston: And really, it's very clear what's going to destroy economies is doing nothing and getting worse.
• 13:37
  Andrew Winston: And there's been banks, this isn't statements from Greenpeace.
• 13:39
  Andrew Winston: You know, Citibank did a report you know four or five years ago that laid out the cost to the economy, tens of trillions if we don't tackle carbon, the cost of moving towards a clean economy, and it was actually cheaper to do a clean economy than a than a dirty economy, which means the payoff was actually infinite.
• 13:57
  Andrew Winston: It was cheaper to then save the tens of trillions.
• 14:00
  Andrew Winston: I mean, I remember my math and economics from Princeton.
• 14:02
  Andrew Winston: If you have a zero in the denominator, it's you know it's an infinite return.
• 14:06
  Andrew Winston: But anyways, I think companies are seeing this.
• 14:08
  Andrew Winston: They're feeling the pain.
• 14:10
  Andrew Winston: Uh AT ⁇ T is a good example where they put out um an estimate of, I think, $870 million that they spent related to extreme weather over the last few years.
• 14:19
  Andrew Winston: That's assets being hit by storms, floods, whatever.
• 14:22
  Andrew Winston: And so they set out with Argonne Laboratories.
• 14:25
  Andrew Winston: Um, they went and got some really smart guys on the outside and said, let's map out what we think sea level will look like in 30 years under different scenarios.
• 14:33
  Andrew Winston: They f they kind of leaned in and focused in on like southeast, um, the southeastern states, and they mapped out, for example, like in Savannah, Georgia, if sea level's this high, and they mapped their assets, their cell towers, their wires, a lot of them will be underwater, right?
• 14:48
  Andrew Winston: So this is a very real cost for them that they're laying out and getting prepared for, and they're already feeling it.
• 14:55
  Andrew Winston: So I think, yes, companies are starting to realize that this is getting very expensive.
• 15:00
  Andrew Winston: Um, and so the idea that it would be too expensive to do something is becoming kind of ridiculous.
• 15:06
  Kathleen Biggins: So let's drill down on some of the threats that your clients around the country or around the world are seeing.
• 15:11
  Kathleen Biggins: Clearly you mentioned physical threats, but it's not just sea level rise.
• 15:14
  Kathleen Biggins: What are some of the other ones that companies are preparing for?
• 15:18
  Andrew Winston: Well, I think the I think a lot of the risks that they worry about are certainly to assets, right?
• 15:23
  Andrew Winston: And um and that's not just floods, that's just storms, droughts.
• 15:27
  Andrew Winston: I think water issues, water shortages are a deep concern.
• 15:30
  Andrew Winston: So you see companies um setting goals and and taking action to understand where their assets and offices overlap with water-stressed regions and what that means, and especially businesses like beverage companies that rely on water literally for their product.
• 15:46
  Andrew Winston: Um there's risk in the supply chain.
• 15:48
  Andrew Winston: Often a company can say, okay, we're not in water-stressed areas, but then you start looking at key supply chain um steps or points in their supply chain.
• 15:56
  Andrew Winston: There was a kind of famous moment when there was big floods in Thailand a few years back, and the two industries um discovered that they had a couple key components that that was basically where they only place they made them.
• 16:08
  Andrew Winston: It was hard drives and some of the automakers, and they lost hundreds of millions of dollars because part of getting lean and efficient over all these years has been like you you almost like it's like monoculture in in um agriculture.
• 16:19
  Andrew Winston: You do this in your supply chain.
• 16:21
  Andrew Winston: One place makes everything cheap.
• 16:22
  Andrew Winston: But if that place gets flooded or or droughted or whatever, your whole business shuts down for a while.
• 16:27
  Andrew Winston: So it it isn't just the floods, it is the droughts, it's hurricanes.
• 16:31
  Andrew Winston: Um and a lot of companies are concerned in looking at the effects on their employees and communities and what happens in these places where there's you know huge shutdowns of power and and fires and floods.
• 16:42
  Andrew Winston: So it it it's just it's like all extreme weather, right?
• 16:45
  Andrew Winston: And it creates enormous risk for their operations, for stores being shut down because everybody's got to get off the road or get has to evacuate an area that's just kills business.
• 16:55
  Andrew Winston: So it's all of it.
• 16:56
  Andrew Winston: I think it's every kind of extreme weather you can imagine is is on the radar now.
• 17:01
  Kathleen Biggins: So we often talk about the physical risks, but it seems like there's also this reputational risk, which we touched on a bit.
• 17:08
  Kathleen Biggins: Um it seems like there's perhaps more pressure abroad where there's things like flight shame for people who take a flight.
• 17:14
  Kathleen Biggins: Are we seeing a little more of that here?
• 17:17
  Andrew Winston: Uh I think we may not have flight shame quite as much, but there is there is clearly um something happening where companies, you know, are feeling the need to talk about their purpose.
• 17:28
  Andrew Winston: Wait, I mean almost every CEO, big companies we have a purpose and talking about sustainability.
• 17:33
  Andrew Winston: And if you saw a few months back where the business round table put out their big statement with the 200 CEOs of the basically the Fortune 200, and said, we're not just about shareholder primacy, we're about stakeholders.
• 17:45
  Andrew Winston: To be cynical, they must see the benefit or the need to say that.
• 17:49
  Andrew Winston: It can't just be because they feel like you know saying how great customers are.
• 17:53
  Andrew Winston: I they're feeling that pressure, right?
• 17:55
  Andrew Winston: And so there is reputational risk, is uh as I mentioned before, it's not just you know uh your brand in the marketplace, it's reputational risk amongst amongst potential and current employees.
• 18:05
  Andrew Winston: I think that the the attraction and retention of talent is such a big deal in so many sectors that you need a good reputation as a company that someone wants to work for.
• 18:15
  Andrew Winston: And yes, and you know, as a brand for a company to buy from, that of course always matters.
• 18:19
  Andrew Winston: And and something that's that I think you can talk about intangible value in business and it sounds so foofy, you know, so soft, but um something has shifted dramatically over the last 40, 50 years that the amount of like the S P 500 kind of market cap that's physical assets, that's kind of measurable assets, 40 years ago it was like 80% of the market cap.
• 18:41
  Andrew Winston: Now it's like 20%.
• 18:42
  Andrew Winston: Meaning 80% is intangible, is brand, is intellectual property, is loyal, is your employee loyalty, it's all these other things.
• 18:50
  Andrew Winston: So actually managing that is a pretty big deal.
• 18:52
  Andrew Winston: And and sustainability and managing against climate change goals is a big part of managing that brand and intangible value.
• 19:00
  Kathleen Biggins: So we have heard that this is a collective danger and that we have to act collectively in order to solve it.
• 19:08
  Kathleen Biggins: Yet on our national level, we're becoming more fragmented perhaps than ever.
• 19:12
  Kathleen Biggins: Do you see a special role for businesses, especially multinational businesses, to help create some sort of coordinated effort to lessen the risk?
• 19:25
  Andrew Winston: Yeah, I mean, uh we have to come together.
• 19:27
  Andrew Winston: This is a problem for all 7.7 billion of us.
• 19:30
  Andrew Winston: Um and yes, we're in this really historic swing towards kind of every person for themselves, isolationism, nationalism, populism.
• 19:39
  Andrew Winston: It's timed really badly for something like climate change where we do need collective action.
• 19:44
  Andrew Winston: I think companies have a really unique role because they are the biggest ones, are they called multinationals.
• 19:51
  Andrew Winston: Most most people just refer to them as multinationals now because they're literally multinational, right?
• 19:55
  Andrew Winston: American-based companies, uh, most of them, they get more of their revenue abroad now.
• 20:00
  Andrew Winston: So they have employees all over the world.
• 20:02
  Andrew Winston: They within their brand, their tribe of their company, they have people from all over the world.
• 20:06
  Andrew Winston: So there's there is kind of this connection.
• 20:08
  Andrew Winston: Um, and and our economies are so linked, you know, that it is the economic driver and the business driver, I think, is a way to come together.
• 20:17
  Andrew Winston: And can and companies have kind of a convening power to bring together, say, their whole value chain, get their suppliers together, and talk about a big issue, a big problem.
• 20:25
  Andrew Winston: And you see more and more of that happening, these what they call pre-competitive um kind of gatherings or or you know um collaborations.
• 20:33
  Andrew Winston: So they're working on maybe a big issue in their sector, in their in their business that has some ramifications like plastics right now.
• 20:41
  Andrew Winston: Everybody's worried about plastics.
• 20:42
  Andrew Winston: So you see companies coming together figuring out packaging, how can we keep it out of the ocean?
• 20:47
  Andrew Winston: Um and so I think they have a convening power that's that's a little different than the governments right now, and kind of go around governments and and work at all levels, at the state level, subnational, you know, at regions within countries.
• 21:01
  Andrew Winston: They can they can kind of work everywhere.
• 21:03
  Andrew Winston: Um it's it's been kind of one of those fun factoids that like Coca-Cola has like more distribution in like Africa than any any governments, right?
• 21:11
  Andrew Winston: Like they can get things to anywhere, because they can get a coke to every every town in Africa.
• 21:15
  Andrew Winston: You know, so there's there's actual infrastructure these companies have that they can reach out to the whole world.
• 21:20
  Andrew Winston: So it's a I think it's an incredible opportunity.
• 21:23
  Kathleen Biggins: So we have this opportunity and they have this concern.
• 21:26
  Kathleen Biggins: Why aren't they raising their voices more on a policy basis?
• 21:29
  Kathleen Biggins: Why aren't they lobbying our government to do more?
• 21:32
  Andrew Winston: Yeah, it's it's an important question and it's come up lately.
• 21:35
  Andrew Winston: In in my book, The Big Pivot, I you know said become a climate lobbyist, and it was um not something companies were comfortable with, and they're still not a few years later.
• 21:44
  Andrew Winston: But it's becoming a topic, and and it's something I'm writing about a lot more.
• 21:48
  Andrew Winston: Uh, there was an initiative that launched um a few just a few weeks ago where 11 big NGOs came together and called on companies to harmonize their policy with their standard.
• 21:59
  Andrew Winston: About climate, while they're meanwhile maybe lobbying against some policies, or their trade associations, or you know, trade groups or or are you know or their associations at their business are lobbying against these things.
• 22:12
  Andrew Winston: And so it is a big gap.
• 22:13
  Andrew Winston: And I think you know, one of the mega trends is transparency.
• 22:17
  Andrew Winston: And I think we know more and more there's a group called influencer, um influencermap.org, and they track companies and they're lobbying and they're donating.
• 22:25
  Andrew Winston: So we can get more information now about the inconsistencies.
• 22:29
  Andrew Winston: And I think, again, employees will find that less and less um acceptable.
• 22:34
  Andrew Winston: And they're calling out their CEOs about it.
• 22:36
  Andrew Winston: Um 8,000 employees at Amazon wrote an open letter on Medium saying, hey Jeff Bezos, we need a climate policy, and you gotta stop you know trying to build more and more business with the oil and gas industry and you know fighting regulation.
• 22:48
  Andrew Winston: Like they called them out on all this stuff.
• 22:51
  Andrew Winston: So I I think companies are gonna be asked more and more questions about their lobbying, and they've been hesitant on climate for a lot of very complicated reasons.
• 22:59
  Andrew Winston: I think it's become a kind of political football where they feel like somehow they're siding with one party if they're pro-climate.
• 23:06
  Andrew Winston: But companies have been not reticent about chiming in on topics I would have thought were much tougher, like trans-batroom bills in states, LGBT rights in general, immigration, gun control.
• 23:18
  Andrew Winston: You got companies coming out and pushing for policy, changing their own policies on very contentious issues.
• 23:23
  Andrew Winston: So why not climate?
• 23:24
  Andrew Winston: Why can't they make that jump?
• 23:27
  Kathleen Biggins: So as you look at this landscape, and obviously you're going around the world, what is it that you're most concerned about?
• 23:34
  Kathleen Biggins: What worries you've got to do?
• 23:36
  Andrew Winston: Yeah, people ask me about what keeps me up at night.
• 23:38
  Andrew Winston: Um look, there's a couple dimensions to it.
• 23:42
  Andrew Winston: There's just the physical reality of climate change that's hard not to be worried about and hard not to be uh frankly sad about.
• 23:48
  Andrew Winston: There's this idea of climate grief that people are dealing with.
• 23:50
  Andrew Winston: I've written about it.
• 23:51
  Andrew Winston: Um it's hard because I actually think that the evidence is pretty clear and the science is clear, and there's a lot of inertia in our physical systems.
• 23:59
  Andrew Winston: There's damage coming, very big damage.
• 24:01
  Andrew Winston: We're already seeing some of it.
• 24:02
  Andrew Winston: Venice is flooded this week.
• 24:04
  Andrew Winston: Um I grew up in South Florida.
• 24:06
  Andrew Winston: I think the odds that Miami is is fully inhabitable in 30 years is low.
• 24:11
  Andrew Winston: Um I think we're gonna lose regions, we're gonna lose the coral.
• 24:14
  Andrew Winston: It looks like the coral is mostly gonna die, which is an important ecosystem.
• 24:17
  Andrew Winston: We're losing species.
• 24:18
  Andrew Winston: So there's stuff that just keeps me up because we're going to lose parts of our kind of rich environment, our rich world.
• 24:25
  Andrew Winston: Um But I I I do think we're gonna make it, we're gonna kind of come back, we're gonna we're gonna stop some of that damage as fast as we can.
• 24:33
  Andrew Winston: But it does worry me this inability to collaborate, this um this isolationism that we feel not just country to country, but within our within our country in particular, this these kind of bubbles that that we're all in, and we're not communicating when this really is a very collaborative issue that we have to deal with.
• 24:51
  Andrew Winston: It it it it's what make it's what makes climate change the hardest issue I think humanity's ever faced, because it is if you were going to design something given our psychology to make it difficult to tackle, you would it would be climate change.
• 25:03
  Andrew Winston: It's it's long term, you can't see it physically a lot of the time, it's invisible.
• 25:07
  Andrew Winston: You know, it's responsible it's a responsibility of everybody.
• 25:09
  Andrew Winston: All of us have a role.
• 25:10
  Andrew Winston: Um it's very different than like the ozone problem, where there were like five companies that made these chemicals.
• 25:15
  Andrew Winston: You could fix that, you could help fix the ozone.
• 25:17
  Andrew Winston: This is everybody.
• 25:18
  Andrew Winston: And so that worries me that it's so diffuse, it's so hard, um, that it's it's going to be difficult to kind of go as fast as as we need to.
• 25:28
  Kathleen Biggins: So we'll counter that with asking you what gives you the greatest hope.
• 25:32
  Andrew Winston: So there's two things that give me a lot of hope.
• 25:34
  Andrew Winston: Um one is the rise of the clean economy, the the reduction in the cost of clean technologies of all kinds, you know, solar, wind, batteries, building systems, AI that helps make things more efficient, they've gotten radically cheaper, faster than people expected over the last decade.
• 25:50
  Andrew Winston: I think solar and wind are down 70 to 90 percent.
• 25:53
  Andrew Winston: They're now fundamentally cheaper.
• 25:54
  Andrew Winston: Um there's a study every year from Lazard, a bank, that they analyze what it costs to build different forms of energy.
• 26:01
  Andrew Winston: And in essence, solar and wind are now cheaper, unsubsidized, almost everywhere.
• 26:06
  Andrew Winston: And we're getting to the point in the next couple years where building new solar and wind will be cheaper than running existing coal and nuclear.
• 26:13
  Andrew Winston: The marginal cost of running a coal plant will be more than building a new solar, which means we're gonna start shutting down some old assets.
• 26:20
  Andrew Winston: That gives me a lot of hope.
• 26:21
  Andrew Winston: Um, and I bought a new uh electric vehicle recently, and it's like the best car I've ever owned.
• 26:25
  Andrew Winston: Like the products are great.
• 26:27
  Andrew Winston: Alternative meat and protein.
• 26:28
  Andrew Winston: Like, there's just better sustainable products now than ever, and they're working, and people love them.
• 26:33
  Andrew Winston: The other thing that gives me a lot of hope is the youth movement.
• 26:36
  Andrew Winston: Um, it's hard not to be inspired by Greta Tunberg.
• 26:39
  Andrew Winston: She was a kid with a sign at 15, sitting in front of her school alone.
• 26:43
  Andrew Winston: A year later, not even a year, four or five months later, she's speaking to the World Economic Forum and the and the you know UN and the UK Parliament and telling them they're ruining her future and they're not doing enough and she's gonna have to take over.
• 26:56
  Andrew Winston: It's it's incredible.
• 26:57
  Andrew Winston: And and I think you have to be excited about that level of engagement.
• 27:02
  Andrew Winston: Um and they don't seem to be going away.
• 27:04
  Andrew Winston: You know, they've it seems something different in Gen Z.
• 27:07
  Andrew Winston: These teens um they see a problem and they're like, we're not just gonna accept it.
• 27:12
  Andrew Winston: We're gonna go demand action.
• 27:14
  Andrew Winston: And by the way, all of those kids become voters pretty soon.
• 27:17
  Andrew Winston: Like if they're 16 or 17, it's not long until they're voting.
• 27:20
  Andrew Winston: A lot of them are voting in the next election.
• 27:22
  Andrew Winston: So we'll see how much they translate that to action.
• 27:25
  Andrew Winston: But that gives me it has to give you hope.
• 27:27
  Andrew Winston: You know, they're so engaged.
• 27:28
  Kathleen Biggins: Well, thank you for that.
• 27:30
  Andrew Winston: Thank you.
• 27:30
  Kathleen Biggins: Thank you for ending on that.
• 27:31
  Kathleen Biggins: We are so enjoyed learning from you here today.
• 27:34
  Kathleen Biggins: And for those of you who would like to learn more about what Andrew is telling companies around the world, please take a look at his website and see his TED Talks and go out and buy his book, The Big Pivot.
• 27:45
  Kathleen Biggins: Thanks for being with us.
• 27:47
  Andrew Winston: Thank you.