“Perhaps it’s not about redesign, it’s actually leapfrogging where we are, right? If you think about mobile phone technology…when the first mobile phones came out, they were about this big right? Bricks, well, in Africa they didn’t build networks across phone lines or electricity lines to enable mobile technology. They went straight from no phones to mobile phones, right? That’s a leapfrog. So,I take your point about we need to look at it with a different lens, to me a different lens is let’s stop trying to redesign, recreate, tinker at the edges and just leapfrog stuff…. It will take us sort of taking our own blinkers off in a way and thinking about what’s the leapfrog change that we can make? What’s our move from no phones to mobile phones?”
That’s one of the insights a group of 11 extraordinarily accomplished women across industries, geographies, generations and cultures came up with at a private Roundtable I produced at SXSW London recently. The purpose was to talk about addressing the climate crisis and what women’s role in doing so might be. It was Chatham House Rules, so I can’t reveal who was there, but I can share their insights without attribution.
The Frame
Our goal was “To step outside the usual conversations, spark new ideas and co-create tangible strategies for advancing a thriving green economy through the power of female leadership.”
There are obviously fierce, urgent, and conflicting political, economic, cultural and environmental forces at play today. The planet is warming, yet dominant political forces deny climate change and are empowering industries that will make it worse.
Yet, market forces are addressing the climate crisis, in part because businesses have to make long-term decisions and investments to protect their operations, their supply chains, their people, and their homes. Investors take seriously the very real financial risks of climate change and are demanding businesses do too. There are workforce pressures too, including studies that the majority of Gen Zers and Millennials, which are 38% of the workforce today and will grow, want to work for companies that have sustainability initiatives.
Women make or influence 85% of purchasing decisions and they prioritize environmental issues as voters too. A recent environmental voter projects study found that 62% of women prioritize environmental issues compared to only 37% of men.
Here are more insights from the Roundtable:
- The friction is because old is dying and the new is not born yet: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the now cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear,” which is a quote from the 1930’s political strategist Antonio Gramsci that was shared at the Roundtable. That birth is a cultural economic, social shift, the person said, adding that, “women are shifting and seeking the opportunity…and there’s a cry out for solutions.”
- The rural perspective is different – and instructive: People there “thought (climate change) was something that the gods had done because nobody had told her why there were these shifts in her community. But what was really powerful is by giving her knowledge, she really began to make changes in her farm and is beginning to affect change and change her community.… She’s not just a passive person who’s just affected. There are tools she has now.”
- The “incrementalist mindset” is too slow: “In terms of solutions, how we can go faster. I think we are actually being slowed down by a very liberal incrementalist mindset that is not seeing what is really happening, the shift that is happening and the paradigm shift.”
- Leverage capitalism: “Capitalism is still at the core of what we’re doing, and I think we need to learn to utilize it for our benefit,” such as with campaigns, where a portion of the price goes to a nonprofit that helps people. “We need to think about how to utilize consumption, utilize philanthropy, utilize the existing systems with actually not breaking them, but adapting them so that we have what we need in order to, to build our solutions.” For example, “If we would find a way to get our corporates, our taxes to be rounded up with that money going into solutions that we need, infrastructure solutions, government solutions, we will be able to finance everything we need in order to do adaptation mitigation within a few years.”
- Think of financial returns differently, a new ROI, to drive innovation: “Innovation is not happening because we’re not financing it because we only finance what white men are thinking, what white men might want. And so until we shift that power towards financing diverse teams, finance, thinking of financial returns on in a different way…or until we price carbon and biodiversity into our decisions, then we won’t be able to finance the shift that we need to shift.” We need “new collaborative models, new thoughts of what is ROI,” and maybe we need “a social impact Nasdaq”.
- Redesign work so it’s better suited to life and the moment: “Right now we’re still working in a way that was designed for the industrial revolution in like in the 1800s…The work still needs to be done but it just needs to be executed in a different way… How do we redesign these old structures that were not designed for women, not designed for minorities, not designed for different generations and like what life in the world looks like today?”
- “Urgency” isn’t working in part because of social media: “We know broadly speaking that it is a climate emergency. The urgency is there…But it isn’t in our faces. It’s getting closer and closer and closer, and that’s when things like COVID or the LA Fires people act when it’s right in their face. And that urgency messaging just doesn’t seem to land as much. When people are sat at home scrolling on their phones,” where they are told to “act now” for everything and getting misinformation.
- “Everybody is tired because everything is going wrong”: It’s hard to reach people, because “everybody is tired because everything is going wrong, climate is going wrong, society is going wrong, war is going on….So when there’s everything that’s going wrong, it’s much harder. What are you fighting for? Are you fighting for your neighbor? Are you fighting for equality? Are you fighting for climate? Are you fighting against a war? There’s just too much stuff for people to process.”
There was so much more…
Thank you to these extraordinary women. You know who you are.