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Show your stripes

This isn’t art, it’s data. Each vertical line is a year. Blues are years that were cooler than the average between 1971 and 2000; red is hotter. The darker the colour the further from the mean. The hottest 10 years since records began in the late 1800s have all been in the last 20 years. 2020 has a good chance of setting a new record.

It’s not sunspots or volcanos or the earth’s rotation or whatever else you might want to believe because you watched some denialist crap on YouTube: it’s us. Mainly our use of coal, oil and gas, cement, land clearing and agriculture.

As it gets hotter, the weather becomes more tempestuous, crop harvests and fresh water supplies become less reliable, the seas rise and become more acidic, and ecosystems on which our lives depend collapse. This is all accelerating now. 

How to Fix It

We can fix it, given government will to make systemic changes to our economic system. The good news is that the technology is available today, and is already (or soon will be) cheaper than the old ways that have created the problems. There are multi trillion dollaropportunities for business, millions of jobs, and clean air and water to look forward to. Here’s how:

1. A moratorium on new fossil fuel extraction. Any new investment in coal, oil or gas is utterly incompatible with where we need to be. Existing plants will need to be wound down as quickly as later steps can be scaled up. 

2. Rapidly scale up renewables and storage. Australia is currently at 21% (of the current grid). We need to get to at least 700%. We have more than enough land, sun, wind and know how; and wind/solar with storage are now cheaper than fossil or nuclear alternatives – we just need the right policy and regulatory settings from government. 

3. Use the excess renewable power to electrify everything that can be including transportation, gas use in buildings and industrial processes. 

4. Use the rest of the excess to produce green hydrogen, which can be used for heavy transport (including ships and maybe aircraft), to make steel (instead of coking coal), fertiliser, and for other industrial processes that can’t be electrified. There’s also a huge emerging export opportunity to ship clean hydrogen instead of coal and LNG, and even to send power to Indonesia, Singapore and beyond via submarine cables from the NT. 

5. Replace cement, plastic and other products with emerging clean alternatives. 

6. Adopt regenerative agriculture to trap carbon in soils, improving productivity and water retention and reducing the need for artificial fertilisers. Reduce the livestock herd and introduce feed systems to reduce their methane emissions. 

7. Trap and store methane from landfills and wherever else emissions can’t be eliminated. Trapped greenhouse gases can be used as a feedstock for plastics, jet fuel and other chemical uses. 

8. Rewild – return land to nature. 

To maintain any semblance of a safe climate the world needs to halve greenhouse emissions by 2030 and get to net zero no later than 2050. As a rich nation with almost the highest per capita emissions in the world, and amazing assets to decarbonise, Australia owes it to the world to punch above our weight. 

But there are powerful vested interests distorting and diluting this message and fighting to preserve the status quo. The fossil fuel industry has captured Australian politicians (from both major parties) and key media organisations. They are using their super-profits to buy their longevity, while knowingly hastening the end of a habitable planet. 

What can you do?

  • Educate yourself. Start with the IPCC’s 2018 report about the difference between 1.5 and 2 degrees of warming. Read science written by scientists; avoid opinion pieces written by people with vested interests. Understand who funds what you read and watch, and question their motives. Join a group such as Australian Parents for Climate Actionto learn more and connect with the growing community of concerned people. 
  • Engage with your MPs and Senators. Write to them, call them, meet with them. Let them know you expect to see decisive and meaningful emissions reduction to secure your vote.
  • Engage with your community. Encourage your family, friends and colleagues to become more aware and politically engaged. 
  • Use your money wisely. Switch your super to a fund that does not invest in industries that contribute to climate change (it will probably generate a better return than your old fund – being sustainable pays). Bank with an institution that doesn’t lend to the fossil fuel sector. Switch to a power company that only uses renewable power. Replace ageing gas appliances with efficient electric alternatives. Insulate and draught-proof your home. Put solar on your roof and make your next car electric. You’ll save money and feel great. 
  • Eat less meat and dairy. Even if you’re a committed carnivore, try out the growing range of meat and dairy substitutes. Some are almost indistinguishable from the real thing and prices are falling. If you have the means, plant a veggie garden and compost. 
  • Travel less and think about your choices. Less flying and car use; more terrestrial mass transit, cycling and walking. Value time in nature. 
  • Switch your media to sources that clearly communicate the gravity of the climate crisis. 
  • Buy less stuff. Recognise that your self worth is not bound up in what you have, but about who you are and the actions you take. When you need stuff, think second hand. Repair, gift, or sell what you don’t need. 

Please, for your children’s or grand children’s sake; your nieces, nephews or just your friends’ children; we must convince our governments to truly act in the best interests of the voters they were elected to serve. 

#ShowYourStripes graphic by Ed Hawkins

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Ratified Paris, Now What?

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Now that major economies have begun to ratify the Paris Climate Accord, countries need to deliver on their pledges. But how? And what will this mean for businesses?

In part one of this article we identified that businesses would inevitably bear the brunt of country-level reductions to greenhouse gas emissions. In this blog we drill into what businesses should do to prepare.

While governments are initially targeting the low hanging fruit of the few dozen or hundred companies that produce the bulk of their counties’ emissions (think coal fired power stations and steel makers, for example), even this may affect many organisations’ cost bases as input prices for power and other affected items rise, unless you’ve already insulated your company by purchasing renewable energy.

Regulated efficiency initiatives to reduce energy consumption and emissions are also gaining pace, benefitting firms whose buildings, manufacturing processes and products are already highly efficient. Innovation in energy and emissions efficiency will become a key point of difference for makers of a wide range of products and services.

Emerging categories such as electric cars (charged from renewable sources) and autonomous vehicles (which eventually could reduce the total number of vehicles and radically reduce congestion inefficiencies, as well as being programmed to drive as efficiently as possible) take efficiency initiatives into the realm of disruptive technologies. Companies will need to think years and sometimes decades ahead when designing product innovations to ensure they are not left behind by technological upstarts.

Eventually, regulations will extend to a broader range of GHG-producing compounds, including the fluorinated gases used in TV screens and the HFCs that have replaced CFCs as a refrigerant and propellent in spray cans. This will spark innovation in the design of products or processes that currently rely on such compounds, as well as services or products to ensure that their use is tightly controlled and doesn’t lead to them escaping into the atmosphere, either during or following the product’s lifecycle.

While the Australian government is currently clinging to its Direct Action, “pay the polluter to pollute less” policy, inevitably that will need to give way to a “polluter pays” mechanism.

Meanwhile, governments will push the burden of achieving GHG targets onto future administrations, which will compound the level of rapid transformation that businesses will be forced to deliver as the Paris commitment deadline approaches. And there is a clear expectation from the United Nations that many countries’ commitments will need to be strengthened in coming years in order to limit warming to the agreed target of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius.

Companies that take the lead today will be well positioned when this crunch comes.

Call Adaptive Capability today to develop the strategy for your business.

 

Image Credit: blindholm / BigStock

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Ratified Paris, Now What?

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Recently ratified by major emitters such as China, India the U.S. and Europe, signatories to the Paris Climate Accord now need to deliver on their pledges. But how? And what will this mean for businesses?

The climate deal struck last year in Paris will take effect from 4 November 2016. The commitment requires countries to reduce their aggregate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – including carbon dioxide, methane and other gases that trap heat in the atmosphere – which are produced through the burning of fossil fuels and/or other industrial processes or land use change.

So far so good, but how will they deliver on their promises?

Given that businesses and the products they produce are accountable for a lion’s share of emissions, they will inevitably be expected to shoulder a lot of the burden of GHG emissions reduction.

Businesses cause GHG emissions through their use of electricity that is generated at coal, oil or gas power plants; from their vehicles and other transportation; the buildings they occupy; various manufacturing processes; their use of steel, cement and other compounds (that emit GHG’s in their production and/or use); and in their development and use of land.

The products businesses produce can, in turn, result in the production of GHG emissions while in use: car makers are an obvious example, but so are the manufacturers of air conditioners, TVs and thousands of other consumer products that rely on GHG-producing sources of energy or which are made with compounds and chemicals that can leach GHG’s into the atmosphere either during production, in use or after disposal.

The lesson for businesses is clear: plan for a much lower emissions future and develop a clear roadmap for achieving it. Changing the light bulbs is no longer going to cut it, and a whole of business approach is required including changes to the organisation’s product and service portfolio.

Call Adaptive Capability today to develop the strategy for your business.

 

Image Credit: Nicola Renna / BigStock

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Reining in Runaway Software Inefficiency

Data Centre

Many organisations are investing in making their Internet and IT infrastructure more energy efficient. But in the search for sustainability, a hardware and data centre-centric approach may be missing the point.

Recently, Adaptive Capability was asked to comment on an Australian government initiative to improve the energy efficiency of data centres.  The discussion report proposes a number of sensible suggestions including applying energy efficiency ratings and/or minimum standards to data centre facilities and the IT equipment they house.  However, we wondered if these approaches obscured a much broader opportunity for transforming the IT industry to a more sustainable footing.

What we’re seeing in the data centre space is a run away freight train of more and more processing power and storage globally, supporting all the amazing web apps that people suddenly cannot live without, coupled with corporates collecting vast amounts of “big data” to try to get new insights about their customers and products.

Fundamentally, energy demand in data centres is a behavioural problem linked to our use of technology.  While we’re not going to be able to change that very easily, buying more energy efficient servers or improving the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) of our data centres seems to to be like putting a band aid on a cancer victim. We think, however, that without trying to tackle the apps/big data juggernaut, there is something that governments could do that might have a more sustained impact

As a long term representative of a technical working group for the Australian government’s NABERS (National Australian Built Environment Rating System) we note that the data centre rating tool released in 2013 made significant compromises in attempting to come up with a measure of the efficiency of “useful computing output”.  Measuring hardware efficiency improvements in metrics such as megaflops or disk I/O (input/output) per Watt (W) is relatively easy but the working group didn’t manage to figure out a way to build a viable, assessable metric that would serve as a proxy for, for example, “emails delivered per W” or, more usefully, “tax returns processed per W” or “Facebook posts per W”.

That’s where we think a lot more work is required: tackling the efficiency of computer software itself (as well as the way people use it).

The inefficiency of software is, we believe, directly linked to the continued realisation of Moore’s Law, which has effectively led to a doubling of compute power (typically for about the same or lower cost) every couple of years for the last 50 years.  This has created a software development culture that encourages “bloat-ware”: there is no need for coders to cut resource efficient code because a faster computer or device with more RAM (Random Access Memory) and storage is released every few months. Meanwhile there’s money to be made in adding new features (whether they’re needed or not) and churning out new versions of ever more resource hungry software every couple of years.

Inefficient code (and lazy operating systems that allow a build up of “system detritus” and memory leakage) benefits the hardware suppliers since it creates an impetus for people to upgrade their devices on a regular basis, cementing a mutually-beneficial relationship between the hardware and software worlds.

Many organisations typically figure on replacing compute equipment within three years (and many people replace their mobile devices more frequently in line with two year phone plans), creating a mountain of eWaste with huge ecological impacts in terms of embodied energy, CO2e emissions and resource depletion.  Whereas you’ll typically get at least 50 years of economic value out of a building, meaning the embodied energy is usually significantly lower than the energy in use, in the case of computing hardware the equation is probably a lot closer to parity or worse and the lifecycle operating energy costs of a server typically exceed the purchase price.

If we are serious about tackling ICT energy efficiency we need to start with the software industry.  Universities should be teaching resource-efficient software development.  There should be measures to encourage applications and operating systems that run comfortably on older hardware. Major software and hardware companies (which are typically US based, so international cooperation would be required) could be investigated to see whether there is any evidence of anti-consumer collusion in perpetuating the Moore’s Law-driven spiral of software upgrade necessitating hardware upgrade. Leaders in sustainable computing (i.e. maximising the longevity and efficient use of compute resources) should be identified and celebrated.

Consumer education is also important to help people understand how their use of technology is leading to inefficiency. Something analogous to the former Australian Labour Government’s “black balloons” campaign but associated with the energy costs of each photo they upload to Facebook; each Google search; even the extra bytes of storage associated with their email signature file and the near ubiquitous “Please consider the environment before printing this message” sign off.

We recommend the objective of government policy in this area should be, on the one hand, to minimise the amount of hardware and associated infrastructure required to perform a particular function, but also, critically, to prolong the economic life of that investment in hardware and infrastructure.

Talk to Adaptive Capability today about ways to safe guard your organisation’s future.

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Climate change: the hefty price of business as usual

Confrontation

The debate is heating up, and yet Australia’s political leaders seem to be missing the real cost of climate change – a former Goldman Sachs heavyweight sheds insight into which parts of the economy will be hit by inaction the hardest.

Where do our major parties really stand?

The political world has become a bit topsy turvy lately. Countries like Canada, previously respected for their environmental leadership, have become international pariahs for promoting exploitation of their tar sands deposits.

And in Australia, as more than one commentator has observed, it’s become impossible to tell up from down as politicians backflip on major reforms.

The Liberals are dumping a free market solution for greenhouse emissions reduction (the carbon tax was legislated to transition to an Emissions Trading Scheme after the initial fixed price period); Labour is opposing a big government solution (the Coalition’s Direct Action scheme); and ironically the Greens are against a rise in the fuel excise tax (which might have sent a pricing signal discouraging the use of high emitting private vehicles).

What’s the cost of discord?

Just as Australia winds back its carbon scheme, a chorus of influential conservatives is dispelling arguments that reducing greenhouse emissions is taxing on the economy.

Hank Paulsen is a commentator to watch. He served as the US Treasury Secretary during the Bush administration and before that, was the head of one of the world’s most successful investment banks – Goldman Sachs. Having recently published a call to action on climate change in the New York Times, he’s teamed up with Republican former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg and others to produce a report called Risky Business.

Risky Business focuses on the economic impacts of climate change in the US over the remainder of the century and identifies the worrying financial impacts of sticking to a business as usual scenario.

Here’s a quick summary of the Risky Business forecast:

  • Property damage from coastal inundation in the hundreds of billions of dollars
  • Decreased labour productivity for outdoor work due to the rise in extremely hot and/or humid days
  • Ballooning energy costs (partly due to soaring demand for air conditioning)
  • Stretched healthcare systems
  • Increased heat-related mortality
  • Reduced agricultural productivity

Acting now may leave Australia in a better financial position

 In fact, not only does a business as usual scenario turn out to have significant costs; a new economic study commissioned by the United Nations has found that a high emissions reduction scenario could transform major economies to zero net greenhouse emissions as soon as 2050 while still maintaining comfortable rates of growth. Australian National University economist Dr Frank Jotzo, a lead author of the forthcoming report, has noted (Sydney Morning Herald 9/7/14) findings that an annual Australian GDP growth rate of around 2.4% could be maintained while making massive emissions reductions to energy, agriculture and other sectors.

And this is where the rhetoric about the economy paying the price of slashing carbon emissions starts to sound more than a little hollow.

Of course studies and predictions come and go and political will is a huge obstacle to be overcome in many countries. However, with notable conservatives questioning the viability of business as usual and growing evidence that the move to a low emissions scenario may not be as economically difficult as it has been portrayed, the mood is beginning to shift.

This shift presents both risks and opportunities for many organisations. To find out how, talk to Adaptive Capability about safe guarding your organisation’s future.

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Grim times ahead for Australia’s largest industry

Coal Loader

Business has been booming in the mining sector – until now. Here’s why investing in all the wrong places is setting Australia on the economic back foot.

Australia’s economy has effectively ridden through the last six years of economic uncertainty on the back of the mining boom. But as the world moves towards cleaner energy sources, remaining ‘open for business’ as the world’s quarry is putting Australia on an unsustainable path at odds with the evolving demands of many developed and developing economies.

The fast facts

  • Mining is Australia’s largest industry by revenue – combining direct mining activities and the associated mining services industry, the sector accounts for nearly 20 per cent of Australia’s $1.5 trillion GDP.
  • Australia’s growth is too dependent on mining – the Australian Bureau of Statistics notes that 80 per cent of GDP growth in the March 2014 quarter was contributed by an 8.6 per cent surge in mining output, though this was in part due to a relatively benign storm season.
  • The sector is almost half dirty energy – Fossil fuel extraction accounts for around 45 per cent of the mining industry’s output, the remainder being comprised of iron ore, other metals and minerals. The majority of coal, oil and gas output is shipped abroad, accounting for about 20 per cent of Australia’s exports.
  • Mining creates fewer jobs than you think – while it’s one of the nation’s most lucrative industries, the fossil fuel mining sector only employs about 80,000 people, well under 1 per cent of the Australian labour force. Which perhaps is just as well.

Yes, there will continue to be a market for fossil fuels decades to come. But despite massive expansion of coal-based power generation in China and India, there are signs that the growth spurt is coming to an end and demand may quickly waver.

Busting some renewable energy misconceptions

Historically renewable energy sources have been significantly more costly to operate – but there have been a number of game changing developments in clean energy sources around the world that Australia will move too late to cash in on when demand for fossil fuels dries up.

Building a new wind farm recently reached life cycle cost parity with a coal fired power plant of equivalent output, and large-scale solar technology is expected to become just as cost effective in the next couple of years.

There is huge investment in battery storage technologies, meaning it will be increasingly feasible for wind and solar plants to continue supplying the grid when winds are light or the sun isn’t shining.

And growth in renewable energy investment continues to accelerate even as the world’s appetite for coal is waning, driven by the early warning signs of climate change.

A recent report from the Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia predicts that Chinese thermal coal demand could peak by 2020 and then start to decline. Despite building hundreds of new coal fired power plants in the last decade, China is one of the world’s biggest investors in renewable energy and its people, who currently suffer from chronic air pollution, are clamoring for a move towards cleaner energy and industry.

Australia is set for a hard landing

Meanwhile, Australia is still investing massively in the very things its largest trading partner is actively seeking to rid itself of: fossil fuel extraction and the associated infrastructure, including the controversial expansion of the Abbot Point coal terminal in the middle of the world heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef. These are investments with a multi-decade economic life.

Australia’s government seems intent on ignoring the warning signs – both economic, social and climatic – and continuing to support a toxic and archaic industry. The recent Federal Budget affirmed that it is simultaneously hell bent on destroying Australia’s renewables sector, right at a time when investment and incentives should be switched out of fossil fuels and into clean energy.

Loss of the fossil fuel mining sector would be a drop in the ocean in terms of job losses though more significant in terms of company tax receipts. But rather than plan proactively for this inevitable and essential transition, Australia seems intent on setting itself up for a very hard landing.

Whether directly, indirectly or passively through misdirected government action, all sectors face a level of risk from climate change and other global environmental issues.

Talk to Adaptive Capability today about safe guarding your business’ future.

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Operational resilience – what a changing climate does to your risk profile

Lighthouse Storm - croppedThe field of enterprise risk management involves identifying and classifying hazards according to their likelihood of occurrence and the level of impact to the organisation should they occur. This yields a matrix view of risks, with differing treatment or control approaches depending on which quadrant they fall into. These approaches include acceptance (of low probability, low impact risks) and controls that reduce either the likelihood of occurrence or level of impact.

Risk transfer mechanisms such as insurance have also been a mainstay of organisations’ risk mitigation strategies. Insurance coverage is often effective for risks where the main impact is financial loss and the inherent likelihood of the risk is low and unpredictable.

Meanwhile, business continuity planning has traditionally focused on lower probability / higher impact contingencies that can’t easily be treated with other mechanisms, but is always complemented by insurance.

Add climate change into the mix and the scenario changes. The scientific consensus is that our atmosphere and oceans are warming due to the sharply increasing concentration of greenhouse gases (which have increased by over 25% since consistent record keeping began a mere 50 odd years ago). A range of human activities are blamed for this incredibly sudden rise including the burning of fossil fuels (chiefly coal, oil and gas), emissions of various other greenhouse gases used in industrial and manufacturing processes, deforestation and other deleterious changes in land use.

Climatic changes are lagging the build up of GHGs but we are already starting to see noticeable increases in the frequency and severity of extreme weather events such as storms, heat waves, droughts and so on. Global mean sea levels are also on the rise, while water supplies and other critical infrastructures are looking increasingly fragile. Ocean acidification from atmospheric GHGs dissolving in sea water and a range of other impacts are adversely affecting eco systems that currently feed billions of people.

The US National Climate Assessment Report released earlier this month puts it bluntly: “Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present”.

Global reinsurers’ data tells the story starkly with record numbers of disaster events and (inflation adjusted) damage bills in the last decade.

It is only a matter of time before this becomes unsustainable and the insurance industry moves to deny – or make unaffordable – cover for events that are increasingly likely and predictable as a consequence of climate change. Indeed, in many parts of the world insurance premiums have risen at well beyond the pace of inflation over the last decade.

Operational resilience and business continuity planning in a world without affordable or effective insurance cover suddenly takes on a whole new dimension of strategic importance.

Talk to Adaptive Capability today about safeguarding your business’ future.

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Australian Federal Budget Recap: what’s in it for the environment?

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As widely expected the Australian federal government has confirmed its intentions to scrap the carbon tax (along with the mining rent tax) and instead implement its widely criticised program of Direct Action. Under this policy, companies responsible for large scale Greenhouse Gas emissions will be paid by taxpayers to reduce their emissions. The slightly reassuring news is that these carbon pollution reduction subsidies will only be paid on evidence that emissions have in fact been reduced, ensuring a level of accountability but putting the onus on emitters to fund mitigation projects they believe will be cost effective once the subsidy is applied.

The re-indexation of the petrol excise levy is a more positive step in terms of sending pricing signals that may incentivise fuel users to reduce their consumption and emissions, though from a budgetary perspective the measure is mainly pitched on terms of helping to get the budget back into surplus.

On the other hand the government has not chosen to adjust the Fuel Tax Credits scheme, which subsidises the fuel used by companies by exempting them from the fuel excise, providing considerable benefit to the mining sector amongst others.

Even before the Warburton report into the Renewable EnergyTarget has been completed, the axe has fallen on the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA), with all but priority, in progress initiatives to be cut. Funding for he Carbon Capture and Storage Program has also been reduced significantly.

Mitigation to one side, the government has honoured its pre-election promise to commit $9m in funding to prolong the work of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Forum (NCCARF), an academic research body. Its role will be that much more critical if Direct Action leads to less emissions reductions than the Carbon Tax / ETS was expected to deliver.

Talk to Adaptive Capability today for strategic advice relating to environmental and climate change risks.

David.McEwen@AdaptCap.com

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What could the divestment movement mean for your business?

divestment-slider-webSuperannuation funds and other managed investments control significant holdings in many companies, large and small. Currently, most funds have featured a high proportion of stocks in resources firms and other businesses with significant exposure to the fossil fuel industry, in line with the relative weightings of major market indices. Some estimates suggest this exposure is over 50%, compared with only about 2% invested in the renewables and energy efficiency sector.

Now imagine fossil fuel stocks fell out of favour with institutional investors. Portfolios worth trillions of dollars would be rebalanced in favour of clean tech and other non polluting industries. The share prices of fossil fuel exposed firms would plummet and it would become increasingly difficult or expensive for them to raise capital to fund new projects.

Couple this with the threat of regulation preventing resources firms from extracting much of their reserves of coal, oil, tar and so on that are still in the ground and it paints a bleak picture for the extractive sector and major downstream users of fossil fuels, whose cost base would rise dramatically.

But how realistic is this scenario? Increasingly, given the growing chorus of respected business and political leaders (in addition to the traditional activists) who are throwing their weight behind the so-called divestment movement.

Take former Australian Liberal Party leader and co founder of Macquarie Bank, John Hewson. His latest venture, the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, asks global institutional investors about their exposure to fossil fuels, rates fund managers according to their divestment actions, and names and shames the recalcitrant. After two years of surveys they are having an impact with a number of large funds announcing plans to divest from fossil fuels.

On the debt finance side of the equation, green groups are targeting major banks that lend to miners, urging customers to switch their accounts to institutions that don’t.

It’s a long road ahead though. Currently in Australia even the so-called ethical and socially responsible investment (SRI) funds continuing to have some level of fossil fuel exposure. But momentum and pressure is building rapidly.

What does this mean for your organisation? Depending on how fossil fuel exposed it (or its supply chain) is, then in the short to medium term reputational and regulatory risk and rising costs could become significant headaches. Talk to Adaptive Capability today about safe guarding your business’ future.

David.McEwen@AdaptCap.com

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More than Mitigation – why your business needs to adapt

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For years the sustainability movement’s mantra has focused on mitigation – the reduction of organisations’ and individuals’ carbon and environmental footprints. And while mitigation is still critically important to reign in the pace of climate change, scientists report that there is now clear evidence that the climate has and is changing due to anthropogenic warming. These impacts are expected to accelerate over the coming decades, with generally warmer land and sea temperatures causing increased frequency and severity of extreme weather events and a host of other – generally negative – environmental consequences.

As such, mitigation is not enough, and we need to start thinking about adaptation. Making our organisations, buildings and infrastructures more resilient to storms and flooding is just the tip of the (melting) iceberg. Organisations engaged in fossil fuel intensive or other environmentally damaging activities should be reimagining their businesses using clean energy sources, with appropriate prices placed on environmental externalities when assessing new investments. Reputational damage is beginning to be felt by major polluters and this is sure to intensify in the coming years.

Organisations and people whose livelihoods depend on their use of the natural environment need to understand how climate change might affect their activities and adapt accordingly.

Then there are the many innovative opportunities suited to a climate changing world and organisations that think now and adapt will prosper as some traditional industries decline or are forced out of business as regulators step up the pace and prices shift.

According to Matt Ridley in a recent article for UK’s Spectator newspaper, former UK Chancellor Nigel Lawson, while a critic of attempts to reduce the level of global warming by curbing emissions, nevertheless embraced the concept of adaptation:

“Lawson pointed out that adaptation had six obvious benefits as a strategy, which mitigation did not share. It required no international treaty, but would work if adopted unilaterally; it could be applied locally; it would produce results quickly; it could capture any benefits of warming while avoiding risks; it addressed existing problems that were merely exacerbated by warming; and it would bring benefits even if global warming proves to have been exaggerated.”
Whatever your politics or stance on the causes of climate change, Lawson’s arguments for taking adaptive action are compelling. But there’s a limit to adaptive capacity (particularly that of the ecosystems on which we all depend). That’s why we must also accelerate our transition to an efficient low carbon economy by redoubling mitigation efforts in order to minimise the pace of climate change.

Talk to Adaptive Capability today to find out how we can help improve your adaptive capacity.

David.McEwen@AdaptCap.com

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