{"id":308,"date":"2012-11-27T20:55:39","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T20:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/?p=308"},"modified":"2012-11-27T20:55:39","modified_gmt":"2012-11-27T20:55:39","slug":"andrew-winston-explains-why-we-need-more-paul-polmans-by-raz-godelnik","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/2012\/11\/27\/andrew-winston-explains-why-we-need-more-paul-polmans-by-raz-godelnik\/","title":{"rendered":"Andrew Winston Explains Why We Need More Paul Polmans by Raz Godelnik"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reposted from Triple Pundit<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

On election night, while his fellow Republican, Karl Rove, was arguing about the election results in Ohio, former economic speechwriter for President George W. Bush,\u00a0David Frum, tweeted<\/a>: \u201cHorrible possibility: if the geeks are right about Ohio, might they also be right about climate?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Many people were intrigued by the notion behind this semi-humorous, semi-serious statement, wondering if this was another step in a shift we have been witnessing in the last couple of weeks in\u00a0the attitude towards climate change<\/a>. But is this really a brave new world where the Nate Silvers take the place of the Karl Roves or just a mirage?<\/p>\n

Among the people asking these sorts of questions was Andrew Winston, one of the prominent figures in the field of sustainable business who spoke at\u00a0Green Spaces NY<\/a>\u00a0as part of the Fall 2012\u00a0Bard MBA<\/a>\u00a0Sustainable Business Series (SBS). Winston, the co-author of\u00a0Green to Gold<\/a>\u00a0and the author of\u00a0Green Recovery<\/a>, who also advises some of the world\u2019s biggest companies on environmental strategy, offered a very clear picture of the present and future challenges that every company should consider, no matter if it is in the Silver camp or the Rove camp.<\/p>\n

One of the first points Winston made in his conversation with Bard MBA director, Eban Goodstein, was that the forces companies face aren\u2019t going anywhere and, if anything, they\u2019re only going to become more forceful. Take, for example, resource constraints \u2013 resources are becoming scarcer and, as a result, more expensive. It\u2019s is not a scientific debate, Winston explained, it\u2019s just happening, and it\u2019s a paradigm shift companies have to deal with as we move toward a 9-billion people world.<\/p>\n

We got used to believing for a long time in the myth that green is hurting the economy, Winston said, and this state of mind was one of the reasons why progress has been so slow. Even eco-efficiency, which is a strategy that seems to make so much sense on every level wasn\u2019t able to avoid this sort of green vs. economy struggle, and only in the last couple of years have companies finally accepted the idea that this is a win-win strategy.<\/p>\n

The problem is that we don\u2019t have time, he added. Winston quoted two studies, the first from\u00a0PwC<\/a>, estimating that \u201cthe required improvement in global carbon intensity to meet a 2\u00baC warming target has risen to 5.1 percent a year, from now to 2050,\u201d and the second from\u00a0McKinsey<\/a>, which estimated that we need to increase carbon productivity tenfold by 2050, or otherwise \u201cthe consequences will be stark.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, companies don\u2019t seem even close to meeting these goals with an average improvement of\u00a0about one percent in annual carbon emissions reductions<\/a>. Why is that? Winston made the point that the short-termism kills us, explaining that we need more CEOs like\u00a0Paul Polman<\/a>\u00a0who stopped providing earnings guidance and quarterly profit updates to investors when he took over the company and said he would be focusing on real value creation.<\/p>\n

I asked Winston afterwards if he thinks climate math can win over short-termism as long as Wall-Street and regulation support the latter rather than the former. He told me that he certainly hopes so. \u201cThe reality is that math, physics, and nature will eventually trump all. The problem is that a part of the investment community \u2013 not all investors by any means \u2013 are entirely focused on short-term results. Some very high percentage of shares trade hands within a day now.\u00a0 That\u2019s obviously not the \u2018value\u2019 investor style,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

While it\u2019s clear why companies need to be on board (who will buy shampoo if you don\u2019t have water?), there\u2019s still the question if we can have the next wave of sustainability without some support from consumers, which we seem to lack today. I asked him what he thought about it and he replied that he wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n

\u201cBroadly speaking, there are three legs to our society, government, business, and people\/citizens.\u00a0 All three will need to change and re-think how we do things. But I don\u2019t think we can count on too much leadership from consumers. We\u2019ve had 42 years of Earth Days to raise awareness, and the percentage of people buying green (and paying more for it at times) is still limited.\u00a0 People will buy greener products when they are better, safer, cheaper, etc, etc. So I think your phrase \u2018some support\u2019 is the critical phrase\u2026some support, yes, but not leading the charge,\u201d Winston said.<\/p>\n

Going back to companies, he said that business needs to start talking about green as the way to prosperity, evaluate how to reach zero impact all over the value chain and stop the constant pursuit of the business case for sustainability, which he finds pointless, especially given the many parts of in business that don\u2019t necessarily have a clear \u201cbusiness case\u201d like R&D, yet no one asks them time and again to provide it.<\/p>\n

Would this sort of rational approach help win the heart and mind of business? It\u2019s hard to tell, but from Winston\u2019s talk it\u2019s very clear that the question is more about \u201cwhen\u201d rather than \u201cif.\u201d For our sake, hopefully it will be sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n

[<\/a>Image credit: Bard MBA in Sustainability<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Raz Godelnik is the co-founder of\u00a0Eco-Libris<\/a>\u00a0and an adjunct faculty at the University of Delaware\u2019s Business School, CUNY SPS and the New School, teaching courses in green business, sustainable design and new product development. You can follow Raz on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reposted from Triple Pundit On election night, while his fellow Republican, Karl Rove, was arguing about the election results in Ohio, former […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[63,11,38,10,64,30,60,31],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stories","tag-andrew-winston","tag-business","tag-eban-goodstein","tag-events-2","tag-green-to-gold","tag-mba","tag-nyc","tag-sustainable-business-series"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":507,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions\/507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/mba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}