As I am writing my 1800th article in eight years I would like to take some time to reflect on our common climate / energy situation, Corporate (Social) Responsibility and my own life.
A tall order you might say and yes, it is. But let us make this piece by piece.
We thought for years that national governments would solve that climate / energy conundrum. We were wrong. WE, the People will. Granted, countries might step up increasingly – I shall get back to this in my next article – but they have so much inertia that they might be moving as slowly as the Titanic to avoid that iceberg ( or, rather in our case, the lack of it…)
This brings me to the second point : CSR, while not new, is helping business ramping up against climate change. how businesses and communities everywhere can cut their energy consumption, switch to ever-cheaper renewables (think about global grid solar parity ) and just educate people to turn the damn lights and computers off after hours.
It is up to us, whether in our communities or at our jobs to make the world a livable place for our common future. Climate change is already here and scorching the Planet. Ol’ Europe is incredibly hot nowadays and Seattle is just hot and getting hotter.
But if we don’t act on climate, such temperatures will look cool in twenty or fifty years. Hence the importance to do something, and do it big and fast. Gratnted momentum is building on climate change action but it won’t be enough…
A huge amount of people when it comes to solving this mess only think about governments. They forget about businesses and communities. A larger amount believe that renewables like solar and wind alone hold the solution. They forget about energy efficiency and conservation. So instead of two angles to attack the problem, we have four !
What a relief, isn’t it. We are not as powerless as we think we are. Here is a little gif image I made rapidly to illustrate my poinf of view.
My last part for this long article is where do I fit in all this ? For a decade I thought I would focus on solar ( or other renewables ). This did not succeed really like I planned. It never does, plans always run amock.
So as I am working on my MBA in Sustainable Business at Pinchot, I am wondering which road should I take :
- Should I train myself in energy audits to help business and communities to cut their emissions ?
- Or should I rather train to become a CSR consultant that would serve the same purpose? Should I do both?
- Another possibility would be to work in multinational NGOs to help the world as a whole do so.
I really don’t know.
To solve this I would need to know which solution has the biggest impact while preserving a comfortable life/work balance ( and not “work/life balance” as I plan to live not to only work but also enjoy my friends and family, and perhaps one day, my own kids ). While not the most important factor, money of course, is somewhat important as well…
So there you go. I am in a puzzle right now. If you add the various things that I learned in the 25+ years of my learning experience you see I have cards to play that can be interesting