Thank you guys so much for coming here tonight
This is my true pleasure to be here. This is my first lecture. I am the new executive director Lauren Weston
I've been in the organization four months and so far
I have seen now all - with this evening included - all of our program components and I am
Continually impressed about the work that Acterra does in the communities that we serve and all the ways that we do that work
We're working in electrification. We're working in underserved and underrepresented communities.
We're at the forefront of EVs.
It's really incredible how we serve the communities that we do and the wide swath of programming we provide
I'm so excited to share this work with you. I'm excited that we're part of the lecture series tonight together with Bill.
Huge thanks to The Foster. I mean if you've had the time to walk around
The Foster is about this amazing journey and the beauty of nature and we get to be part of that.
So, thank you so much for being here tonight
Thanks to The Foster - making sure I'm not forgetting anyone our sponsors
Of course the Air District, the Foster itself the Gillilands -
just amazing opportunities that they provide us for these education moments together, and I can't thank them enough for their support
And I get the pleasure of introducing Bill who I have had
Many hours with over the last few months and I'm so appreciative of that
He has a lot to teach me and I'm so grateful for his time. He of course is here to talk about
Corporate advocacy this evening. So I want to turn the mic over to Bill.
Thanks, Lauren.
And one moment -
I've got this for some notes just in case I
Get lost or fall asleep or something
So well, I'm delighted to be here and thank you all for coming out
I know some of you they're actually a remarkable number of faces. I don't recognize
But hopefully I'll get to know all of you a little bit better. I
Want to talk about what we need to do and what I think needs to happen
For us to actually meet the challenge that the climate I'll call it an emergency because I think it is that the climate emergency
Poses and we need to treat it like an emergency and everybody needs to act like it's an emergency. So
We have seen amazing leadership by companies. I think over the last decade compared to 10 or 15 years ago
What companies have done has been I think extraordinary and I've been lucky to play a part in that
at Google and at Facebook, and working with many many other companies.
It hasn't been enough. And
So
the theme of this talk is "One giant leap for mankind": Corporate climate leadership in the next decade and
It's really about getting companies to move from
the individual actions they're taking in their operations and in some cases in their supply chains to
Advocacy for policies that will actually scale all those amazing solutions to the entire society in the entire
economy at the speed that we need it because this problem is all about speed and scale and and
That requires policy
and
policy success on the policy front is gonna require
Advocacy not just action. I used the phrase one giant leap for mankind
many of you
Probably recognize this picture
I saw it on I think an 11 inch diagonal black and white TV with really sh*tty reception back in 1969
when I was
Almost 12 years old
That's Neil Armstrong about to put his foot on the moon
And you may remember his famous statement - that's one small step for
Man, and I think he meant to say 'a man', but I think he just said man
but one giant leap for mankind and it really was I mean we set -
He and a small number of other of men - only men -
Set foot on another
body in the solar system.
So you know that happened for a few years in the late 60's or early 70's and that's it
Hopefully someday we'll do that kind of thing again, but he was one of my earliest heroes
I was in awe at this. I was inspired by it - the effort it took from
when Kennedy said "we're going to the moon" until we got there and then for a number of years after
it was extraordinary and inspiring
And it was much easier than what we have to do in climate
So I think it's a it's a useful metaphor and a useful point of
Inspiration and it's time for companies to make in some sense a similar leap from what they might do for themselves
To what they need to do for all mankind.
That's that's the point I'm trying to make.
Ok, let's see if I can
so
Let me start by saying a little bit about myself
I mean, I think there was a short bio and the the information about this
I know some of you but not all but but to paraphrase Admiral James Stockdale, Ross Perot's running mate in 1992,
Some of you probably remember him - some you may remember better the SNL parody of him, which was actually really funny
who in the
there waas probably only one vice presidential debate who you know, in the debate was sort of opened by saying "well who am I,
and why am I here?" which I don't know why that phrase has stuck in my head, but
but it did - so
I've had a long career starting in academia. I got a PhD at MIT. I was on the faculty there
I got tenure I came out here on sabbatical. I lost the return ticket or threw it away or something all sorts of reasons
I stayed out here
I was at Digital. (Well that color isn't working too well.)
But that's sort of about what happened to Digital
Some of you many of you remember Digital which then became part of Compaq
I was still there when that
Acquisitions / merger happened and then that became part of HP which still exists in several incarnations in parallel
Or I don't quite understand how this happens --  anyway
So so I was there, then I went to a startup called Akamai - still around, huge -
They're building a gigantic new headquarters in Cambridge, Mass
I was chief architect and then CTO there, and then I hit the total freakout stage on climate
I'd been hearing about climate change in the 90s
I may have sort of been an environmentalist my whole life but in the late 90s
I was learning more about climate change like this is scary, but bush and gore both said they would regulate CO2 so
You know, it was all going to be good
we all know how that worked out and
by
2004 as we were kind of moving into the that was scary. I think right ran against Bush
Into that election. It seemed pretty clear that Bush wasn't going to do anything. It wasn't clear if Kerry got elected
He would be able to do anything and I was increasingly freaked out and at 3:00 in the morning when I couldn't sleep
If it wasn't because one of my kids was screaming and waking me up what I was thinking about was not the really hard cool
Interesting problems that I was working on at work - it was climate change.
And so I decided it was a good time to see if I could do something professionally on climate and I was lucky enough
About a year later
Beginning of 2006 to land a job at Google where they basically said we want to do something on climate
We don't quite know what that means what we could do what needs to be done?
Figure it out. I mean that was an extraordinary
You know sort of job to be handed and I feel lucky and grateful
They took a chance on me and I think I did alright.
So I did that for six years and then I went to Facebook in a similar role
The Google job turned into a far broader sustainability role Facebook was sustainability from the get-go, though
The big focus was energy and as a result, climate. So I've done
most of the parts of this big complicated system that need to change that doesn't mean I've been deep in everyone but you know
it's it's R & D and innovation, it's deployment, it's startup companies , it's finance both on the
Project finance side and the investing sort of adventure-investing side. it's policy. It's all sorts of other sides
It's human psychology, God help us, sort of part of the problem -
and I've learned a lot about what works and what doesn't and so what I want to focus on today is
What I think is needed and is missing today because there's a lot of great stuff happening
but I think the evidence pretty clear it's not enough and I'm here to issue a call to action to
companies and
many of you work for companies - not all
but most of you know people work for companies and
Everyone who works for a company can play a role in
Pushing companies to do more. Ok. So the call to action for companies is
What you've been doing - for the last decade or more, or for some maybe it's the last year or two - is great
It's been incredible leadership. We need more so it's time to step up
And maybe past time but as a number of people have said, you know
The best time to act on climate was probably 25 or 30 years ago. The second best is now
So let's not wait until tomorrow or five years from now or 10 years
It's time to get get going and treat it like the emergency it is
So to set a little context, and to butcher
A phrase from Game of Thrones - "the youth are coming!"
And this is a picture of Greta Thunberg
Who has become maybe the poster child of the youth movement - She's not in any way the only
leading youth activist
There are at least a thousand other people between 14 and 25
Who are real leaders in the youth movement, and there were six to eight million
Young people in the streets a few weeks ago around the world. So this is this is a movement
But she has been speaking with a moral clarity and a simplicity of message that has been resonating and
Has gotten a lot of young people to rise up and I think it's beginning to have an impact and
the thing that I found interesting having been working in the climate space for 15 years is
We spend a lot of time in in the climate world
Debating "What's the right message?"
and how do we motivate people - and we don't want to scare people too much because then they'll check out - and just you know,
Say oh, it's just too complicated and we're doomed so I'm gonna go drink wine and enjoy the beach
and maybe that's true for people my age and some of your ages, but
She's not speaking from a place of hope
Young people are terrified
and
That terrors into passion and energy and action and also anger that all of us
Because we've been not really addressing the problem. So I I think
We all have ideas about what the right messages and honestly
I think the truth is that the right message differs for different people some people you say there's an opportunity to make an enormous amount
Of money trillions of dollars, they'll go I'm going there other people like, you know, I have enough money. I don't care
But you say the world's gonna end if we don't do something. Okay, I can do that. So people are motivated by different things
There isn't one message. But what we need to do is get all of us together to act so
She's inspired millions of people around the world including adults
She has embarrassed and her her peers have embarrassed
world leaders and
They have begun to shift not enough, but some I was in New York
I guess it helped at almost three weeks ago for the climate strike and then the day after the strike on Saturday
There was a youth climate summit at the UN that I was lucky enough to get an invitation to to observe
It was young people speaking and there were world leaders like the secretary-general was there
but to listen and a few people like him got to respond, but they weren't there to give speeches they were there to
listen and absorb and react and
It was really powerful and the energy and the passion and the fear and the anger on
Friday during the strike and then on Saturday at the the summit at the UN were palpable
I was also in New York then the following week for a few days for what's called climate week
where the UN had a climate summit official UN governmental meetings and then
all around New York City were many other meetings organized by companies and by NGOs and so on and I would say the contrast between
the message from young people and the energy and the sense of urgency that they conveyed and
what was conveyed during climate week which was
companies are doing great stuff and they just need to do more and
It'll all be fine was sort of the implication I think was striking and to my mind wrong. It might have been a good approach
Ten years ago or maybe even five years ago. It's pretty clear. It's nowhere near enough today
so
We need to
We need to act on that fear and with the sense of urgency
I do want to say there is reason to hope it's not hopeless
There is climate change already, you know, most of you are from the Bay Area
Maybe all of you are from here if you were in the Bay Area a year ago in November
During the fires
You know, we were all walking around and wearing masks because the air was so painful to breathe and
When was the last time that happened here I
Mean well two years ago there were some bad fires
But it was like a couple days last year two weeks. I grew up in Cincinnati
I mean
I wish we had all worn masks when I was a kid in the summer because
The air quality in the summer with air inversions was awful
but
but last year I mean it was like Beijing and
That fire wasn't caused by climate change
It certainly was made worse by climate change and our fire seasons are worse because of climate change
so there are effects there already happening, but there is hope in the sense that
We have choices to make
and we can
Choose to sort of continue on the path. We're on and
just things will get worse and worse and wind up with three four six eight degrees Co warming or
we can choose a different path and
maybe halt warming to one and a half degrees or two degrees C and
There'll be worse changes than we're already seeing but much less bad
Certainly, then if we let things warm a lot. So there are reasons to hope and there's a lot of good stuff happening we've seen
You know companies setting targets and acting they're these these various
Initiatives and groups called RE 100 and EV 100 and REBA the Renewable Energy Buyers Alliance
all of which are about companies
Setting really ambitious targets for their operations and banding together to work together to help each other meet these targets
So there's a lot of great stuff happening
and
We know how to transform our electricity grid. We know how to decarbonize most transportation
We don't really know today how to do airplanes or ocean travel
Going a long distance ocean travel, you know cost effective or maybe even at all
But we have ideas
And we have time to deal with those if we deal with the other stuff aggressive. Well, you know that decarbonized buildings
I don't know if this building has a kitchen
but half the
residential
dwellings in the US have natural gas and
Many commercial buildings have natural gas and we burn as much natural gas in buildings , commercial and residential buildings, not industry
but buildings for
heating hot water
Cooking and clothes drying. Those are the main uses. We burn as much natural gas in building to those as we do in power plants
And we burn a lot in power plants. The amount that we burned in power plants has exploded in the last
Pun not intended
In the last decade or two because of fracking and
abundant cheap natural gas and natural gas
Along with the wind and solar displaced a lot of coal. So natural gas on the grid has has gone way up
Natural gas in buildings has also gone way up and is huge we need to stop
combusting that natural gas
And maybe in 20 or 30 years, we'll have enough direct air capture that's cost-effective to actually pull it back
pull it out of the atmosphere so we could keep burning it but
We don't have 20 or 30 years to make the kind of progress we need to make - so there's hope
We're making progress. We know most of what we need to do, but
It's not enough what we've been doing today today is not enough last year energy consumption and emissions from energy
Increased at a record rate
globally
So, you know there was there were a few years where in the US we saw emissions drop and globally we saw them sort of
Plateau and then they went back up
okay, so you could say well we've made progress but
it certainly isn't enough and
depending on whether you're a glass half empty or a glass half-full kind of person you might think we're failing and
We're certainly not on track to stay below one and a half or two or probably even three degrees of warming
Or as I've had some people say no, that's the wrong message we're not failing
We're just not winning fast enough like I don't care which message works for you, but we need to move a lot faster
So we need to hold on to the hope but we need to act with a much much stronger sense of urgency
So Hal Harvey if you've heard of him, he's one of the smartest people I know in the climate space -
engineer
and
Policy wonk who
understands
all these systems at a much deeper level I think than I do, but he likes to emphasize It's all about speed -
Speed and scale. We need to deploy solutions and decarbonize at
At this point a crazy fast rate and at enormous scale and
Doing that requires making very conscious choices
For those who are market fundamentalists and think that the answer to most things is Adam Smith should be up there
You know using the the strings
with his invisible hand
Well, Adam Smith actually talked about well-regulated markets though these days when market fundamentalists talk about market fundamentalism.
They forget that part
But it won't get us there fast enough - the IPCC a year ago and the 1.5 degrees C report
that they put out
gave us pretty clear guidance
If we want to have about a two-thirds chance in their estimation of keeping warming below one and a half degrees
Centigrade we're already at about one so that's not too far away
We need to decarbonize 45 percent by 2030
That's from a 2010 baseline
So it's more like 50 or 55 percent from today because the emissions today are higher than 2010
And we need to decarbonize a hundred percent by 2050 and then go negative
If we want to have a hope of staying below one and a half degrees
so
And people like to talk about well, okay mid-century. We need to be net zero or net negative
But we can innovate and do all sorts of things and we'll get there. But if we don't do the fifty percent by 2030
We will have baked in three or four or five degrees of warming and what we do from 2030 2050. It won't matter
But things will be pretty catastrophic so that it really isn't a thirty-year problem. It's a ten-year problem
and
Given the the amount that we have to do that to me. That's an emergency
That's not we can take our time and be measured and careful. It's like we gotta figure this out and do it
so speed and scale and
The question to my mind is what can we do?
What do we need to do have reasonable confidence that we will actually hit that 2030 target?
And and I have my own biases about what might make me feel like there's confidence
I'm not a fan of
honestly of the
the
models in the way of thinking that many economists have because I think it is driven in many cases from a belief that the only
thing that really works well is
Putting a price signal on things and letting the market work. It's magic in
That that is more efficient. And that does matter that does work
I don't believe it's the only thing and I actually believe given the speed and scale which we have to operate the risk of only
Doing that is really high that we wake up in ten years and go
well, that was a good try and
Now we're heading toward three or four degrees of warming and there's nothing we can do about
So
We need individual action, I mean I talked a little bit and and you know
You can go read about all the amazing things that companies have been doing
We need individual action by all of you and everyone we know and you know puts all on your house and buy an electric car
Get rid of your car and ride a bike. Whatever don't eat meat everything individual action is really important
It is not going to solve the problem
what we need is
Systemic change
But to get that we all have to take responsibility for it
all of us as individuals
but also all
entities companies etc that have influence in our system and
That's really the core of the point
I'm trying to make tonight that companies have enormous influence and they are not using it to drive
systemic change they are
acting in their own operations and
Then stepping back and saying well if everyone would follow our example, we'd be fine
but
I'd say the evidence in the last 15 years is everyone isn't following their example, and I'll say a little bit about why that is
so
Getting this to me in my mind requires policy
And when I say policy, I don't mean
Socialism whatever the hell that means. I don't mean government, you know ownership public ownership of the means of production, etc, etc
What I mean by policy is market rules
That guide us with reasonable confidence on to the decarbonization path
We need to and those market rules could include a price on carbon. They could include clean energy mandates
They could include all sorts of other things
California I think actually has a pretty good suite of policies that are
Don't have us quite on the path. We need to be on but getting pretty close
But there is no single silver bullet policy just like there's no single silver bullet
technology
and we need those rules or
We're gonna keep seeing good stuff happen and when we do good things will feel good, but we'll still all go off the cliffs together
and you know
fires will burn up entire towns and we'll have I mean I'm guessing I don't know what the the
How far above sea level we are here, but probably not very far
So and when I was at Facebook, I mean the Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park is basically at, I don't know,
It's probably three feet above sea level, right? So
You know, you know king tide and in a big storm
This is all going to be under water.  And in 50 years it will just be under water pretty much all the time.
so we need
policy not just
Hope that somehow it will all work out
We've seen a lot of innovation people talk a lot about technology
this is Silicon Valley, you know innovation is the lifeblood of this place and we're really good at it and
People talk a lot about AI and blockchain and materials and micro grids as things that will solve climate change, you know
Like I feel like I can't go ten minutes without seeing another headline cross
One of my devices about this thing that could be the solution to climate change
There was just a thing about you know
Bracelets made out of thin air because they're sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and they're turning them into some
Carbonate that they're using to make bracelets. So you make the direct air capture tangible. It's like if
People buy those and it makes them feel like actually that our solutions the solutions are just around the corner. We're totally screwed, right?
I mean
You know, we need to decarbonize the power sector. We need to decarbonize buildings. We need to decarbonize transport a
and also industry and agriculture
quickly and
direct air capture that maybe in 20 or 30 years is at a scale that is big enough to be significant is
Not something to get people focused on and think you know, it's right. It's just around the corner. Look it's on my wrist, right?
I mean it just it drives me crazy, you know AI Microsoft AI -
- I don't know what the number is now, but but you know a few years ago
They they basically committed 50 million dollars to helping
develop AI based solution using AI to help make the the earth a better place and help make the earth greener and
It's amazing and Google with Google Earth and Google Earth engine similarly, which is AI and big data and so it's amazing
Blockchain. Well, I actually think it's unlikely blockchain will make a material difference in this problem
I'd be happy to have that debate with people. I think blockchain is really interesting
but the the the the acolytes think it's the solution to everything as acolytes often do and
Given what I know about our energy system and what we have to do
I don't think the problems that are preventing us moving faster are addressed in pretty much any way by watching
Materials absolutely - micro grids absolutely - AI to some extent. So innovation is great - lots has been happening
But
Remember that polluters can innovate too
So you may have seen this headline in the spring and there was another one focused on Microsoft I think
a few days before the climate strike
basically about
It was Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
selling custom AI and cloud services to
Exxon and Shell and basically big oil and gas
And you might think that's terrible. They shouldn't do that. In fact, a lot of employees. They're saying that's terrible
We shouldn't do that and it's some level I think they're right
But it's not at all surprising. I
mean oil and gas have been at the forefront of
using
the the bleeding edge of computing technology
for
At least 30 or 40 years. I
Mean when I was at MIT and we were working on what we call distributed computing and parallel computing and supercomputing,
Some of the earliest commercial applications of supercomputing were seismic modeling
Because they're basically using seismic waves to take a you know, I guess you know
Would you call a CT scan of the earth that requires an enormous
There's a lot of data and back then it seemed like a lot today
it would probably I don't know fit on my watch but a
lot of data and an enormous amount of computing
To figure out what did that all that data
Tell you about the rock formations and what's actually down there? and how hard it would be to drill? and so on
And as computing's gotten better, they've stayed on the bleeding edge and the bleeding edge today is AI an elastic cloud infrastructure
so of course they're there and
If Google and Microsoft and Amazon didn't sell it to them, they'd do it themselves
Now, I think those guys could still take the moral stand and say well you can use our infrastructure
but we're not gonna actually actively aid in abet this but so Microsoft's put 50 million in AI for Earth and
Then they probably put I don't know a million dollars in helping Exxon build custom solutions
Where the negative impact of those custom solutions in terms of making oil and gas cheaper and easier to extract
Probably completely swamps the positive impact of that 50 million
In AI for Earth.
Certainly in the next you know, 10-, 20-year time frame. Long long term. Maybe it's the other way and
To some extent I'd say it doesn't really matter which has bigger impact
This is a big negative and if we rely on
Innovation the people who focus on that forget that in some sense the other side can innovate too and they have a lot of resources
And they're really good at it. So
Innovation alone won't fix it
We need to phase out the bad and phasing the good with rules that give us some confidence that will happen
Similarly, you know, there's there's been a
Lot of talk about how just information and communications technologies are going to decarbonize everything because we're moving into this virtual world
and we're digitizing everything and
You know, we're doing video meetings instead of coming in person
Of course, we're all here and I think it actually works a lot better. But you know, this could be over zoom or something
And it is true that for any single meeting
If people do it over video instead of flying or maybe even driving across town
Look, it is lower emissions. It's better for the environment
the question is has the introduction of all this technology been net positive or net negative for the environment and
all of those studies which are pretty limited and and honestly,
I don't know why they had to go the effort to actually do a study
But all the studies are about a meeting we do a meeting if it's done by flying
Car very carbon intensive its if it's done by video. Yeah, there's some routers and you know
Monitors plugged in and cameras and they use some energy and maybe that's call so but it's still really small compared to find people
Across the country are halfway around the world
So you look at one meeting it's great. But if you look at the system
Business travel has grown and
It's actually grown at an average annual rate faster than the economy
Now is that because we've introduced all this great collaboration technology or in spite of it
I don't know. No one's really studied it carefully and it may be really hard to tease apart
But if we're relying on this idea that somehow if we do, you know
If we virtualized and decarbonize things that will naturally lead to a much less carbon-intensive economy
It's not clear. That's true
Business travel per unit of GDP and per employee has grown
And actually I have hypotheses like, you know, 30 years ago or 40 years ago
You couldn't collaborate close to the people across the country or halfway around the world
Because it meant really expensive phone calls or mailing, you know paper
and so you you couldn't you had to fly if you in and it was really expensive so people mostly didn't and
today, with
zoom and slack and email and chat and
Videoconferencing and you know, etc people collaborate with people or halfway around the world where the only real barrier is timezone
We need more or less need to be awake at the same time
And actually sometimes it's like well we're working during the day here
And then when we're asleep your work your pick it up and you're working over there and we go back and forth and we're exchanging
all this digital information
Occasionally we actually talk
but we don't even have to be awake at the same time, but
What I've observed is today lots of Engineers travel
Because they're working closely with people
you know in London or Dublin or Paris or Seattle or whatever and
they want to actually be in a room with them a
Couple times a year and get in front of a whiteboard and they want to have a beer with them or a meal or whatever
So they travel and they didn't use to
So that is that why this is travel going on? I don't know,
No one has studied you carefully but the short story is from all the best data I've been able
to find, business travel has gone up so these solutions that are
You know
Virtualizing the world not clear they are
so again without rules that
decarbonize and force the decarbonisation
Where we're believing things are happening
And when we look at a tree, you know that trees doing great
And when we look at the forest like the whole canopy is on fire
But we're not looking at the forest. We're just looking at one tree that isn't on fire
That's probably a pretty mangled metaphor
There's also been a shitload of money
Committed by major banks to green finance
You know green bonds and you know funds that are focused on investing in wind and solar I mean hundreds of billions of dollars
which is amazing and
We need more of it but at the same time
There was a study that was put out by
Rainforest Action Network and by a bunch of others
but I think they were the main group behind it came out in the spring that said in
three years or two and a half years since
2016
the 33 banks finaled one point nine trillion dollars
into fossil fuel infrastructure and fossil fuel product projects
So yes, there's a lot of green stuff happening a lot of money flowing there, but it's dwarfed by the money
That's still going into the the legacy
Infrastructure because there's a lot of money to be made there
And as long as there's money to be made there that's going to keep happening
And as we keep expanding that infrastructure, that's just more stuff that we have to deprecate, you know at some point
So we need to decarbonize the whole system we need it's a system problem it's not about you know this meeting
Let's do it over VC. It's not about
Great. Let's go build a solar farm over there. It's about looking at the system and decarbonizing. We need to do it really quickly
Markets got us
Into this mess - and markets will get us out, but the markets need rules
To ensure the markets go the right way. So I
Believe you you may have heard of what are called science-based targets -
There's an initiative called the science-based target initiative that was started
Four or so years ago
by
Several NGOs that - one of the main ones is called We Mean Business
Which is basically getting companies to commit to targets for their own operations
Decarbonization targets that are consistent with what the science says we all need to do
Now I've long felt that you know given that they've got on there three or four hundred companies
I think that have committed science-based targets now
These companies are viewed - they are leaders,
They're viewed as leaders
But holding up as leadership companies doing what is essentially the average of what the entire economy needs to do to me
That's not leadership. That's to be a bare minimum
number one
number two
This is about individual action
a company is taking action in its
Operations and maybe now in its supply chain because a lot of companies are beginning to push on their suppliers
but that is not creating the system change at the pace we need so it's time for companies to make the leap from
science-based targets to supporting a science-based policy agenda and those policies are going to be
Different in different jurisdictions because the culture is different the existing policies are different
so they've got to work with the the the
Policies are already in place. The the political climate is different, you know, Bernie Sanders a place that you know
Vermont might adopt a very different set of policies from Tennessee
Because Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul's from Tennessee right there
You know the assuming Rand Paul got on board with we need to act on climate and we need policies the policies he would be
Willing to support or be inclined to support are very different from what Bernie would support. That's fine
As long as they give us reasonable confidence we're going to get there.
So but we need
companies to make this leap because without
Corporate support for these policies. We're having a really hard time getting them to happen
So, what does that look like?
I think what that means is companies need to be
Strong advocates - really champions for regional decarbonization because it's consistent with what the science requires
Everywhere they operate
In ideally everywhere. They source, you know, the
the chairs and tables and stuff in their
offices and the equipment in their factories
But also the products that get manufactured maybe in a factory in Asia by some third party manufacturing that they then sell
They have influence where they've got offices where they've got factories where they've got suppliers and they could use it
To drive real change systemically in those places. They're not mostly not today and that's going to take
standing up to
Other companies to utilities to fossil fuel companies to politicians who won't be happy about this
It's gonna take courage. It does entail some risk, but
That risk can be mitigated
Especially if we can get a bunch of companies to do it together because there's almost certainly in that kind of situation
safety in numbers
So I
want to digress with a story which is part of what inspired me to think along these lines, so
and it's about the
Stages that companies went through in engaging in
The issue of LGBT rights over the last let's say twenty years
But particularly the state-level though. Also, it happened nationally, and it's happened in other countries as well. But before 2010
Over the probably 15 or maybe even 20 years before that we had
Many companies by 2010 many many companies basically standing up and saying we don't discriminate
We offer equal benefits to people and domestic partnerships. We don't discriminate in hiring
we don't discriminate and who we serve will bake a cake for anybody and
I mean there were some companies that were saying we discriminate more proud of it
But there were a lot of companies standing up and saying we are good actors in our operations
We have policies against discrimination and they're they weren't perfect by any means and they certainly weren't implemented and executed perfectly
But this was a huge leadership compared to say 1990
and
then in
2015 we saw companies make a leap
Over 360 companies joined an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case on marriage equality. I
Mean this was corporate America
Most many big companies some small companies over 360 companies saying we think this is the right thing
For the economy for our businesses and oh, by the way
We paid some really high price lawyers to explain why it really is the right thing constitutionally
because in the end the Supreme Court has to have
arguments about that to to rely on
and I believe I've got to believe that you know that
Both the cultural shift we'd seen over the previous decade
It just in
society broadly, but it but also that kind of statement from
Much of corporate America
had to have had an impact on the court for
all that they might say we're you know, we're just
You know referees calling or umpires calling balls and strikes, and it's just based on what the Constitution says. I mean
The Constitution doesn't say anything about marriage equality directly, its interpretation.
And so I've got to believe that matter and then that same spring
Indiana passed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which some of you may remember
Salesforce and a bunch of other companies and some sports organizations and nonprofits
you basically
Stood up to Indiana and said you know what this is gonna change how we do business in the state Salesforce had just bought
a couple years before bought a small software company in Indianapolis and they were planning to hold a major, you know big conference
lots of economic
activity in the state from that conference, they moved it and
They said to the state, you know
we may have to rethink our presence here completely and a bunch of other companies did the same and
Indiana fixed it. They didn't repeal it completely, but they fixed the worst parts and
then
In 2016 North Carolina passed its bathroom bill, which you may also have heard of
And again companies have lobbied against it it passed anyway and
Then companies said well actually
We really meant it when we said we didn't like it and we didn't want you to pass that
so now you need to fix it and
It got fixed. I think the NBA all-star game moved -
I've heard North Carolinians care about basketball. So I think that was kind of a
Dagger to you know the midsection
but
the company said we can't keep doing business in the state in the same way if you don't fix this so they fixed it and
actually, six months later, Texas considered essentially the same bathroom bill this time companies can learn
People can learn companies can learn companies are always thought, you know
It's a lot easier to just stop a bill from passing than to repeal it or kind of fix it
Afterwards because that's a public fight where people get egg on their face like I voted for this and now we're undoing it
So in Texas when this bill was being debated from the get-go. They said if you pass it, we're leaving -
Effectively. I mean I'm oversimplifying the message a bit
It never passed and the same thing happened in a bunch of other states
So companies moved from we don't discriminate to we are advocates against discrimination. We have influence and/or damn well gonna use it
so I think we're at a
moment in time
on
climate
That is similar to where we were eight years ago on LGBT rights
where a we need companies to use their influence and be
the the zeitgeist is such that it it I think the the the
Stars are aligning to push companies to do it
And so they need to move from action to advocacy
For those of you familiar with the the literature and the lingo and the anti-bullying world
They need to move from being bystanders. So they're good. They're not doing bad stuff. They're not polluting to being upstanders
I mean, they are advocates against bad stuff broadly. They're pushing back against the bullies
They're stopping the bullying the harassment or whatever. They're
Helping get policies put in place that stop the pollution
That's what we need
So what would and I know there's some people here from the Citizens Climate Lobby and business climate lobbying and other groups that
Have been deep in the policy world for years. What would a
policy - Science Based policy agenda look like?
Okay, and so I've enumerate to hear what I think are some
Critical principles. Number one it needs to be aligned with the latest science. So that's gonna change
is
If we continue dithering in two or three years the policies we're gonna need
To get us where we need to be are going to be much more stringent than what they are today
What they what we need today is way more stringent than what it was ten years ago
I mean, I I feel bad for the people who have a very strong
conservative free-market
Philosophy and only want that kind of approach because that might have worked that alone might have worked twenty or thirty years ago
Or maybe ten it's not enough today. We need other policies to
I think it needs to be rooted in climate justice because what is driving the shift in?
Public sentiment and the the energy and urgency on this issue
is mostly young people and they think of this as a human rights and and
justice, environmental justice issue many of them not all but many of them and
So if you want to build the political coalition and the power to actually get real policies passed if it's not written climate justice
I think that's going to be really hard
It needs to be politically possible, which means we need to check our ideologies at the door or whatever. They are
Because you may think this is the you know
the
Economists tell me this is the the most efficient thing so we need to do that and I don't want to talk about anything else
Well, if that means we don't do anything
Then the fact that that would be efficient doesn't matter if it never gets enacted
so we need to be able to work with a large coalition of
Different interest groups in any given jurisdiction any region and find something that is politically possible
And I think a price on carbon is an important one
but we've also seen a lot of evidence that a
it doesn't do as much as some of the advocates think it well certainly not a politically feasible price on carbon, you know for
$500,000 a ton
I might feel reasonably confident it would get us where we need to go if it's
20 or 40 dollars a ton and increases slowly to 100. It'll make some difference but it's not going to create the transformation we need
And we saw in state of Washington. For example
they failed twice to pass a price on carbon once was a
Revenue neutral fee and dividend once it was a carbon tax
They also did at the ballot box and passing any kind of tax at the ballot box is probably just really hard
It needs to be transformational not incremental. I mean, this is an emergency
We you know, we can't you know incremental change everyone doing their their bit we need
the whole economy to do a lot and
And
What the thing I've hit on several times we we need policies where we can look at it and say with a reasonable certainty
we will hit the 2030 target and
I think given the risk if we don't my preference would be you know what let's
Do enough
To kind of overshoot the 2030 target to do better because odds are some of this stuff won't work as well as we think it
will so
Let's aim higher and hopefully we land there or aim lower in terms of warming whatever higher in terms of decarbonisation
Because otherwise whatever we aim at will probably fall short
so I do think we need a price on carbon and
If that's the first thing we can get in some jurisdictions great
But we also need complementary policies like clean energy mandates
Renewable portfolio standards going up to you know by day tax will have 100 percent clean energy on the grid
We need tax credits. We need evie mandates. We need building codes. You want to get natural gas out of buildings. It's building codes
Certainly for new buildings and then we need policies that actually incentivize and help, you know
socialize maybe the cost of getting out of existing buildings because is it fair to tell someone who 10 years ago bought a house with
natural gas that well, we all thought that was great 10 years ago, but now
You kind of out of luck
you got to rip the natural gas out in the next decade and it's on you to pay for it because
Society has said this is not okay. I mean that's a conversation we need to have how do how do we deal with that?
we need Rd for hard to decarbonize sectors like
Cement and air travel and ocean travel and other things that are large
Buckets of emissions and we don't have good solutions work days and so on
So there's a suite of policies that we need and it's gonna be different in different jurisdictions
The business case for this I think is easy
I mean, this is a lot of NGOs have been harping on this and a lot of companies including the ones I work for
It's like, you know, this makes business sense. We have bought clean energy. We've bought cleaner vehicles now electric vehicles we've
Invested in energy efficiency. We're saving money
Business case absolutely makes sense. And it makes sense where the economy as a whole I
Think there's lots of evidence for that in the business case
the the the alternative of not acting the
The negative consequences are so potentially dire that I think it makes the business case a no-brainer for acting
So why aren't we well?
The the business case that you know
if you buy clean energy today, you can do it and you can actually save money on your electricity bill is
Is good for getting companies to take action in their own?
operations and good for getting me to put solar in my house or to buy an e V because the total cost of ownership is
Lower, especially with tax credits and so on
but
Get going from there to
How do we decarbonize the whole system is harder? And I think part of the problem here just to digress for a second
I fell into sustainability kind of by accident how I came into it sideways
I was interested in climate and I found a job that started out as climate and energy and became
sustainability
What I've observed is that in the world of sustainability. We basically push sustainability people to speak the language of Finance the
Only way to justify something is by putting in the language of finance
Knowing a way to sell a project or anything is to say it makes economic sense bottom line
You know earnings per share cents for the company
And and that's the way most decisions are made or well in the end
That's the way they're justified
a lot of decisions are made because the CEO says we're gonna do this and I believe it's the right strategy and then
There's a lot of posto justification
but climate is
Not just a financial problem
it's a moral and human problem and
most
Sustainability many sustainability efforts are rooted in morality and humanity
But then we have to sell them
Insurance of the bottom line and sometimes you know, that doesn't quite pencil out
So I think we need to get business to learn to speak the language of morality and humanity not just get
Sustainability people trying to save humanity from the climate emergency to speak the language of Finance
You may have seen the recent letter from the Business Roundtable
Which I think was actually a good basically saying the purpose of business is not just to maximize shareholder value
So shareholder overall supremacy is has been dethroned
It's a broad range of stakeholders out you
So shareholders employees the communities we live and work in you know sort of the broad environment and so on
It's a great statement. It's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out and if business people
have the the language and the the the the tools to think about how to weigh the apples and oranges of
earnings per share and
You know how many people in Bangladesh are gonna drown?
I mean
I wasn't trained to think that way
I don't think we have I mean, I think moral philosophers have those tools. I think most of us really don't
But I think we need to - those are muscles we need to build.
So, let me go back to Greta and
Not just her I'm using her as a proxy for all the young people the six or eight million in the streets a few weeks ago
And the you know thousand young people like her from all the world and all different
Creeds and colors and you name it who are really leading this youth movement
because
They're freaked out about climate change and
They're freaked out about their own future
but they also
They're showing an amazing amount of empathy
For everybody around the world. They see it as a moral
Problem of human rights and and the future of civilization and they're saying that with real clarity
companies need them
Companies need that need young people as customers
Someday as shareholders when they have enough money to actually buy stock and in the near term
especially as employees I
Mean young people, you know, maybe not 14 year olds or 16 year olds
but 22 year olds and 25 year olds many of them have jobs working for companies and
the 16 year olds will have jobs someday and
Companies want to hire them and if companies
Alienate young people by being complicit with sending us all off a cliff. They're kind of a problem
so
This gets to my final points
In the world of policy and politics companies prefer not to get involved in fights. They don't have to get involved in
So, you know for Facebook like they've got to get engaged in privacy policy because it's central to their business
but they don't have to get involved in climate or clean energy policy and
they mostly don't they have some as have many other companies, but some
They think of silence as neutrality and they portray it that way - it's not.
Because in the climate world
We have an enormous amount of power and influence on the other side
fighting climate action
Every fossil fuel company is pretty much all in on fighting climate action
The the initiative 1631 in Washington State last year last November which was the carbon tax on the ballot
The fossil fuel industry put 34 million dollars into ad campaigns to torpedo it and they succeeded.
The pro campaign that was trying to get it passed I think had about 15 million
And I have heard that the fossil fuel
Companies were prepared to basically whatever the pro side sent. They were gonna suspect they were gonna double it for
Them. It's a fight to the death and
They will they're gonna fight
So there's an enormous amount of power and influence pushing back against climate action
So in that situation being a bystander is not neutrality
its complicity
And I think young people are beginning to wake up to this
NGOs are raising the bar yesterday
Think about a dozen
environmental NGOs released a letter urging
companies to
use their influence and be real advocates for
climate real climate policy science-based policy and to stop using their influence against it sometimes kind of
implicitly because if you remember the Chamber of Commerce you are lending your
Businesses voice to and supporting them in the climate denial and anti climate action work. They've been doing for decades
So it's complicity
young people are recognizing this NGOs are and
This is why I think it's so important to route these policies in climate justice
because that's how young people see it and
If you adopt a purely sort of technocratic approach to solving this problem
You may help us solve climate
But I don't think you're gonna make young people very happy and if young people don't like you
They're not going to buy your products. They're not going to want to work for you
They eventually want when they have money you won't want to buy your stock
So, you know, that's a real cost to your business
So just to close
If you need if your company or
Companies you know need a business case for stepping up as advocates for making this pretty big leap and it is a leap
Let me just use a
Somewhat overused quote from Wayne Gretzky when asked you know, well how do you play hockey so well?  he quoted his father
who said don't skate to where the puck has been skate to where it's going so leadership for the last decade has been
decarbonize your operations
That's where the puck has been. Where the puck is going is, be a champion for climate action
globally, societally, systemically.   And
Young people are expecting this, NGOs are expecting this, and companies that don't step up can expect to suffer as a result
So back to my call to action company needs to support science-based policies every where they operate
Everywhere, they source materials products, etc
Pressure encourage cajole brow be
I'm not encouraging violence, but whatever you have to do to get your peers to do the same
Because it's an emergency
So time to step up make the leap speak up
That's what leadership looks like for the next decade and that's what the world needs. Thank you
I'm stunned that was
right on time
So huge thanks to Bill.
We're gonna do a Q & A. We only have one working mic. So I'm gonna help him
identify
Perfect. And it looks like we have our first question right here
Right. So so to paraphrase
Expand my comments on shareholder value versus stakeholder value
Especially when you think about big funds whether it's retirement funds or just investment funds in general
It's a really hard problem
So, I think the Business Roundtable was talking about from the point of view of, you're the management of a company
The board, the CEO, the other top management, what is your responsibility? and for the last
40
45 years
it's been shareholder value, maximize shareholder value has been
Increasingly viewed as that's it -
anything other than that is
Do good or crazy stuff -
There are probably other words they use for it to , but and
The notion of
Companies should think about a broader range of stakeholders and the impact on them
I think is is a welcome shift and it was more of a fact of life in companies 50 or 60 years ago
I think where companies thought and
Acted on the larger context not just doing whatever they could for their own
bottom line, but when you think about an investment fund whether it's a retirement fund or
You know one of BlackRock's massive funds or an index fund
If the responsibility that those fund managers feel is maximizing return
Then it gets the same question of well if maximizing that return is continuing to drive
society off the cliff
Maybe they need to be doing something differently
And that's where some of the divest divest invests movement is pushing. So so the comment was about
looking for major leverage points and and I think the leverage point that I've been pointing out which is mostly unused today is
Companies using their influence in the jurisdictions where they operate city county state national
Even international though, the International stuff to date on climate has mostly been non-binding
To
Drive policy change, but there are many other leverage points and some of them are also not used much today
So the one you raises around insurance
businesses many businesses can't really operate without insurance and
If you look at the insurance industry, I didn't understand this until maybe fifteen years ago. It's not just their insurance companies
There are reinsurance companies that insure the insurance companies
that they take on the really catastrophic risks and
They have enormous power
because if if they say to all the insurance companies that they are a backstop for
We're not going to be a backstop unless you do X
if all the reinsurance companies say that and
as Carl said they're only maybe ten of them. I don't know the exact number but
There aren't that many that would create a lot of change potentially very quickly
And so there are some groups that are working to put pressure on and get the insurance
insurance and reinsurance companies to change
And I think we may see some real success in that over the next
Couple years. I hope we do.
So the question comment was
And I'm partly repeating this because A you don't have a mic, and partly for the recording
It's not going to get it
Asking companies to be upstanders instead of bystanders is a little bit abstract. Supporting a science-based policy agenda is kind of abstract.
What does that mean in practice?
And I I think I'd love to see companies say yes
We will support a science-based policy agenda and we will be champions for that everywhere. We have influence. That would be great
but in the end what matters is okay, you're in a jurisdiction and
Here's a policy that's being debated. Are they stepping up and supporting it or not? And
That doesn't mean it's a blank check any climate related policy companies should just automatically supply they're gonna be ones that are badly written
They're gonna be ones they disagree with for some reason
They're gonna be ones that they just fight because it hurts their business
But right now they're all almost all almost always on the sidelines
So give you some examples and I think it really then comes down to specific examples a little over a year ago in California
We passed SB 100
Which mandates 100% clean energy on the grid by I think 2045 it also accelerated the renewable portfolio
Standard from where it had been it almost didn't pass
We're out in California. Right one of the bluest states in the country and
This policy which was only about electricity
But was pretty well aligned with the science
I would argue actually, it doesn't really go fast enough, but will probably move faster than it requires, but it almost failed. I
Mean I was I was in a meeting
the day before the final vote where one of the people there got word that they were five votes short of
Passing it and there was a massive, you know sort of effort to get people to call in to their
Assembly Members and State Senators
There was a pretty strong effort to push companies that hadn't yet spoken up to speak up. In the end
I think about 35 companies supported it publicly there
probably a few more that made phone calls to you know state reps but didn't make a public statement and it passed and
Legislation is binary so it passed and that's a win but it almost failed and that's in, California
We're not yet on the track. We in California were not on the track we need to be in
Transportation - we're not on the the path we need to be on in buildings  - we're not on the path
we need to be on industry, you know, we're not actually on quite a fast enough path I would argue in
Electricity so we're not done in California, but California companies
Operate in other places other states other countries
The the example I gave of what happened with the LGBT rights fights in other states
the pressure in Indiana and North Carolina it came from
companies that were operating there
They weren't all headquartered there by in fact most of them weren't and the pressure that the the employee pressure that got them to move
In many cases was not certainly not just from employees in, Indiana and North Carolina
It was from employees in
California and Seattle and New York and Boston and Atlanta and other places so
So I don't think California companies are done. I think in fact, I hope they're just getting started
Both in California, but also outside so so I don't think this is easy
But you could say the same thing about gay rights or civil rights in general
It's not that there's one bill you pass a no now everyone's free in equal and it's all great. It's an ongoing
evolution
Where there's a high level principle of we stand for civil rights we stand for equality
we stand for climate justice and
Then there's okay. Well this policy do we support or not? That's that's going to take effort to to sort out
Not simple. So the question - to summarize, so ERISA (E R I S A), Employee Retirement
something-something Act (indistinguishable)
Income Security Act in in the 70s
had the perhaps probably unintended side effect of
pushing a much shorter term outlook and
on companies in terms of Wall Street and so on and
The actions taken by the Insurance Commissioner I think in California, right?
actually pushed companies insurance companies to really consider a climate and the impact of climate change in their portfolios and their
portfolios on climate change, right
So one of those policies had in the end
I think arguably a negative impact on
The economic system and ultimately that is playing out in terms of a negative impact on climate and many other things
The other policy was very intentionally
Aiming for a positive impact on climate and the question was how do we avoid the bad?
Onion usually unintended consequences and ensure they're good
I I don't have a simple answer to answer that unintended consequences are real and I think
Avoiding them requires a lot of argument and analysis and thought and you're not going to avoid them
That's partly, you know, I I am personally more of a fan of if we're gonna legislate things
Let's let's just legislate the outcome
Because the political process is hard and messy and slow and we don't get a lot of bites at that apple
So let's legislate the outcome like SB 100 by 2045
no carbon emissions from our electricity grid or like or like New York which just passed a law which basically says the entire state the
Economy of the entire state will be Net Zero Carbon by it was either 2045 or 2050. They're pushing some of the what would otherwise be
controversial political decisions on to regulatory agencies
Where they can be more responsive and respond more quickly and it's less political
but also my the point I was trying to make and I would argue that a carbon market is
Not about the outcome
So much as about the mechanism for achieving the outcome just as a carbon tax as a mechanism
It's sending a market signal which might achieve the desired outcome, might not
but if it doesn't then you have to go back to the
Legislative well and have those political fights if you legislate the outcome
We want to be carbon
You know Net Zero Carbon whatever by date X and here are the broad outlines of how we think that should happen
Regulatory agencies - this is what New York just did - "regulatory agencies. Go figure out how that's gonna happen"
And then adjust every couple years as we learn
I think that we are much more likely to get closer to the path
We need to be on and then to stay on it. That's that's my own personal feeling.
The the question was I talked a lot about kind of broad policy and what companies need to do. But as a
young employee
The questioners a month into a job. It's great
She feels powerless and how can how can she make her voice heard? How can she influence her company and
That's not easy, I don't know if you saw what happened at Amazon over the last year
Amazon employees organized they - uh
for - they pushed internally, they worked a lot talking to the sustainability team and others. They weren't happy with the answers
They were getting and finally they said okay. Well we're gonna act and then they realized that we have stock
because tech companies
give employees stock Lots companies do and
So they had standing to file shareholder resolution, so they did
and that
Pushed the company
I think that pushed the company to accelerate some of the things they'd been thinking about and they made some announcements in the spring
they asked the employees to which raw the shareholder resolution the employees said no, and then they wrote a letter to the board which was
Much more expansive in the ask of the company. They it was an open letter published on the internet and
They asked for signatures of Amazon employees. The last count I think they had over 8,600 signatures was about 12% of their corporate workforce
So I think the short int and then I think about 1,500 of them walked out on
September 20th in support of the youth strike. I think the short answer is it's hard. It's about organizing and it's about
Collective power in a collective voice not just one voice
so you need to find fellow employees who share your concern and your passion and
Then work together to organize
I think the Amazon employees have published a kind of handbook or playbook for organizing around this stuff
Which I think is a good starting point
I would love to talk to you about how you could begin to push your company and work with
other employees and at Nvidia but also
people at other companies
too
Right, there's the Silicon Valley Green Team Network
Which is a good place to start doing some of that organizing here, but it's a it's about organizing and you know
40, 50 years ago, we would have called it labor organizing and
Unions were much bigger and more powerful and many more people were in unions back then. I don't I don't know this is about
union organizing and having a sort of
certified union that actually comes with a lot of constraints but it's about labor organizing and using your collective voice and
And power as employees.  There is risk.
You know companies can fire you if you're a troublemaker, so you need to be careful and you need to be thoughtful
But I - sorry that's it's it's not a simple answer but I'd say that's okay. One more question?
Yeah, over there. Question was when am I gonna give the talk of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group? I'd love to
And this is first time I've really talked about this publicly
And thank you Lauren and Acterra for inviting me. Thank you
You
