No Case for Business-as-Usual
Being Intentional - Motive's bi-weekly newsletter for Intentional Shoppers
This past week saw what will surely be one of the most important developments in climate change this year: The release of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report. The IPCC--or the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in full--is a global collaborative effort to provide policymakers with scientific, unbiased, and apolitical assessments on climate change, including causes, developments, and consequences.
The Sixth Assessment Report does not provide any new scientific evidence in itself, but rather is a synthesis and discussion of leading research from around the world--it is the best insight we all have into the state of the science of climate change. And the insight this recent report provides is alarming. We effectively have a very narrow window of opportunity to make the meaningful choices we need to make right now in order to prevent decades of some of the worst climate consequences unimaginable.
The full report and supporting annexes and appendices run to well over 3,000 pages (download here) but the summary for policymakers--at just under 40 pages--provides a concise overview as a more manageable undertaking. Leading the science side of things at Motive, Taylor is trudging through the full report, but it looks like Kai will be let off the hook and get away with reading the summary (so typical of him!)
What is most interesting is how this Sixth Assessment Report has changed over time since the release of the IPCC First Assessment Report in 1990. For decades, the scientific community--pushed by policymakers--felt compelled to cushion our understanding of climate change in qualifiers. In earlier reports, the narrative held that human activity may contribute to climate change and that finding solutions would require global cooperation. This newest report is leaving no room for qualifiers or equivocation. Human activity is clearly causing climate change above and beyond that which is naturally occurring and solutions require immediate, explicit, and coordinated global action.
The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report is clear--climate change is real, we are accelerating it, the consequences are life-threatening, and it is all happening faster than we expected. Businesses and policymakers can no longer cite uncertainty or compromise as reasons to not engage in meaningful climate action. Of all the cutting-edge research cited in the report, its true value comes from its overarching narrative: There is no room for doubt, no room for error, no patience for denial, and no case for business-as-usual.
Keeping with the themes of the IPCC report, consider switching away from some of the worst climate performers among popularly recognized brands such as Lyft (RS:-33, ↓ 91%, 🌏 -50), Avia, And1, DVS Shoes--all owned by Sequential Brands (RS:-25, ↓ 84%, 🌏 -50), Breville (RS:-11, ↓68%, 🌏 -49), or Fitbit (RS:-29, ↓88%, 🌏 -48) and instead consider how much better other popularly recognized brands are performing, such as Qualcomm (RS:+42, ↑100%, 🌏 +76), Herman Miller (RS:+15, ↑ 64%, 🌏 +62), Ben & Jerry’s (RS:+25, rank: 83%, 🌏 +53), or Delta Airlines (RS:+18, ↑ 70%, 🌏 +58).
We are facing a climate crisis, and favoring the brands that are taking meaningful action is a simple yet powerful step we can all take...and clearly some brands take this situation far more seriously than others.
🌏 = Climate Action sub-score
This latest reporting period continued a trend that we have been monitoring for quite some time now. Search activity on AskMotive.com is overwhelmingly concentrated toward the flagship brands of the modern economy--that is, the largest and most recognizable brands around the world. What is most interesting, however, is that a search for McDonald’s is more likely to be followed up by a direct comparison search to Nike (as but an example) than it is by a search for any other smaller restaurant brand. Or a search for Google followed by a search for Patagonia, as another example.
This trend, and its continued strength in particular, raises a lot of questions for us. We will investigate them all, but most notably we are most interested in learning:
We see only minimal interest, and often none at all, in exploring the impacts of smaller and newer brands that advertise themselves as being particularly ethical or eco-conscious. Our own social media feeds are flooded with advertisements for waterless soaps, tablet toothpaste, plastic-free kitchenware, and so on all promising to be a low-impact alternative to the established brands, yet we are not seeing these brands reflected in the AskMotive.com searches. Is it that people are more willing to accept the eco-claims of smaller and newer brands without question? Or is it rather that these brands are spending a lot on advertisements that are not actually converting to likely sales and so few people are actually investigating the claims? Or is it something else altogether?
Is the process of finding alternatives to the brands we know actually a longer-term process? Are we exploring the impacts of all the flagship brands that we have grown comfortable with and then taking time to reflect on how this makes us feel and if we really do want to find alternatives? Does learning more about the flagship brands lead to a moment of introspection questioning how much we are willing to align our spending with our values? Is the process of becoming an intentional shopper one that is played out over the course of months instead of moments?
If you see yourself in any of these questions or have any thoughts about these, please do connect with us. The psychology of intentional shopping is an amazing topic to explore and it is the most fun to explore it collaboratively.
From our Blog:
Back-to-School Shopping with Impact - This blog was born from our last newsletter. The topic of back-to-school shopping was so timely that we decided to expand upon what we introduced in the newsletter and share it more broadly.
Don't Tear it Down to Make it Better - Change can be difficult, in fact, it can often feel outright impossible. But change doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing pursuit. Both systemic and incremental changes will help make the world better and we can each find the level of change that we are comfortable with. Not everything needs to be torn down to be made better.
From our Youtube Channel:
We know that studies can be dry reads, especially a study titled “Global Trends in Investor Relations” but this particular study provided some fascinating insight that we thought was worth sharing. As with most of the things we read at Motive, this, too, concerns the ever-expanding ESG market. This study focuses on the effects of ESG on the Investor Relations landscape. How companies communicate and manage their investor community plays a significant role in the life of any public company. If you’d experienced working for a public company you will have undoubtedly encountered the IR group, especially during quarterly financial reporting ramps up.
Investor Relations is yet another corporate group that is feeling the seismic shift brought about by ESG. As this study so clearly illustrates IR teams are struggling to keep pace with their investor community. From the report, “investors are not only pushing ESG onto the standing agenda of meetings with issuers, they are bringing their specialists to the table when issuers are not.” In fact, the disparity is striking: 83% of investors are bringing ESG specialists to the investor calls, whereas only 23% of issuers are doing so. This unbalanced scenario is not sustainable for companies, and it predicts a future of greater and greater demand for companies to have formal EG programs in place that are able to provide investors with the data they are eagerly expecting.
Very interesting learning about the lack of traffic surrounding the smaller "intentional" brands. My gut leans towards your first guess -- customers are more willing to trust the "intentional" statements of smaller brands. Not sure why? In many ways that is counter-intuitive, since smaller brands come and go. Maybe there is a cognitive bias or two at work here.