Six cheers for climate change… Hip Hip…!

This is the third article in a series about a new role, vision, mission for all small to medium business owners. For the first article in the series, which is a regularly updated, living document of new initiatives, see Living Document.

Right now, every day, the team at Innovating Our Futures shouts. “Six cheers for climate change!” Have they gone mad, mad, mad, Neville?

Well, they’re suggesting no cheers for the fact of climate change, and global warming, of course. Nor for all the hoo-haa that surrounds them. Nor for the lies, falsehoods and half-truths we hear everyday. Multiple boos for these.

And multiple boos for those individuals, politicians, publications and business CEOs who still deny the reality of global warming. Or that human behaviour causes or contributes to it. Or that we can, and should, do anything about it.

But rounds, and rounds, of cheers…

But three big cheers for the fact that, finally, we’ve reached a tipping point about global warming. And this is big time, significant! And important.

Three cheers, also. for Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old Swedish climate activist who, at this week’s United Nations Climate Action Summit, spoke so passionately and directly to world leaders, and who has helped ignite a global movement.

“How dare you?” she says in a pivotal Martin Luther King-like speech. “We’ll be watching you, she repeats, so poignantly…Change is coming, whether you like it or not.”

Get on with it

Greta, and hundreds of millions of other young people worldwide, now want an end to “empty words”. They demand that every world leader, every citizen, and every business “stop wasting time,” and get serious about curbing carbon emissions, and global pollution in general.

If not, her message to politicians is clear: “We will vote you out.” And with businesses, “We’ll stop buying your offerings.” Three more cheers.

Do give a damn!

Three cheers, also, for the 93-year-old natural historian, eco warrior and broadcaster, David Attenborough, who after 70 years of documenting so wondrously our planet’s animal and plant life, is now ramping up his message of climate warming destruction.

He has seen with his own eyes, and his documentaries reveal, the increasingly devastation of world treasures, like our Great Barrier Reef.

“You [Australians] are the keepers of an extraordinary section of the surface of this planet, including the Barrier Reef, and what you say, what you do, really, really matters,” he says with a sad strength in his voice.

Then he continues with congealed anger: “And then you suddenly say, ‘No it doesn’t matter … it doesn’t matter how much coal we burn … we don’t give a damn what it does to the rest of the world’ ”.

Walking the talk

Three cheers, also, for the millions who have taken to the streets in cities around the world, demanding all of us take action on global warming.

Oh, yes, and three more cheers for all those Big Businesses, and especially the small to medium businesses, who are starting to act on climate warming, and global sustainability as well.

That makes eighteen

Okay, okay, that makes eighteen cheers, not six. But why not? For, finally, suddenly, dramatically, we have reached a tipping point about climate warming and global sustainability.

Tipping point

Tipping point!? Yes, a tipping point. Author and columnist, Malcolm Gladwell defines a tipping point as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behaviour crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire.”

It’s not the reality of climate change and global warming that have suddenly changed, of course. Though they continues apace too.

What’s changed is a vital, upsurge in global awareness and a wildfire willingness now to act.

So, finally, finally, finally, world, leaders, politicians, CEOs, and every citizen will act, and we will change our behaviour dramatically!

Reaching this tipping point is the difference that will make all the difference. We can bet the future of our businesses on that! And the future of us, and our kids, as well.

Because our failure to act now, dooms both our businesses. And the lives of our kids – whose future we have stolen.

But hang on a moment?

Doesn’t transforming our individual and collective behaviours around global warming change our way of life? And doesn’t being serious about reversing climate warming alter the traditional role, mission and profit-making-taking of Business. And won’t that cost, cost, cost?

Yes! Yes! And yes! And three cheers for that!

Tip of the iceberg

What’s more, as we as business owners genuinely incorporate “care for the planet” into our role, mission, decisions, strategies and actions, we open up a Pandora’s box.

For between 50-70% of our suppliers, distributors, customers and potential customers now demand, that to be credible we must become, and be seen to be, “agents of whole system change.” Including, but not limited to, climate change.

Fail to do that, and they abandon us!

What this means

This means we are required to play our part, as citizens and businesses, in ‘fixing’ some of the other social, technological, ecological, economic and political [STEEP] tsunamis hitting the world.

Wow! That’s steep! It’s a rewrite of capitalism. And a total transformation of all the givens of business.

Yes it is! But it’s the only path to our future survival and thrival. The lot of all humankind as a whole, is at stake. For make no mistake, the planet will survive. It is very good at throwing off parasites like us.

The key question is will we continue to survive and thrive? And the answer is: Yes, but only as collaboratively and individually we all change our behaviours, dramatically, starting right now.

Going where no one has gone before

But let’s get real. For most of us, this new and more vital role is nothing we have ever done, or even considered before.

So we have an enormous amount of learning to do. Learning, and action, we believe, that’s best done is custom-built SME cohorts. Like, for example, the Innovation RoundTables, facilitated by Innovating Our Futures. And within communities that we link into, or we create.

With later articles in this series you find a clear road map of how we can take on this new adventure.

Please join us.

Next article in the series: All a bit STEEP? Seven key trends!

To think about now: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead.

Feel free to share this article, and any in the series, with your colleagues.

Want to know more? Want to dialogue? Want to be part of the new role and mission?
Contact Neville Christie on +61 420 978 932 or neville@nevillechristie.com

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