Living Between Worlds • Is Larry Lagging? • Can books change anything? • Sustainable Brands
LIVING BETWEEN WORLDS
My monthly ZoomSalon, exploring how we might live with calm, grace, and power in “the time of monsters,” continues next Wednesday (and every third Wednesday) from 12:00-1:30pm PT. You’ll find our past calls (and other gems) on my YouTube channel. (While you’re there, consider subscribing to get notified of new postings.)
Register here for next week’s call and future sessions. NOTE: Please zoom in five to ten minutes before noon, so we can start right on time, with everyone included.
IS LARRY LAGGING? (a/k/a My love/hate relationship with Larry Fink)
“Rich Countries Must Bear the Cost if We Can Ever Hope to Achieve a Net-Zero World.” That may seem obvious to you, dear reader, but it becomes a Big Deal when declared by Blackrock CEO Larry Fink in the New York Times. But it’s a big deal that’s both heartening and disheartening.
On the plus side, Fink calls on the world’s financial leaders to “reimagine how the world can use finance to reduce the risks from climate change… and mobiliz[e] enough private investment to help developing countries do their part.” He asserts that “stimulating [the] $1 trillion per year of public and private investment [needed] to reduce emissions will require closer to $100 billion in grants or subsidies from countries that can afford it.” (Compared to the $16b/year of public funds currently invested).
On the minus side, Fink’s explicit call for “grants or subsidies” to encourage private capital to do that, and his implicit threat that business won’t invest in the future of the world unless bribed by taxpayers to do so. Smart ones will. Worse: not a word about eliminating existing subsidies to the fossils—many times larger as the “do-good” subsidies he’s proposing—which was front and center in the pre-COP26 statement released by the $90 trillion Glasgow Financial Alliance for NetZero (of which Fink is a Principal). That message should be everywhere, Mr. Fink!
CAN BOOKS CHANGE ANYTHING? CAN WORDS?
A friend asked that this morning. (Well, “asked” is a nice way of putting it.) This was one of many challenges that I’ve seen lately saying “we need action, not words” on the climate crisis.
Well, we do—since hardly anyone—countries, companies, cities, folks like you and me—are on track with our climate commitments. But I’m of the mind that words can be actions, and that they certainly contribute to actions—in our thoughts, interpretations, communications, and mobilization of others.
So, yes, sometimes books can change things. They have. Ecology of Commerce and Biomimicry are just two of the many that come to mind.
This season we’re seeing a flurry of books that have that potential. Here are a few that have jumped to the top of my teetering reading pile. (Reviews to come as I make my way through them.)
- Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation, from Paul Hawken et al.
- Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take, by former Unilever CEO Paul Polman and our friend Andrew Winston. (Here’s what I wrote the day it was released.)
- Climate Positive, by Natural Logic alum David Jaber.
- Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future, by MacArthur Fellow Saul Griffith
- Mobilize—Dancing in the World, by Chauncey Bell.
What are some of the books that have changed your life or your world?
TALK TO ME!
- Strategic coaching—I can’t do your laps for you but I can help you “succeed”…and enjoy the journey!
- Thought Partnerships—for the deep conversations you can’t have with you boss or your staff…and don’t have with yourself.
- Living Between Worlds—join me Wednesday!
- Advisory services—My climate crisis question for your company: What if you had to? What would you do?
In solidarity,
Gil
Gil Philip Friend • Trimtab for Trimtabs™
CEO, Natural Logic, Inc. • Founder, Critical Path Capital • Keynote Speaker—Book me now!
Tel: 1-510-248-4940 | Cel: 1-510-435-6346 | Blog | LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube channel
The task ahead (if we were to really tell the truth about it):
Reinventing the economy of an entire planet.
This planet. In one generation.
New: On-demand sustainability micro-learning—for $1/month/employee (or less)
PS: Going to Sustainable Brands next week? Join us Monday for a not-for-the-timid virtual session about Sustainability Myths, Lies, and Blindness. (Virtual, alas, out of an abundance of Covid caution.) Conference details and registration here—and a 20% discount with code: “SPK20”!