I made my living as a management consultant. For thirty five years I gave lectures on future trends.
From 1996 to somewhere around 2016, a common theme in my public lectures were the trends of globalism, religious fundamentalism, tribalism, and environmentalism.
I rarely spoke about the trend of environmentalism.
The reason is, the world I was involved in during the majority of that time did not include environmentalism into what was important to them. In other words, in the business world, challenges having to do with the environment were not present.
But, all of a sudden, after 2016, that started to change. The problems associated with the environment were seen as existential threats to the ability of businesses to carry out long term service. Added to this, investors, as if out of the clear blue, started demanding more investments in long term protection of the environment. Standards for investing in a sustainable future (ESG = Environment, Social, Governance) were popping up in strategic plans and portfolio funds as if a second gold rush were upon us.
Until you see something, you don’t see it. We were blind to sustaining the environment until we NOW see the serious damage being done to the environment.
For example thousands of people who were invested in stocks and bonds (whether that be employee pension funds, or high net worth individuals aggressively investing with Merrill lynch, etc.) realize that their surroundings are actually starting to change dramatically:
- California has started burning up;
- hurricanes are starting to drown the south;
- the east coast is flooding;
- the north west part of Australia is burning down;
- a tsunami in Japan destroyed a nuclear power plant that still has to be cooled 24 hours a day, and It may never be completely decommissioned;
- There are now frequent pandemics like SARS and Coronavirus;
- Clean air seems to be an elusive possibility;
- Draught and overpopulation have caused places like San Diego to introduce desalination plants;
- the polar ice caps continue to melt as temperatures rise releasing yet more carbon dioxide and methane.
It’s not that these events didn’t naturally occur. They did. The problem is they now occur more regularly with greater intensity. As a friend of mine put it, “ It’s just one damn thing after another.”
It’s finally seeped into our consciousness. After all, private investment funds are flowing into sustainability projects. At last count at least $30t has popped up in investor portfolios which total $93t. A full one third of all private funds from “western alliance countries” are now tied to environmental issues.
Follow the money. When large segments of people invest their hard earned money into sustaining our environment, you know that the situation has now captured the attention of earth’s population.