The ‘Sustainability’ Business: A Gathering of Rent-Seekers
National Review Online, March 24, 2022
The Economist Group, publisher of the Economist, has been hosting its seventh annual “Sustainability Week,” with one day in London and three others on virtual platforms.
The event’s website offers a revealing glimpse into the ecosystem that “sustainability” has created — an ecosystem that contains true believers, to be sure, but is also one in which opportunists can take advantage of the pathway it offers to power, profit, and prestige — or at least a job.
The roster of speakers features an impressive sprinkling of the prominenti, from the secretary-general of the U.N. to the secretary-general of the OECD to the president of Austria to the mayor of Stockholm to the co-head of “global public policy” for — wait for it — BlackRock.
But it was also striking how many on that roster hold positions that, to a greater or lesser degree, depend on the sustainability of the sustainability bandwagon. To take a sample, they included seven (or was it eight?) chief sustainability officers; a chief brand, innovation, international, and sustainability officer; two heads of sustainability; a global head of sustainability; a head of sustainability and inclusion; a vice president of sustainability; a vice president of inclusive impact and sustainability; a director of sustainability (not to be confused with a global sustainability director, although one of those was billed as a speaker too); a senior vice president of marketing for purpose and sustainability; a head of global impact; a director of SRI (or “socially responsible” investment); a director of a climate-risk initiative; an environmental-development director; a director of environmental action; a director of social purpose; a global head of climate business; a global head of impact; a professor in practice for sustainable finance; a head of sustainable energies; a research director for sustainable finance; a chief responsible-investment officer; a global head of climate business; a director of climate-resilience investment; a chief ESG innovation officer, a head of sustainable procurement; a global sustainability-services lead; an ESG solutions engineer; the managing director of a center for carbon transition, and more.
This selection does seem quite . . . extensive. Then again, the event’s website refers to “185+ speakers” and “65+ sessions.”
It’s hardly surprising that sustainability professionals would address an audience attending (virtually or otherwise) a “sustainability week.” Not having them there would be like a church service without priests. At the same time, the sheer number of them — a mere microcosm, incidentally, of the sustainability caste — is a reminder of how rapidly sustainability has caught on, and of the opportunities that it now offers. While we must assume that all such professionals care sincerely about working toward their particular vision of the planet’s future, it would be naïve not to appreciate that their hiring (and the recruitment, doubtless, of teams to support them) is constructing a powerful interest group that will not only regard any opposition as a danger to the environment but also as a threat to their livelihoods. The implications of where that will lead do not have to be spelled out, and it is by no means a phenomenon confined to the private sector.
We can also be sure that sustainability’s paid evangelists will be doing their best to get their message out — and far beyond their own organizations. They will see that as their duty, of course, but the more converts they win to their cause, the more influential — and the more valuable — they themselves become.
An event like this must have sponsors. Naturally its organizers are not shy about explaining why this is one to back:
Our commitment to quality, and our unique ability to reach c-suite executives mean that we are able to attract the most important, qualified influencers to speak at our events.
Series speakers past and present include Bill Gates, John Kerry, Tony Blair and Larry Fink.
Larry Fink, well, who’d have thunk it?
Sponsors this time round included Deloitte, a firm active in the ESG business, Planetly by OneTrust (“OneTrust ESG simplifies the gathering, storing and assessing of your company’s ESG . . . data and metrics”), Mott Macdonald (ESG consultancy is one of the services it offers), Ecovadis (“the world’s most trusted provider of business sustainability ratings”), Wellington (an asset manager “embracing ESG”), BCG (“WEF [Davos] and BCG are shedding light on the financial materiality of ESG factors and how those factors will evolve”), and Accenture (“we help our clients reinvent their businesses at scale, creating business value and sustainable impact for all stakeholders”).
Yes, there’s an ecosystem.
And the Economist Group is a part of it, quite literally, in word as well as in deed:
Since the Climate issue in 2019, The Economist’s climate coverage has permeated all aspects of our journalism. We take a clear-headed approach to analysing what does and does not work. A weekly email newsletter by the same name was launched shortly afterwards. In September 2021 we launched “To a Lesser Degree”, a podcast series exploring how everything—from finance to farming, transport to trade—must change to slow the pace of global warming. Over the last five years, our special reports have taken an in-depth look at the future of energy, water and the business of climate change. Our films reveal the politics of climate change, the definition of net zero and whether veganism could make a real impact on the environment. Our journalists explore the role that business and policy makers can play in reversing climate change, interviewing global leaders such as Bill Gates and Christine Lagarde.
The Economist is focused somewhat on the financial, so that’s an emphasis that would be expected at an event being organized by its parent. Moreover, as climate warriors have come to understand, harnessing capitalism is a way of advancing political aims (a specific response to climate change) without the inconvenience of going through the democratic process (The SEC’s new proposals on climate-related disclosure are just the latest example of this.)
And so, turning to this event’s agenda we see, among other treats, panels on greening the financial system, on innovation in green finance, on the best returns in green finance, and on how banks can gain competitive advantage by accelerating green finance. There were to be talks on investing for change (given by the founder and executive chairman of Engine No. 1, the activist fund that took on Exxon), on how digitization will improve company ESG data, and on analyzing environmental- and social-impact investments.
Another panel (advertised as “the road to nature-positive”) was to consider these compelling questions:
How can businesses across industries identify and calculate their natural-resource dependencies? What tools, metrics and targets exist to enable businesses to measure their impact on the natural environment? How can firms best understand the business risks that arise from environmental degradation and their own impact on biodiversity? What lessons can be applied from the journey towards net zero?
What lessons could be learned from the journey toward net zero?
Hmmm . . .
I wonder whether anyone suggested that, like all too many exercises in central planning, it has been an expensive shambles. Maybe one V. Putin (undisclosed location, Russia) took the time to send a message that he, for one, thought that the journey — which has, curiously, mainly been embarked upon by those in the West — was going very well.
Also on the agenda: a “fireside chat” on making money from sustainability, followed by a lunch break where the talk would revolve around unlocking investment for net zero, a topic so gripping that it was scheduled for further discussion during a networking break later the same day.
A conversation was promised on “embedding the value of natural capital in economic, financial and political decision-making”:
As world leaders such as Boris Johnson and Joe Biden commit to “mainstreaming nature across all sectors and into economic decision-making”, how can governments in practice use natural capital to deliver outcomes in a sustainable way?
Boris Johnson is leader of the British Conservative Party. That he can be paired with Biden says a lot about how far the Tories have fallen to the left (a slide, it must be said, that was well under way before Johnson).
Equally, this event demonstrates how deeply entrenched a certain notion of sustainability has become within the private sector, with serious implications for free markets, shareholders, and prosperity — and, it should be added, for, in all likelihood, scant ecological benefit.