Caring about the environment: Necessity vs Practicality

Unless you've had your head buried in sand over the last few months, you will know that the environment and climate change is a major global talking point at the moment. Protests, strikes, office and classroom walkouts, activists making impassioned pleas to politicians demanding they act now before irreversible damage is done. It's hard to ignore, but as businesses, how much can we do and how practical are the solutions from a business perspective?

I'll start by saying, I care about our planet and all it's inhabitants, I don't want the world to overheat, animal extinctions to continue at the rate they have been and an environmental apocalypse to wipe out all living things. I think and hope the vast majority of people feel the same way, weather that happens in our lifetime or not.

I've tried to inform myself and from the documentaries I've watched and the warnings I've read from environmental scientists who dedicate their lives researching the impact we've made and continue to make, I certainly believe something has to be done. What exactly, I'm thankful to the people trying to figure that out and fighting hard to encourage the systemic changes required, but I myself don't know the answer.

Which I assume is how a lot of people feel. If simply saying we cared about the environment and agreed something needed to be done was all it took, the problem would have been solved years ago. The challenge for most of us however is being able to contribute to the solution, without having to make major sacrifices that result in us suffering, our business suffering or the people we care about suffering. A number of people are willing to make those sacrifices and I have the utmost respect for those people, but a large number of people that run businesses have to balance saving the planet with protecting their business.

I believe government legislation around emission levels is inevitable and not a matter of if but when now. The sensible and likely place to start is with the industries that contribute the highest proportion of carbon emissions. One of those industries is transport and logistics and as a business that works with freight and logistics providers, Cargo-Select is keen to help people negate any negative impact change in legislation might have on their business and it's employees.

The vast majority of businesses want to be socially responsible, but say for example a new piece of legislation came in that insisted companies reduce their carbon emissions, which lead to an increase in costs for the business, which in turn meant X number of employees lost their jobs. Those employees won't like that and neither will their employers.

For any new legislation to work for everyone, there has to be collaboration between government and industry, which I'm hoping will happen. I firmly believe technology can and will be utilised to help businesses monitor and reduce carbon emissions, something we're hoping to be involved in at Cargo-Select. The most important thing in my humble opinion however, is that we work hard to avoid a scenario where business owners are asked to make a choice between saving the planet and saving their business.

It is totally necessary for us to act and find solutions, lets try make sure the solutions we find are smart and practical for everyone!