From acorns grow mighty oaks

A big picture post incoming here, so if you're one to unsubscribe from LinkedIn posts that go on for ages and don't have a firm conclusion please do just skip right on by and please don't hit the unfollow button.?I'll get back to writing about bikes, but every now and then it's necessary to put thoughts down on what's going on outside our bubble and how, often, it's all related.

Last week I was part of a group of professionals spending the day on The Carbon Literacy Project course, led by Anne Snelson BSc DipM MBA. To be very upfront on where this post is going, I'm seriously very concerned by the trajectory of the climate. If you follow me on Twitter (@marksuttonbike) you've probably noticed my feed ratio tilting from bikes to the bonfire of the wilderness steadily more with each passing week. I often hesitate to post, but in reading about misinformation in the book 'Foolproof' lately, I think it doesn't hurt to not surrender the platform to deniers.

Anyhow, I've been in one of those the more you read the more you panic feedback loops since about 2019 when I first really started to notice changes in the world around me. Ironically, it was while I was indulging a life-long passion for travel on a sabbatical - that's when it hit me that the world has a big predicament. It took 4 years of saving cash and fret about quitting my life's work to get to that point and when I finally did I was overjoyed, then refreshed and then immediately afterward guilty as hell about it all. The lead image on this article, if you're wondering, is from my time in New Zealand. At that moment, looking into the void where a glacier was only decades ago, I started to get it. Regardless of what came before, all of this has happened very quickly in historic terms. There is no doubt at all humans are the accelerant.

While I was away I had time to read and I was seeing simultaneously places where where reefs once had life and jungles that were quieter than I expected they might be. I experienced 40 degree heat for the first time and it wasn't for me. Funny, then, that almost the day I came back to England we hit 38-degrees temporarily and had a massive storm. Since that time outlier temperatures and once in a generation weather have become regular globally. I don't recall much like it before that time, but maybe I just wasn't as focused on looking for it back then.

A book that really changed my outlook was The Uninhabitable Earth by Bill McGuire. After reading that and understanding better things like feedback loops and the domino effects that will come from increasingly adverse conditions just about everywhere, well then I had to learn more. I have continued to read and read. Going that road has been just about the most testing thing my mind has ever endured. I have had more or less had no idea what to 'do' about it since and a large part of testing the water with friends and family since has largely been met with varying levels of dismissal, or desire not to talk about it for more than 60 seconds. Misinformation, the lack of reliable or consistent press on the issue, our own mental fortress against foresight - it's powerful stuff. We're all invested heavily, but it's far easier not to engage at all and go on as usual when you live another day unaffected in an 'in your face' kinda way.

Some have not been so lucky lately, from Europe to Asia and the USA. I'm having more and more bike industry connections talk to me about what's happening on their doorstep, so it doesn't sit right with me to pretend it isn't happening. And it is happening. It's fair to not be plugged in to the newsflow, but to take a snapshot of 2024 so far an area the size of Italy has now burned this year in the Amazon accelerated by record drought, Europe is presently seeing its worst and most widespread flooding in its history, Canada's wildfires have been growing exponentially year after year, the permafrost is disintegrating. The one that I personally find most alarming is the ocean heat - water is significantly harder to heat than air, but records are falling all over. I'm ready to talk and I'm getting the sense others are too.?

Getting the opportunity to go on a carbon literacy course was naturally something of professional interest, and I have recently been advocating ways for Cycling Electric to assess its impact in a small way. We're in progress in working out how to run future demos on clean energy, though this is a learning curve for which I'm cobbling together pieces, learning as we go. If we do it once this year, we can do it multiple times next year, and then take the learnings and extrapolate them wider into the broader business where applicable. (Advice welcome from experts please, I'd rather not fall on the sword if the idea fails...). Change, I hope, starts with a step in the right direction and with that first success we can expand fast.

But I'd like to go a step further. Six months ago Tony Farrelly posted to roadcc why it is turning its back on press events overseas. He very likely does not know this, but that post started a discussion internally with our team. A small step in the right direction again has the power to ripple further whether you know it or not. I don't know if Tony's team has had 100% success, we all have to do business and compromise sometimes, but in knowing that the intent was sincere I think it's admirable to have started to roll a snowball.

I do not know yet whether I've gained the Carbon Literacy Certification, but in writing up my assessment pledges to try to move the needle were made. Among those was the promise to start (or restart) a conversation in the bike industry around individual brand international press camps and visits. I'll be the first to admit I miss them. Quality content comes from the knowledge and relationships built when you experience something first hand.

Yet in flying to Frankfurt for this year’s Eurobike show I braved looking up the carbon footprint of a flight (economy seat, return) and it was 0.3 of a tonne from London, double that for business class. That's one seat's worth, my seat on the plane. If you can imagine that weight in the form of a blanket, that’s up there in the atmosphere, locking in heat and I am just one person, blanketing the world slowly but steadily each year. That heat and the carbon dioxide that stores it is persistent in the atmosphere. Its presence, for one example, melts ice that previously reflected sunlight, thus darkening the surface of the earth, which reinforces more stored, rather than reflected heat. Then the ground starts to thaw and permafrost releases methane, which is somewhere in the region of 40 times more potent as a heater of the atmosphere, albeit on a shorter burn. We really do not want the permafrost doing this if we have any hope of not accelerating warming sharply in the very near term.

In 2023, scientists that I follow closely suggested we had our first 1.5-degree above the industrial baseline year; in fact, I've seen data to suggest we're currently tracking at 1.68 with a linear warming trend having diverged sharply north. That ‘target’ to remain below was not supposed to be close by until the end of the decade, but we have already arrived. If you want to know why every 0.1 of a degree from this moment is critical I strongly suggest reading Bill McGuire’s book. And I apologise in advance if it has the effect on you that it did on me.

And so to the point. What if we collectively do the sensible thing and stop flying to individual overseas press camps as a first, major collective step for the bike industry to address its footprint? What if brands stop inviting us and what if journalists all over the world stop accepting? What if one major manufacturer does what Tony did and goes public with its intent? What if that became a story in the press in our industry and what if it became a story in the press outside and inspired others with similar models?

This is one step that I feel is available, appropriate and achievable. There are many more, but I'll focus on the low hanging fruit I can reach and you yours if you feel like it.

I’m not yet suggesting the big leap of zero overseas flights, baby steps have to come first for it to stick. Trade shows where we all do business en masse are undoubtedly economically valuable to the engine of our industry; and we do work in an incredible industry in terms of potential to offset carbon globally so that must continue to develop. The UK's largest emissions (26%) is transport - we can help fix that.

But what if we just cut out the unnecessary and the inappropriate? I’ve turned down multiple overseas offers this year already. It has been, mostly, but not exclusively, met with understanding. There are other ways to do this. So this is my question – are we ready to take the first steps to break the mold of how things have always been done??I’m open to your feedback, open to your thoughts and most of all to your conversation. Lord knows I’ve never known silence like when trying to broach this subject.

Once again, a big thanks to Anne Snelson BSc DipM MBA - the Carbon Literacy Course reinforced to me that this matters and that there are people, probably in your own company, who are willing to step up to do the work and be the difference. For me, it has been a line in the sand in knowing I can 'do' something. I can at least put my neck on the line and try at the very least. At some point our collective instincts have to kick in and I think mine just did.

(Finally, a massive disclaimer, because I am a hypocrite and I'd rather not hide from the fact. Probably we all are to a degree, but I’m trying. I still fly personally, I love travel and I while I'm no great believer in offsetting, that matters too. I know the impact and increasingly I’ll try another way. I do a lot elsewhere to reduce my impact: Grow my own food where viable, eat a lot less beef despite formerly being seriously vegetable averse, installing solar at home, ride not drive wherever viable, try not to buy things I don’t need, I've even invested (and seemingly lost) hard-earned money in companies trying to solve select chunks of the crisis with various technologies. There's blood on my shirt from steps I've taken and they're still not large enough. For now i'll set the course for small steps, made in several areas, but not yet perfection, and truth be told, I’m not shooting for that either. I’ll stop flying one day soon; my arbitrary goal is to go cold turkey when the private jets do, but it may be sooner at this rate. Again, there are often other ways and eventually, sacrifice can be the only answer. To this point, I have lived for and spent almost all of my disposable income on travel. We have a wonderful planet, I’d love to see it all, but more than that I’d love to see it remain when I'm long gone. My goal, then, is to start a dialogue that can have a bigger impact, faster, using my professional network as leverage.)

This will take all of us, so I'll sign off by asking where can you make an impact now?