The Rat and the Elephant

I'm often surprised by the lack of eyerolls when I tell people that I'm what I call a "Jabiliever." That's either because there's a lot of genuine pride among Jabil employees - or everyone is incredibly stealthy with their eyerolls. [Before I go on: This article reflects my own, personal views - not necessarily the official views of Jabil.]

Part of my Jabilief is that I'm fortunate to work in a function that allows me to exercise my creative drive for a great organization - one that encourages me to bring my personal values to work. Personally, I believe climate change is real - and that we all need to take collective action to address the crisis.

This theme of personal and work values converging, I think, is perfectly expressed by Eric Austermann, Jabil's VP of Social and Environmental Responsibility, in a video I'm very proud to have had the opportunity to produce, part of Jabil's #EarthDay2020 campaign:

Another, more nuanced theme I'd like to talk about is evidenced by Eric's journey from operations and business development to CSER:

You don't have to work in sustainability to start making an impact.

My own climate action story begins, perhaps like many people my age, with the 2006 film "An Inconvenient Truth," - albeit with a twist. Although I knew what it was about, I'm a little ashamed to say I deliberately never watched it; because although I understood that global warming was a serious issue, at the time, I felt that it was unrelated to my aspirations and that, surely, our leaders and best minds were actively addressing it. To this day, I've not seen it - and probably won't.

Fast-forward more than a decade and I noticed more coverage of climate change in my news feed, thanks to a recently published 2019 book: "The Uninhabitable Earth." As the author intended, I was shocked to learn that: Instead of the problem being addressed and reversed, in actuality, global carbon emissions had increased exponentially over the last decade, with no signs of decelerating. Whereas "global warming" had been re-framed as "climate change," the narrative was now being re-framed again as a "climate crisis."

I had to do something.

I started educating myself on the facts and understanding the different points of view and narratives being framed around the issue. I made the easy decision to replace my problematic, daily-driven hot rod with a great electric vehicle. (Finding an affordable EV in Florida wasn't so easy.) My wife and I are talking about solar power for our home.

I've considered making a career move directly into sustainability; and my 2020 resolution is to form a vision ?? for how to make the biggest positive impact in whatever time left I have on this Earth, given my talents, experience and position in life. And I'm extremely grateful to have a leader and mentor at Jabil that I was able to talk to about all this: Christine McDermott, Jabil's VP of Marketing. As she has done countless times before, she connected me with the right people to take action.

The result is Jabil's #EarthDay2020 campaign, coinciding with the 50th anniversary theme of "Climate Action" (vs. their typical environmentalism focus.) That's amazing timing.

What's not great timing: Trying to rally and launch an Earth Day campaign at the onset of a pandemic. Throughout this last month, I was reminded of the hypothetical scenario introduced to me by another former mentor:

Picture yourself a store owner. At the entrance of the store, there's a rat loose - and in the back, there's an elephant loose. Which do you take care of first?

Although I thought about the diseases potentially spread by rats, I replied "The elephant," picturing trampled shelves and shoppers.

"No," he smirked, probably knowing how I'd reply. "You take care of the rat first, because if the shoppers see it, they'll go right back out the entrance before they even see the elephant."

I get it. Yet, I've always had a problem with this hypothetical. It frames the scenario such that you can only choose to focus on one problem - or the other. I believe people have the capacity to think about and act on multiple problems at the same time. I don't believe we can ignore a global crisis, even in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

I hope I'm right. Hopefully, if you search for #EarthDay2020 #JabilCares this week, you'll find many more posts from Jabilievers taking and talking about climate action.

And I encourage all of you to consider climate action this Earth Day.

As Eric puts it: "Go out there and take action. See where you can change your own behaviors to be more sustainable. Get involved in an environmental initiative or get involved in a sustainability initiative, whether that's at [your company] or that's in your local community."

“If we all are rowing in the same direction, we can do just amazing things.”