Stop the press!! SME owners and an easy moral decision

It’s hard to pick my way through this minefield, but I’ll give it a go.

I know this is a subject that is “triggering” for people from all points on the spectrum between radical greenies with hairy un-deodorated armpits to the most staunch drill, baby, drill set.

If I’m completely honest, I don’t know what the truth is. We might be drowning in our beds by 2030. We might be cooking in our homes by 2028. We might even be absolutely fine no matter what we do. Shane Jones might be right. Bugger Freddy the Endangered Frog, but something tells me that the arrogance and wilful ignorance we seem to be displaying as a species may not be in our own best interests.

So, what if we looked at the planet as we do at our own businesses? What does that mean? Well, as business owners, we try and look at the past, present and future on some kind if continuum to assess the risk to our survival and ability to thrive.

There are things that we absolutely know are true. If we keep making ourselves more efficient at what we do, we will increase our profitability. Everyone knows this is true.

There are some things we can’t be sure about. What if we started producing a new “widget”? The market may love it, or they might reject it out of hand and if that happens, we’ve buggered it up and poured a heap of money down the drain on a hunch.

We all kind of know that if we want to maximise the potential of our new endeavour, we have to do everything we can to establish the risks and threats to us by doing whatever the new thing is.

I know there are some business owners who are perfectly happy to take a punt and the consequences be damned. That’s their choice, but we’re talking about so much more than one person’s decision. Generally there are two categories of people who are in the reckless “let’s just have an unresearched go” class. One is those who have enough money that it doesn’t matter what happens and the other is people who are so close to the edge of failure that it also doesn’t matter what the outcome is.

The world we inhabit currently has many elements of the robber baron years of the late 19th and early 20th century. People and families who struck gold either figuratively or actually who found themselves in a position of such wealth and privilege that the rules that bind the rest of us don’t apply any more.

Musk, Zuckerberg, the Google people. They don’t breathe the same air as us and you don’t have to dig very far to find that they (correctly or fatally) have contingencies in place that mean they won’t suffer the consequences that the rest of us will.

I don’t want to have a poke at the current government particularly, even though I feel bilious about so much of what they’re doing. It feels queasily retrograde. It’s almost like the cold, dark years of the early 1990’s and that was grim.

The reason I don’t want to dig at them specifically is because the government I supported before utterly capitulated and showed all the commitment and courage of a butterfly on a windy day.

So my point is not political. It is practical, calculated and dead-eyed. I’ve got descendants who will be living through the consequences of the very uncertain future we are supplying them. If it turns out that we have massively cocked this up and the world is cannonballing towards disaster and carnage for the future, we chose that.

If we choose to try and remediate what we’ve done to the environment and put our efforts, muscle and money into a cleaner, greener future, what possible harm can that do?

Do a SWOT analysis on Planet Earth and the W & T bits are looking a bit scary. Green technology is getting cheaper and cheaper and let’s not be fooled. The US is investing more into clean futures than the rest of the works combined and trust me, I don’t say encouraging things about them easily. Germany has made spectacular gains on green energy despite knockbacks and any number of reasons to not go there.

I’ve been a New Zealander for 63 years and have grown up with the utter lie about 100% pure clean and green. One of my pups gets the most appalling rash from swimming in the Waikato River. Swimming? More like “going through the motions”.

I don’t know what the answer is, I really don’t. But when I think about the options, I am all about de-risking the future. I want a planet that will provide my descendants with a benevolent and joyous experience.

Drill, baby, drill just feels like a reckless and selfish option. Investing in sustainable technology that has the capacity to wind back the damage we are doing just feels so much more prudent and demonstrates that we do take the future seriously.

Here’s my point. Do we know exactly how much influence mankind is having on climate change. It seems there is a massive consensus amongst most reputable scientists that we are the villains. Some say we have almost no effect at all. If we stick to the principles of risk mitigation, we would surely say something like “if we don’t know absolutely but we have the technology and ability to deliver our kids a better future planet, then why the hell wouldn’t we?” If it turns out that we were wrong and we aren’t the culprits, so what. We have fulfilled our responsibility to at least try and leave the planet in better shape than when we found it. I fail to see any downside to that at all.

If you agree with these sentiments, please tell me. It can feel a bit lonely here. If you think I’m full of bullshit, tell me that too. Honest dialogue is what’s going to make the difference.