You'd be surprised. Just last week I spoke at an industry conference where a good part of a day was dedicated to the issue of global warming. There were three individual talks, and then a panel, totaling more than six hours. I was part of the panel addressing how companies are responding to the business risks and opportunities associated with global warming.
The three individual talks, however, were notable in light of the question posed above. The first talk, by a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, could have been lifted from the pages of Michael Creighton’s "State of Fear" novel (the scientific failings of which are extensively reviewed at
www.realclimate.org). The speaker spent an hour and a half characterizing global warming as a scientific hoax and press conspiracy. He pointed to case after case where specific scientific findings might not appear consistent with global warming expectations, and asked why those findings don’t get as much attention in the press as findings supporting global warming. He apparently felt that newspapers should report each and every new piece of scientific research, in effect announcing “there’s no global warming,” one day, and “global warming is back” the next day. In fact, discussion of most if not all the issues raised in his talk can be found at
www.realclimate.org; the issues are getting attention in the scientific community, and generally turn out to be a lot less clear in their implications than was being portrayed to the audience.
The second talk, by a member of Senator Inhofe’s (R-OK) staff, carried on the same theme of scientific hoax and press conspiracy, adding that efforts to deal with global warming would be economically ruinous to the United States. The presentation largely mirrored arguments Senator Inhofe himself has made on the Senate floor. It’s instructive to see those scientific arguments dissected in a January 2005 analysis at
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=97. The staffer went on to tell his audience that even with scientific and press conspiracies, there isn’t any real pressure for action on global warming at the national level. He argued that all of the legislative proposals in the Senate are coming from a small minority of Senators representing a small minority of states.
The third talk, team-delivered by two local beat reporters, did little to dispel the “press conspiracy” theme of the previous two talks. The reporters agreed that environmental viewpoints tend to receive more traction in today’s press, and that the more sensational the story, the better. They also intimated that it’s hard to go against today’s conventional wisdom regarding global warming.
Against this three-session backdrop, my panel faced a fundamental challenge. After all, if global warming is simply part of a scientific and press conspiracy, why should companies take any action whatsoever? Panelists from several companies did make the point that the issue has moved beyond the science, and that companies ignore it at their peril. I, too, urged the audience to not base fundamental business and strategic decisions on a scientific conspiracy theory.
What I consider notable about the conference was not that individuals could be found to make the presentations that they did. Rather, I’m intrigued that conference organizers would have chosen to spend almost an entire day on such a misleading view of the science and policy of global warming. Of course, there are plenty of legitimate questions that can be raised about global warming and what to do about it. But starting from the premise that the whole issue is simply an environmentalist and scientific conspiracy is of little help when it comes to developing corporate strategy.
The fact is that public and policy concerns over global warming are creating a range of corporate risks and opportunities. Companies need to be thinking about how to manage these risks and opportunities. Even if companies choose to believe that global warming is fundamentally a hoax, they ignore global warming concerns at their business peril.
