CEOs Letters to the Earth

Amy Clarke, Tribe Impact Capital

The line in the sand*

Looking up, the sky is blue. There is not a cloud in the sky. Your leaves gently rustle in the breeze as if sighing in contentment. Your canopy casts a welcome shadow under which I sit. A bird sings a song of abandoned joy while dancing around your branches. All is at peace.

I glance west. Standing next to you lies your cousin. Scorched, broken, blackened. There are no leaves. No shadow. There is no peace. The sky is still blue but against it, a charcoal remnant of what once was splendour sits petrified, frozen in time. The bird is still singing the same notes above me. But they are no longer joyful. They form a soul piercing whisper of lament.

A line was drawn in the sandy soil upon which you stand. Made by man, it was a line upon which you could not cross, rooted as you were to the land into which you were born. That line kept you safe. But that same line defined your cousin’s future. As rooted as you are, your cousin stood as proud as you, reaching upwards towards the sun. Works of art, you all stood tall, breathing life into this wondrous world. But the line changed it all.

I can still smell the fire. Once a welcoming smell, a nostalgic memory of winter log fires and toasted marshmallows, now it’s acrid. The smell of death and destruction. Of guilt. Of greed. Of apathy. Of too much and never enough. There is no peace here. I feel sick. I turn and hold onto you, like a child. I ask for forgiveness. A tear rolls down my face.

“What else can I do”, I ask.

“Defend the line”, comes the answer.

Thirty years have passed and I sit once more under the shady tree. She stands proudly, even taller than before, casting shade where I can see others have now sat. Her leaves rustle again in the evening breeze. Her presence is reassuring.

The line is still there. But it’s barely visible under a carpet of wildflowers. Life has returned. I look west to what was once a blackened desert of broken life. I see endless green, an ocean of joy. Not one bird, but a choir give praise as the sun starts to set.

I walk the line. Made by man to break the cycle of destruction, it has been reclaimed by Nature; a scar on the landscape it has magically been assimilated into the land. It’s barely visible but it’s there, in the background of the lives of all who inhabit these new meadows and forests. A permanent reminder of what we did, it now serves as a literal and metaphorical line in the sand.

Returning to the tree, I turn and whisper ‘I’m defending the line. We all are.’

*The IPCC 6th Assessment Working Group Reports are our firebreaks. They are the metaphorical lines in the sand we must not cross. They implore us to dig deep and defend them. The question they ask is ‘will you?’.

Amy Clarke

Co-Founder & Chief Impact Officer

Tribe Impact Capital

Fiona Ellis, Business Declares

Dear people of the Earth

A beautiful September morning, apples ripening on the trees, a few butterflies chasing the sun, bees on the ivy. I watch a spider dexterously build her web suspended on a delicate thread. How would you know anything is wrong?

I know the ancient forests are burning, the seas are emptying, poisoned by plastic, the floods and droughts are ruining millions of lives from China to New York, and the animals and insects are disappearing. It breaks my heart. I now see it on the news daily, whereas before when it was happening in the global south, driving waves of refugees and wars, it was happening out of sight or unacknowledged. This is our life support system, the food we eat and the air we breathe, and we are in the emergency room. Worse is to come, already baked in the system. And who are we, merely one species, to destroy the balance of life on earth? Earth’s complex systems are in danger of passing tipping points that will not recover, like melting Antarctica or switching off the Gulf Stream.

In my lifetime, humans went to the moon and looked back on our own precious blue planet, a speck in outer space, yet this has not stopped us in our tracks. We have known we were pouring CO2 into the atmosphere, and it would change our climate since the 70s. For over thirty years I have known. I got busy, worked hard in businesses, raised kids, and worried, marched, and protested but held back from acting and speaking out publicly till 2019 when I co-founded Business Declares. I have many personal changes I still need to make day to day and much to learn.

We knew, we know why, we have the answers. We need to act, not promise, and pledge, and show leadership. We need to take in what Code Red for Humanity really means. Our global leaders need to come together at COP 26 to act. We need to stop fossil fuel investment now, move to net zero, and protect biodiversity.

Business is taking leadership, but this needs to be real and to happen faster. The world changed rapidly for COVID and for a much bigger threat we need to change even more. I stand with those who are acting and are speaking up, all over the world, in many other parts of a global movement and urge us all to act now and make the rapid change we know is right.

Join us. Write your own letter.

Fiona Ellis

Director, Business Declares

Marcela Navarro, ProjectX

Dear Earth,

Today is the 9th of September 2021.

I am writing this letter to you with a promise. A promise that I will remember who I was before I forgot. A promise that I will recall how it felt when I was one with nature. A promise that I will remember when I was courageous and wise to take care of you, to take care of us, our oceans, our forests, our biodiversity, our planet. A promise that I will remember when my actions were centered in preserving your aliveness and generosity. When I reverenced you, life.

While I write these words to you beloved mother, I cannot seem to shake the feeling that maybe, I am given the opportunity, in this lifetime, to start remembering. Remembering the time I knew who I was before I forgot.

People have often asked me – why Project X? Why now? The answer is simple: I simply cannot sit around and see business destroying our environment much faster than it can be regenerated. I co-created Project X in 2015, with the goal of bettering the world. A resource to tackle ecological challenges on a massive scale. A resource to be used by many to reach ‘Adoption’– the point where at least 10% of the total global spend is channeled to sustainable alternatives. 10 of the most

polluting value chains are our starting point. $1.3trillion of volume sourced is our goal.

We cannot change our previous actions, nor we can change the actions of our predecessors; but we can build the tools we need to take action now. A wonderful proverb says that “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.” We can make adoption mainstream without trading off on quality and performance. We can move away from the emptiness of ‘green washing’ and ‘green wishing’, now.

Help me dear Mother to have the courage, the wisdom, and the open heart to help others to start remembering. To regain the confidence that our actions matter. Small actions, big actions. Actions. As mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, businessmen and businesswomen. Actions. As individuals. As the collective. Actions that can help us honour you and protect you, as we did before we forgot.

I promise I will remember who I was before I forgot.

Today is September 9th 2021.

Quoting Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Whatever I can do or dream I can, I will begin it”. Boldness has a genius power and magic in it.

With deep gratitude

Marcela

Dirk Bischof, Hatch Enterprises

Dear Decision Makers,

For too long have you stood by and allowed corporate interests to be put first.

This has resulted in a catastrophic climate crisis. People and humans are suffering the consequences with a loss of habitats, destruction of vast ecosystems across the planet.

I am willing to take action, to reduce my carbon footprint, to walk and cycle more, to eat a plant-based diet. What will you be doing to address the climate crisis?

What will you stand for when future generations will ask some hard questions about your actions?

Now is the time to start doing the things that are necessary to avert this crisis from spiralling out of control.

Dirk

Hatch Enterprises

Ben Tolhurst, Business Declares

Dear Earth. How did we ever get to this state of affairs?

How is it that human-kind can do incredible things but at the same time fail to grasp the basics?

How is it that we can build bridges across rivers, fly to distant planets, invent the internet, pioneer huge breakthroughs in medical science, but fail to safeguard the life support mechanism which underpins all of this and without which none of it will work?

How is it that people have to block roads, go on hunger strikes and put themselves in harms way just to try to protect todays children and prolong the lives of all other living species and all the while these very people are often vilified as law breakers and nuisances.

I despair at this contradiction and struggle to understand how the “most evolved” species can be so stupid.

Even now as I write this in September 2021, in the face of unequivocal scientific evidence, organisations are pouring trillions of dollars into projects which will accelerate the extinction of the planet in the name of short term growth, profit and all that it buys.

You have given us plenty of warning signs in the guise of extreme weather, floods and famine to make us understand we need to change our ways. And you must be asking why these warning signs are not being acted on with the speed and depth of action needed and what more you need to do to get us to truly take this seriously.

Perhaps you are wondering if we as a species have a major flaw in our make-up - only able to see danger when its literally right in front of us and ignore future harms for immediate gain? Or perhaps the flaw is that our insatiable desire for power and advancement creates a blind spot which will ultimately lead to us overreaching and extinguishing ourselves and everything else around us?

I don’t think it’s either of these actually. The problem is that we, by which I mean the richest people/nations on the planet, have become trapped in a social, political and economic construct of our own design, which is hastening our demise. We can’t get off the treadmill, we feel we need the next purchase to make us happier or just to pay the bills, we are chasing the next thing instead of stopping, reflecting, learning about what really matters.

But how do you change an ingrained system in which millions of people are governed, in which things which really are superfluous to life are regarded as basic rights – and where this construct is jealously guarded by the powerful who engineer huge barriers to changing the status quo?

But the tide is turning – not fast enough yet to stop more destruction and devastation for sure - but perhaps fast enough to delay and reduce the impact of some of it.

And this momentum for change comes from the many talented, selfless and authentic people out there who are getting their voices heard, who are making a difference, who are inspiring other cohorts of people to do the same.

And so planet earth please take some comfort from the fact that you do have advocates out there – perhaps not enough and perhaps not in the right places just yet – but we are working on it and there are literally thousands and thousands of amazing people who aren’t going to give up on you.

Ben Tolhurst

Director, Business Declares

Martin Bunch, Bates Wells

A Letter to the People of the Earth

Like lots of people, I watch documentaries and it deeply saddens and worries me to see how much damage we as humans have done to the planet and in such a short time. Particularly given that so many other species have managed to inhabit our planet for so long with no discernible consequence. And looking at our impact, I can’t help but worry for our future generations, and I wonder with great concern what type of world my children’s children will live in.

Yet I fear that many people haven’t woken up to what the reality will look like for all of us, and those to come, if we don’t act now.

This is not someone else’s problem – everyone needs to sit up and take notice. For me, business has yet to take on and acknowledge the responsibility that it should, and the legal profession is no exception. Business leaders need to act now and show far more authority in addressing the crisis. Society needs to change its collective approach to tackling this very real emergency and while governments must play a part, business has a loud voice and can push for change in a positive way.

Conducting your business in a sustainable way is the right thing to do and it also makes commercial sense. The triple bottom line is real – we and other purposeful businesses have shown that you can care about people and planet and still make a profit. Doing business this way attracts the clients that you want to work with, it attracts the people you want working with you and what’s more it keeps them by your side. It just makes sense.

David Attenborough and other key figures have done an amazing job to bring this debate to a much greater audience in recent years, showing us how we can do our bit. But the message must travel further and hit harder. The more that we make changes and talk about them, the more we can inspire others to do the same. And collectively we have power.

As I get older, and I start to wonder about my children’s future, I feel we must be more radical in our efforts if we want to make a real difference; our legacy cannot be a broken planet. We must act now.

Your sincerely

Martin Bunch

Managing Partner, Bates Wells

Samantha Cooper, Business Declares

From Oil Trader to Business Declares:

thoughts when asked to write a Letter to the Earth

this EARTH shares the same letters as our HEART

but the planet earth has no need for my words

we need a Letter From the Earth

to tell us to stop, to drop the devastation

to ask all humankind

how, to ourselves, we became so unkind?

the planet will somehow survive,

our children's futures we destroy

so how did I get so lost in profit and praise

what started as fun, a game to win

a life of competition to feel complete

seeking comfort I found dis-ease and dis-connection

I consumed, collected, strived to capture and control

but the hunger and the wanting grew

impatiently speeding down a tunnel hoping for a better, less fearful me

running on an endless treadmill to escape the here and now

trying to outrun the reality of change and uncertainty,

we exhaust ourselves and this precious planet, our home, in vain

the present is the gift we can all give ourselves

not the things we buy for those we love

who only need our time and care

as we pass by on our way to who knows where

we have what we seek if we just slow down

opening to nature's riches, we can travel back home

to smell the air & feel the cold water flow

I stopped, stayed, looked and listened. step by step

discovering we already have all that we need

if we are brave enough to pause

to gently work with heart and mind as one

we find the purpose of our lives is to live

our jobs are not in the taking but in the leaving

(the most precious gift, a living planet)

Samantha Cooper

Director, Business Declares

Ed Perry and Rosie Brown, COOK

Dear Earth,

We’re writing to you in hope. Faced with the monumental mess we’ve made of our relationship with you, the only alternative seems to be despair. We choose to remain hopeful.

We have met, worked with and observed enough good people to feel you should not yet give up on humanity. This is not to deny the gravity of our situation, nor its urgency, nor to duck the blame. We must confront the brutal facts, and now, more than ever, move forward with unwavering faith we will prevail.

We have met and worked with enough good farmers, seeking to regenerate their land, put goodness back into the soil and return wildlife to their hedgerows, to have hope we will create a more sustainable food system.

We have met and worked with enough good cooks, creating tasty, nutritious, and plant-powered meals, to have hope we will shift to a diet that keeps both us and you healthy and more people properly fed.

We have met and worked with enough good business leaders willing to grasp the nettle and turn their companies rapidly towards net zero carbon, to have hope a kinder form of capitalism will triumph.

Good politicians? We must hope there are enough of them gathered in Glasgow next month to take the courageous and decisive action we need to set us on the path to restoring our right relationship with you.

So our hope is not blind. Nor is it idle: we accept our obligation to move COOK towards being a truly regenerative business, operating for the good of both people and planet, regardless of the outcome of COP 26.

Thank you for your patience as we try to forge this better path.

Yours hopefully,

Ed & Rosie
coCEOs, COOK

Andy Middleton, TYF Adventure

“My love didn’t always show up as well as it could. Too often, and for too long, I took without giving and used your limited resources without thinking. No matter how many times we stumble though, we will never step back from our responsibility to restore your full beauty and the dynamic balance of your complex, connecting ways. Without you, we are nothing.

The fuel for our journey forwards will be the love we hold for you, Earth. Our progress will be powered by a love of every petal, every flower, raindrop, and wave. A love of action and uncertainty.”

Dear Earth

I have loved you since my earliest memories. I surfed your waves and coasteered around your rocky shores. With friends I kayaked your rivers and soaked up sun on ocean-salted skin. I watched the numinous splendour of dawn skies and sunsets. I sipped ice-cold water from your mountain streams and harvested abundant vegetables from the seeds and soil you made.

My love didn’t always show up as well as it could. I found gold in your deserts and helped mine iron from your mountains. I have left a decades-long trail of damage behind me. Too often, and for too long, I took without giving and used your limited resources without thinking. I was thinking without being fully connected and living without being part of you.

The gaps between living and love started to close 20 years ago when I drank from fountains of learning at Schumacher College and Cambridge’s Institute for Sustainability Leadership. I forged friendships with change makers and saw new ways of seeing. Every day since those Damascene experiences, my work and purpose has been driven by a certainty that we must find ways to give back to you way more than we take.

I knew we had to find better ways to use the gift of the adventure and learning programmes and of our retail business at TYF to teach and inspire others how to do the same. It’s not easy and we’ve fallen many times on the way. No matter how many times we stumble though, we will never step back from our responsibility to catalyse change that restores your full beauty and the dynamic balance of your complex, connecting ways. Without you, we are nothing.

TYF commit to searching out and shining a light on the pathways that can help humanity navigate to a shared future that serves protects you, Earth, and all the other species that you support. Progress on those pathways will be slow and hesitant if the people walking them are carrying fear and dread. We will help our customers, communities and their families lighten that burden with hope and confidence grown by time spent close to nature and learning how to live well as activists for nature and future generations.

Travelling together in small groups with varied histories, skills, and years, we will find ways to break down the barriers to rapid and radical change. Welsh writer Raymond Williams’ words “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing” reminds us to tell stories of bold ambition and progress that bridge across differences. We will acknowledge risk and the possibility of failure, but it will not determine how we feel.

Our direction is clearly set, and we acknowledge the rocky terrain ahead. The fuel for our journey forwards will be the love we hold for you, Earth. Our progress will be powered by a love of every petal, every flower, raindrop, and wave. A love of action and uncertainty. A love of the unborn generations of descendants who will follow in the footsteps we took on you, Earth as we found the courage we needed at the moments of our most profound choice.

Andy Middleton

Founder and Chief Exploration Officer, TYF Adventure

Tessy Antony de Nassau, Human Highness

My Letter to the world:

A mother loves unconditionally. She provides, loves, supports and is patient as also ever giving.

We all have the same mother, Mother Earth which has been neglected, abused, destroyed, and exploited by many of us in a variety of ways.

Still, Mother Earth keeps providing, loving and supporting us all until there is no more. How can we continue to exploit the earth's resources at the speed we have been going so far? The effects of climate change are much visible and cannot be ignored any longer.

Still, rather than changing our ways and truly trying to make a shift in how we consume and produce, big business and government keep wheeling and dealing behind closed doors to reach their ultimate gain, purely self centred and short termed. Where are the leaders that speak up for our most beloved Mother Earth?

Real change takes time. However, with no effort at all, a prosperous future, a world that shines and provides for us all no matter where you are from, is not possible.

It is time to take off the masks and show a real face to the reality which cannot be ignored nor unseen. We are all humans and thus make mistakes. However, every leader can still change things around if he and she wants to and choses to do so.

What are we waiting for? It is time for us all, especially our leaders, to give back to Mother Earth the love, care, support and patience she has given all of us, and the generations before us, so that generations to come can also enjoy the world we all enjoyed as children.

Tessy Antony de Nassau

Founder of Human Highness

Amanda Powell-Smith, Forster Communications

Dear Earth

Thank you for this morning - there is nothing like a beautiful sunrise and birdsong to start the day. Glorious.

But wow, the rain on Tuesday? I know several people’s houses flooded, and whole schools were late arriving because of traffic nightmares. Away from home, the fires that have been raging across the world are truly shocking.

Your point is clear - it is getting too hot, too fast and we have to cool it now.

Please know that you have been heard. Not just by me and my team at work but by people everywhere. Indeed, with your devastation in front of them, I dare anyone to say that climate change doesn't matter.

I hope you feel some sense of progress by the new targets for cutting carbon emissions that are being set by governments and organisations - but I join you in frustration that many of these have no plans or finance to support them. I’m proud of what we’re doing through our climate positive plan with our clients and suppliers but know that is not enough.

Like you, I am a mother. I love the way you are helping new trees to grow and nature to adapt. We are facing an unprecedented challenge but I really believe that the combination of our actions and your nurture means we can succeed.

When my daughter was born I kept a diary and I have now started a new one – replacing her weights and new words with my climate actions and insights to make sure I am really doing everything I can personally and professionally.

We must restore the balance between your dazzling beauty and total destruction. Life depends on it.

With love and deep respect.

Amanda,
Forster Communications

Tom Greenwood, Wholegrain Digital

Dear Earth

What has happened to us? We used to be such good friends. We used to treat each other as family.

We didn’t intend to turn against you, but we have fallen sick with a disease that blinds us from what we are doing, not just to you but to ourselves. This sickness has made us delusional. It has made us believe that we are masters of the universe, ruling over you and all of the life that you create and support so generously.

We pollute the water, claiming it as ours. We burn the forests, claiming those as ours. We torture and murder the innocent creatures, claiming even their lives as our own to take and do with as we wish.

But none of it is ours.

And in all of this disgraceful madness, this mania, we reassure ourselves of our own goodness and tell ourselves that it is our right, that there is no other way.

The truth is that you, Earth, gave us everything. Every seed-bearing plant, drop of water and breath of air. You offered us abundance, and instead of being grateful, we demanded and took even more.

We have fallen for an illusion that we are separate from you. We can no longer see that when we nourish you, we nourish ourselves and that when we hurt you, we are hurting ourselves.

This is our own doing. We made ourselves sick through the stories that we created to fool ourselves into the worship of “the market”, our false god that we believed would deliver us all the worldly pleasures and solve all of our woes. How foolish we have been.

Now we are trapped. Trapped behind our digital screens, boxed in by walls, our feet afraid to touch you, our skin afraid to breathe, our eyes afraid to look without the protection of glass. We can hardly hear you speak.

And so we resort to the very definition of insanity and do more of the same, expecting different results. We throw more of our inventions at you, believing that the solution to our problems, the end to our destructive behaviour, is through ever more technology. But our technology only disconnects us further. If it wasn’t so painful, I’m sure you would be laughing at our claims of “advanced technology”, so primitive and absent of wisdom. We need to listen to you, not through our sensors, but through our senses.

You are owed an apology and we are deeply sorry, but I don’t expect you to take our word for it. Every year we hold more conferences, sign more treaties and make more pledges but we fail to honour our own words. You have heard our empty promises too many times. You don’t want to hear our apologies, you just want us to stop!

Like a virus attacking its host, we have not been good guests. Until we find a way to reconnect with you, to live symbiotically as a part of you, we leave you no choice but to try to evict us in order to save yourself. You are growing angry, and your fever is rising.

Everyday is a new beginning and we can do better. We want to do better. In the space between the sunset and the sunrise there is so much opportunity yet we are struggling to grasp it. We need your help. We have no right to ask for your help after what we have done, but we desperately need it. Can you show us the way back to you so that we can learn how to live together again in harmony? We hope that we can find you in time.

Whatever happens, we want to thank you for all that you have given us.

Lots of love

Tom Greenwood

Managing Director

Wholegrain Digital

Bevis Watts, Triodos Bank UK

To the quiet, hardworking, environmentalists,

Over the past 20-plus years of my career, I’ve spent countless hours trying to give a voice to the planet. I first had a letter published in a national newspaper as an angry young man in the 1990s, but like many environmentalists most of my attempts to give this voice have been made quietly, politely and patiently.

One of my first lessons about the way we treat and think about our planet was from my role working in the recycling industry with WRAP. In trying to engage a large bank in investing in recycling businesses I learned that the faster that you fill a landfill site, the better your return on investment. It showed me that our economy and society was founded on principles that were completely obsessed with how much money we make, rather than true long-term prosperity.

Along with my colleagues at Triodos Bank, I’ve made it my mission to shift from this broken system, which only serves itself, to one that serves people and planet. This involves reshaping the current economic model and supporting financial systems to ensure we provide for the needs of all people, while remaining within planetary boundaries.

It means making a just transition to an economy that prioritises fair access to food, health, homes and education (and much more) while ensuring that we’re not putting the planet and the natural systems we rely on in danger through climate change, biodiversity loss, soil degradation and pollution.

I’m pleased that over the years, we’ve made important progress. Sometimes it’s the big things that make you feel like you’re succeeding, such as the bank helping to develop the UN Principles for Responsible Banking, encouraging many of the world’s biggest banks to commit to more sustainable practices. I’m also proud of our pioneering work in financing the electrification of transport and progressing nature-based investment projects in the UK.

But it’s also in the small things – sharing tips for growing your own organic vegetables with a co-worker or helping one more person at an event realise that the money in their bank account could be funding fossil fuels. Both big and small wins bring me hope and remind me why I do what I do. I’m sure you might feel the same?

Throughout this time, it’s also been important for me to stay in touch with nature. Running a bank is certainly not without its stresses and being able to pause and reconnect with the outdoor world is always vital to me. I use wildlife photographs with metaphors in nearly all of my professional presentations as it reminds me and those listening of the natural world that we often take for granted – or, yet worse, actively harm. Many of the solutions to the current crises we face lie in nature and better care for it.

I spent part of my career leading a conservation charity as well as serving as a trustee and volunteer for others and I have learnt we need a much more concerted and radical approach to reverse nature’s decline. We need an approach that links economic and social outcomes to investment in nature’s restoration, rather than conservation being a primarily philanthropic activity we do as an afterthought.

Up until now, I’ve – quietly, politely and patiently – tried to highlight and share ideas for how we can make a change. As a bank, we’ve worked with likeminded organisations on important initiatives, but have always aimed to lead by example, showing positively what can be done rather than going into battle directly with a greedy, solely profit-focused world.

Now, I’m writing this letter as I believe that the time for polite challenge and having hushed conversations in back rooms is over. The urgency of the situation has been highlighted by everyone from the IPCC to young people on the streets.

I don’t want to have any regrets about what I’ve done to combat the climate and ecological emergencies. So I’m writing this letter as a promise to myself – and to encourage others like me – to say that the time for us to put up with hollow pledges, broken promises and inadequate policies is over.

We need environmentalists in every walk of life. Only through us holding governments, regulators and businesses to account, encouraging challenging conversations and calling people out can we take the next, necessary steps in saving the planet.

Bevis Watts

CEO

Triodos Bank UK

Nigel Pocklington, Good Energy

This year the UK hosts the world’s most important meeting on climate change - COP26. This is our chance to make things right. Activists alone can’t solve climate change. It is unfair to look to a few individuals to fix a problem caused by billions. The solution requires worldwide cooperation, from businesses, governments, and individuals.

After witnessing first-hand the impacts of climate change this year, from the record-breaking temperatures to the London flash floods – including in my own neighbourhood, I'm delighted to have joined a business dedicated to making a difference.

In May this year I joined Good Energy, a purpose-driven company which has been fighting climate change since day one, twenty-two years ago when renewable energy was not only a ground-breaking phenomenon, but something people didn’t believe was possible. At that point, only 2% of the UK’s electricity came from renewables, now it can reach 40%. But we need to do more.

Consumerism plays a huge role in exacerbating climate change. But equally, consumer-powered decisions are one of the most powerful ways to change our consumption habits and reduce our environmental footprint. We all want a cleaner, greener future and this is being reflected in purchasing habits. Millions more people are choosing to support smaller, ethical, and sustainable businesses over the low-price points offered by industry giants. The demand for green jobs is at an all-time high, we are more cautious of who we work for. The market is changing and for the better.

Although we’re making progress to repair the damage, we’re not there yet. My future vision includes a world covered with green space, thriving ecosystems, electrical transport networks, and a society powered by our natural resources – wind, sun, and water. Localised energy solutions will be crucial to achieving this. We must transform the current fossil-fuel-powered energy industry to 100% renewables, supplied by individual generators across the UK, based on a model of generating, buying and storing local power, which will ensure a cleaner, greener future for all.

I recognise that we must be better. We must preserve the ecosystems we are so lucky to live with. Business, for so long seen as part of the problem, needs to be part of the solution.

I promise to do my part.

Yours sincerely,

Nigel

Nigel Pocklington
CEO
Good Energy

Guy Singh-Watson, Riverford Organic Farmers

Letter to Planet Earth:

Tax fossil fuels and make market forces save us

Our campaign to fight climate catastrophe must focus on one thing above all others – possibly even to the exclusion of all others. We must push to make fossil fuels much more expensive and leave markets and businesses to drive the change to a more sustainable global economy.

I have reached this conclusion reluctantly, after 30 years of campaigning for more enlightened business practices. My belief that businesses can harness humanity’s deeper motivations and work collectively for the common good culminated in Riverford becoming employee owned in 2018. I still long to live in a world which is not dominated by greed, mediated through markets; I hope others will follow our lead, choose more imaginative ownership structures, and work to benefit people and the planet as much as for profit. But the urgency of the climate crisis means that we must fight it in the world as we find it now. A world where greed and selfishness are deeply embedded in our institutions, culture, and governance.

That model is arguably what got us into this mess. It can get us out of it, too – but only if we are unflinchingly honest. Here is the fundamental, world-shaping truth: businesses exist to extract profits for their shareholders. That is more or less enshrined in law, and no amount of Corporate Social Responsibility window-dressing is going to change it.

Instead of relying on claims of corporate morality that are repeatedly shown to be wafer thin, we must appeal to the self-interest of shareholders, and harness the strength of business to create rapid change. Despite spending my life railing against unregulated neo-liberal capitalism, I cannot dispute its extraordinary power to drive innovation and funnel resources towards solutions, as long as those solutions are profitable. It offers us the only realistic hope of addressing climate change in the time available.

Fossil fuels currently cause 89% of global warming. Reducing their use as quickly and effectively as possible is all that matters in the urgent fight to prevent climate catastrophe. Only one thing will mobilise the action needed to achieve that: making fossil fuels much more expensive. That can be done either simply and directly, through taxation on their sale – or, with much more complexity, through a carbon tax.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimate that the appropriate taxation of fossil fuels, at rates rising to the equivalent of $75 per tCO2e (tonnes of CO2 equivalent), would reduce global carbon emissions by at least 40% by 2030. This is probably not enough to stay within 1.5°C of global warming, but it is much better than any other proposal.

Given that this is the view of the IMF and the OECD, and given that virtually all leading economists have called for fast and substantial taxing of fossil fuels or carbon, it is very hard to understand why the world is moving so painfully slowly from subsidising fossil fuels to taxing them.

Where fossil fuels are currently taxed, the global average stands at under £2 per tCO2e – at a time when carbon is trading at over £30 per tCO2e, and rising rapidly. I would argue for even higher rates of taxation than the IMF and OECD suggest. My personal experience at Riverford (when deciding whether to plant trees, electrify vehicles, compost flammable waste, and so on) has been that around £50 to £100 per tCO2e is the level at which many green investments, previously justified by ethics or marketing, suddenly become driven by hard-nosed economics, and likely to be adopted at scale.

My argument and plea is that all campaigning forces should unite behind this one urgent call to tax fossil fuels. Although campaigns around plastic, food waste, methane emissions from livestock, food miles, and so on are all very important, I am concerned that they are diverting attention from the one action that may yet avert disaster.

Campaigns which focus on individual people’s behaviours (mediated through markets) also risk encouraging the disturbingly prevalent myth that informed citizens making good buying choices can drive businesses to find the solutions we need. Nothing other than government-imposed taxation will bring about the necessary scale and speed of change. I am staggered that any thinking person could suggest that the purchasing choices of conscientious individuals will be anything more than peripheral in solving our environmental problems; we are surrounded by the evidence of this. I have an uncomfortable feeling that an excessive belief in the power of consumers to drive change is being used as an excuse for systemic inaction.

Don’t let the noble actions of a committed minority of individuals and businesses be a fig leaf to cover our government’s inadequacy. We desperately need them to provide a framework that financially incentivises a drastic reduction in the burning of fossil fuels by the less committed.

Of course, fossil fuel interests will lobby furiously against this – and history tells us that our governments are pathetically susceptible to their influence. There will be cries that taxing fossil fuels is regressive, that it will impact the poor unfairly, that energy-intensive industries will be driven to less regulated countries… So we must be prepared to respond, with plans to use the funds raised by the tax to support emerging green technology, and critically, to support those worst affected by the transition. This is thoughtfully addressed in the IMF report; read it online at bit.ly/2YLl7y3. A large body of leading (mostly US-based) economists argue for a ‘fee and dividend’ policy, under which the entirety of the funds raised by a carbon tax would be distributed in a universal payment to ensure that the least wealthy 70% of people are actually better off.

Business can be part of the solution to the climate crisis; indeed, it can be the biggest part. But only if we are honest about the purpose of business, and provide a clear, firm, and ethically justified taxation framework whereby the polluter pays. However obvious and well supported by mainstream economists this conclusion is, our governments will only resist the interests of the fossil fuel industry under unified, focused, and relentless pressure from the electorate for one single goal: make fossil fuels expensive.

Guy Singh-Watson, founder Riverford Organic Farmers

P.S. Those who know me may be surprised by my line of argument. I have not previously been an advocate of market-based solutions to complex environmental and social problems. My core values remain unchanged, but a number of factors have led me to believe that we face a specific and urgent challenge which can only be addressed, in the time available, by working with the world as we find it; namely through market forces and the clear signal of taxation. This is what has changed my mind:

Capitalism is brilliant at solving simple, clearly defined problems efficiently and fast, but very poor at addressing complexity. Few problems could be simpler than the need to burn less fossil fuel, or have a more straightforward market mechanism for achieving it than taxation.
Riverford is not a repeatable example of how businesses can carve a path to sustainability in the absence of government action. We are unique and privileged in so many ways: we are employee owned, largely free of debt, and not beholden to impatient investors. Many of our customers have the financial freedom to make choices denied to some – and even more importantly, they are extraordinarily interested, educated, and supportive of our ethical choices. All these factors have enabled us to follow a path not open to most businesses.
I have been very impressed by the pace of decarbonisation of the National Grid, using well-engineered contracts and competition to drive down the cost of renewable energy and grid balancing. The companies providing these solutions are typically concerned only by returns on capital, but have done more to address climate change than any values-driven business or individual.
Reluctantly, we must acknowledge how resistant to making real lifestyle sacrifices even many relatively thoughtful people can be. Despite being disappointed by their inaction as individuals, I am confident that the same people would be happy to collectively support much stronger government action on climate change. People are far more likely to support and adhere to a system that all are obliged to follow, than to adopt these actions independently while those around them carry on as usual.

The already inadequate pressure from individual people’s patterns of investment and consumption is further dissipated by misleading greenwash, making it almost impossible for concerned citizens and investors to make informed choices even when they do have sufficient willpower.

Likewise, values-driven investment will have little impact. I suggest reading Robert Armstrong’s commentary in the Financial Times on the words of Tariq Fancy (once a fan, now a critic of the power of sustainable investment): (on.ft.com/3nBqHgM). Or listen to similar arguments on BBC Radio here: bbc.in/3lsUeXv.
The argument for ‘fee and dividend’ can be read at bit.ly/39eQPFS. And here is the impressive list of economists who support it (the largest collection of economists in history to make a single statement): historyismade.org.

Visit carboncommentary.com for a blog by Chris Goodall (a well-informed insider in the energy market) which gives fascinating insight into the pace of change in the energy market. Change is 100% driven by market forces, with not a worthy intention in sight – but inspiring none the less.

P.P.S. None of this should detract from the importance of, and the intrinsic rewards reaped from, good citizens making good decisions and living good lives. There are also occasions when committed individuals can be important in supporting unproven or radical green initiatives before they are picked up and supported by the market. We must, however, deny our politicians and corporate PR the crass fantasy that any individual’s actions can come close to solving the climate problem.