Here we go — blog of the day…
En route to Rio
As I stand in the long line before for the security check it hits me: the moment has finally come — and nothing but a 12-hour flight separates me from actually being in Rio! 12 hours is a long time and I wonder if we can really justify the negative environmental impact we cause with our travels to go to a sustainability conference. I ask my travel companion if he chose the carbon offset option that was offered when we registered for the conference. He tries to remember. Well, I didn’t offset and suddenly feel kind of guilty about it. My president, who is also coming to Rio, chose to pay for the $40 carbon offset charge. I remember how surprised I was and how stupid I felt.
Part of the reason why I declined the charge was my insecurity about how my institution would feel if I chose to incur such a voluntary expense. While the environment is personally important to me, I was not sure I could actually impose this sensitivity on my work. My colleague sheepishly admits that he also did not choose to offset. We wonder why. If we, two environmentally conscious, comfortably employed academics specialized in Responsibility and Sustainability won’t do the carbon offset, who will? When booking easyjet, we have a choice to pay more for the offset. So far I never clicked on the option. Making a “donation” which is how offsetting carbon feels like right now is contrary to the spirit I am in when booking a low-cost airfare. My money-saving mode prevents me from doing what is right.
When we dig deeper, we identify another disruptive emotion that perverts us: when paying an indecently low amount for a flight (easyjet and co.) we somehow refuse to donate money without knowing what is going to happen to it. My colleague ventures that there are questions like “where is the money going?” and “will it be used in a sensible way?” suddenly come up. Not that such questions aren’t justified, but would we ask them before making a carbon-offset contribution, while we don’t ask them for other expenditures. Not really consistent! I, for one, don’t consistently ask where some of the clothes I buy are made, or under what conditions.
We further explore what would change if we could choose where our money ended up? If, for example, we could select between investments to ensure biodiversity, reforestation, revamping production in the Northern hemisphere or social enterprises in emerging countries. What bothers me in particular is the idea that such donations at least partially end up in contributing to expand our already out-of-hand consumption pattern.
I don’t want to support new innovations of even more stuff that I don’t need, even if it has a significantly improved carbon-footprint compared to the previous year’s gadgets I already didn’t really need either. I realize that I don’t really know what projects can get funding from these offsets. I should read up on this on “my climate”. While it is critical to significantly reduce our footprint, we can’t fool ourselves by believing that investing in green growth will get us there. We in the wealthy West or North must fundamentally rethink how we want to live, what is important to our quality of life and as a result how we want to spend our personal resources (time, energy, money, and share of mind and heart) to live well and within the limits of our planet.
I recognize very humbly that I have a long way to go before I will be the kind of role model I would like to be. But, let us start talking about what we can do in every aspect of our lives. Now that I am en route to Rio, my determination to make the best out of it increases by the hour. Two years ago we promised the U.N. a scandal — and today we are ready to deliver it. Back in November 2010, I made that promise to the U.N. division in charge of the business sector (UNGC), namely to help save the RIO+20 conference with a significant contribution. With a scandal. What I had meant with it was that we would work on a radically new vision of how management education would contribute in all possible ways to a world worth living in. Already in 2010 it was rumored that the 20th anniversary of the original Rio Earth Summit may well become another Copenhagen: a crushing disappointment. It became apparent that governments would not be able to agree on the kinds of breakthrough agreements needed to assure the future of our planet. The private sector and namely business would have to make the difference.
That’s us — by the way.
