I could read Terry Pratchett again and again and learn something new each time.
And the first page of Soul Music has the line “… if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed, it’s even more true that it changes the observer”.
This line helps explain some of what is going on right now in the world.
Let’s look at this in a specific context – what organisations are doing about sustainability.
8 years ago, when we first started building systems to count carbon, we were starting to observe something that was considered a problem.
It took a few years to build a data set that showed trends – where we could see the impact of production and system transformation in the numbers coming through.
And that inevitably started to change the organisation and the teams we worked in. We started to pay attention to how things were done, which contracts were in place, which materials were being used.
Just looking made a difference.
And that, I think, is what the backlash against ESG appears to be attacking.
People with vested interests don’t want you to look at things that will affect their businesses and profit centres.
It’s the central premise of the film “Don’t look up”.
And they have the political and regulatory power to attack the ways you look, from removing the ability to calculate emissions factors to stopping you using sustainability criteria in selecting suppliers.
I don’t think their efforts will work in the long term. It takes a lot of energy to push a narrative that protects a small group of people while putting the future of the majority at risk.
And of course, the climate doesn’t care about regulation and what people think. The pandemic cut transport emissions. At least some of us are more reluctant to fly as data shows turbulence increasing.
Just watching, observing, looking at what is going on around us is going to make a difference.
Handcrafted insight 