What Shareholders Have Learned From COVID-19 and How These Lessons Can Lead Us to a Safe, Just, and Sustainable World
If there is one takeaway from the pain and anguish of COVID-19 it is that we now have dramatic proof that:
SCIENCE = LIFE IGNORANCE = DEATH
Over half a dozen people in my circle of family and friends have passed away in the last few weeks. For the most part, it is because our leaders did not base their decisions on data, long-range planning, and worst-case scenario models. When we address problems with logic; people live, economies recover rapidly, and we avert intense tragedy. Conversely, when we base decisions on a hunch, maintaining the illusion that everything is okay, and returning to business as usual, people die. In the case of COVID-19, they often die alone and in intense pain.
COVID-19 and climate change are fundamentally issues of risk management failure. The hard truth is that the laws of science, of physics, and of chemistry must be acknowledged. If we believe in our scientific models that lay out worst-case scenarios, and we respond with the necessary urgency, tragedy is avoidable. Health and financial modeling show the escalating costs of not responding and how delays increase these risks exponentially.
With COVID-19, early recognition and quick action would have limited the harm. With climate change that time is long past.
Voices that minimized, politicized, and denied the virus did a great disservice to this nation. Companies that continue to deny and support false-science on climate condemn us to drought, super-storms, famine, refugees, and all of the other known climate risks as modeled and detailed in numerous United Nations’ reports.
With the virus, failure to bring existing resources to the problem, to require businesses to serve the public, has cost us dearly. It is difficult to fathom that the United States, one of the richest countries on earth, still lacks sufficient swabs to conduct basic testing. With climate change we have the models and case studies from around the world. We know how to transform our energy, transportation, and building systems to become Paris-compliant. The decision makers are under the control of the few that want to maintain business as usual even if it means that millions will suffer and perish.
COVID-19 teaches us that we cannot outrun science. We can only ignore it for a time and at our own peril. Climate change is the exact same story. COVID-19 is a high-speed coming attraction of what awaits us if we continue to ignore the planetary crisis of climate change.
If we are wise, we will apply COVID-19 learnings to shift our trajectory on climate change and other issues including toxins in our food system, plastics destroying our oceans, and injustice that puts the brunt of the impact on low-income communities. We can create a safe and fertile place in which our children and communities can thrive. As investors, when we align our investing with our values, channeling capital into companies with best practices on environmental, social, and governance, we shift the paradigm. As individuals, when we choose wisely which products we purchase, where we bank, what we eat, and what clothes we buy, we send a powerful signal. Each decision defines us and builds a regenerative economic paradigm.
We can ignore the science, disregard the peril, and repeat our mistakes. We choose our future with every action we take. If we believe our scientific models and respond with the necessary urgency, tragedy is avoidable and transformation is possible.