The science is clear — we are headed for a catastrophe

Peter du ToitI'm the founder of FutureWork IQ where I spend my time assisting businesses to improve their climate literacy so as to understand the projected impacts from the expanding climate crisis and how to adapt their workplaces in the face of these impacts.

The trajectory we are on, as you can see in this animation, is leading us to to an unthinkable catastrophe.

The science on this has been clear for decades.

Soon governments will be forced to aggressively limit emissions with “carbon lockdowns” becoming a real possibility. The disruption to mobility will be very similar to what we have just experienced with the covid response.

We keep saying to leadership teams, put on a pair of “carbon glasses”and look at your business through them. Where does the burning of fossil fuels touch your business? What is your strategy to decouple revenue generation from those touch points?

For example, we now know that we don’t need offices, we don’t need to fly around the world for business meetings, we don’t need to commute to work everyday.

The point is, there are many things we can do immediately to limit our exposure to fossil fuels. Those organizations that use the opportunity provided by the pandemic to fast track their emission reductions will face less disruption when governments are soon forced to act to reduce global emissions.

Do you think the organizations that were fully distributed before the pandemic were disrupted as much as their office bound counter parts when covid movement restrictions came? Of course not!

The same will be the case for those that take action now to decouple from fossil fuels.

How far are you down this track?