Take investors, for example. For a long time, investors either didn’t care about social and environmental performance or actively discounted companies that took action. In fact, research has shown that for years investors penalized a company for being environmentally and socially active. But that’s no longer true. For example, finance firm Lazard studied 16,000 equities over a period of four years and discovered that investors drove down the P/E ratio of firms with higher GHG emissions.

When it comes to employees, even more has changed. First, big companies’ employees are increasingly concentrated in metropolitan areas and, second, they’re increasingly looking to recruit from the Gen Z and Millennial generations. Since both residents of metropolitan areas and younger people are more likely to be concerned about social environmental issues, that means companies who want to recruit them have to be also.

Customer expectations and preferences haven’t stood still either. NYU’s Stern School of Business studied tens of thousands of products over a six-year period and found that those marketed with sustainability claims grew faster than those without. McKinsey and Nielsen IQ conducted a different study covering 600,000 products representing over $400 billion in annual sales—and found the same thing. And my own company, Valutus, has collected over half a million data points on four continents showing the causal connection between environmental and social attributes and customer preference.

Politics is suddenly front and center when it comes to companies’ ESG policies, especially in the US. In several US states, laws have been proposed ­– or passed – that target companies that “discriminate” against fossil fuels, that use or promote ESG ratings when deciding where to invest, or that have diversity initiatives.

Elsewhere, others have threatened political action against companies based on their advertising or content decisions – such as one heavy hitter in the Republican party saying that companies that stopped advertising on Twitter could be called before Congress about participating in “leftist corporate extortion”[1] while another warned AT&T to work things out with the Newsmax cable channel “or else.”[2]

People used to think that questions like investments and advertising spend were outside politics and would be left up to the businesses themselves – but that is far less true than it used to be. Even these decisions are being pulled into the legislative orbit by relentless political gravity.

Image by Casey Horner / Unsplash

Is this new? Yes and no. It’s certainly new, and bad, in a lot of ways. But there have always been places where political and business issues intersect.

In the early 1950s, when IBM was exploring building factories in North Carolina and Kentucky, segregation was still legal in the United States. In 1953, company President Thomas Watson wrote Policy Letter #4 and circulated it to his managers, stating the company’s position plainly: “It is the policy of this organization to hire people who have the personality, talent and background necessary to fill a given job, regardless of race, color or creed.”^[3]

IBM, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Photo by IBM

As the official history of IBM continues:

Policy letter #4 conveyed without qualification that IBM would not comply with “separate but equal,” an entrenched euphemism for sanctioned segregation in the U.S.

It took courage for IBM to stand up to state governments in the 1950s, and it will take courage for business leaders to stand up for their beliefs now. But there is no alternative – as politics swallows more issues, businesses will either push back or see many of their decisions made for them.

References:

[1] https://twitter.com/HolmesJosh/status/1588626474327760904?cxt=HHwWkICzsZHX94ssAAAA

[2] https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1629171470881390592

^[3] IBM. “IBM100 – Building an Equal Opportunity Workforce.” CTB14, March 7, 2012. http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/equalworkforce/.

^[4]“IBM100 – Building an Equal Opportunity Workforce.” CTB14, March 7, 2012. http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/equalworkforce/.

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Fairy Tale Homes
Goldilocks, as every child knows, was scouting for a new house when she happened upon a two-story cottage in a secluded, wooded neighborhood, and decided to look it over. As with any prospective buyer, she was faced with various lifestyle choices: is it too cozy? Too cavernous? Will it be too hot or too cold? Can I find a mattress that’s neither too hard nor too soft? Finding a home that is ‘just right’ has never been simple but, by today’s standards, Goldilocks had it easy.

This century demands an entirely different set of criteria:

• How frequent and severe will hurricanes be?
• How likely is massive flooding or inundation over the next 50 years?
• What about regular atmospheric rivers, like the Pacific Northwest?
• Is it certain water will be available by 2030 and beyond?
• Are millions of climate migrants going to compete for space?
• And, yes, will rising temps and more-frequent, more-intense thermal periods render it too hot?

This is not an idle exercise. In 2020, the Ecological Threat Register reported a tenfold increase in natural disasters between 1960 – when there were 39 such incidents – and 2019, which endured almost 400. With oceans rising, deserts metastasizing, populations rising, and the number of climate-refugees exploding, locations that are safe from the various ramifications of global warming are becoming as scarce as they will be in high demand.

But where on Earth will it be safe to live? Inquiring minds – especially those used to the Hamptons, Los Cabos, Trancoso, and St. Barths; or who winter on atolls off Tahiti – want to know. For those without riches? Buckle up: it may get rough.

Climate GPS

A modern Goldilocks must triangulate climate-safe landing spots, and to do so she will need, as The Balance suggested, this set of simple criteria:

It Should Be Cool…

Temperatures are rising, and heat waves will intensify and lengthen, so starting with a place that stays cool makes sense       

Settle on a Hill…

A nice meadow, ridge, or timbe stand halfway up will keep you cooler, flood-free, and hey, what a view! Avoid areas prone to mud or rockslides, plant plenty of shade trees, and you’re set

Access to Water is a Must…

Desertification continues spreading worldwide (map above) so potable water for people and agriculture will be major issues, even in parts of the world where such was abundant before. A lake, an aquifer, enough rainfall, or a tame river will be ‘just right’

Avoid the Coasts…

Inundation will dominate headlines in coastal areas around the world throughout the century. Cyclones, rain, storm surge, erosion, and salt damage will increase dramatically, and few coastal areas will escape unscathed. A homestead in rolling hills or landlocked woodlands checks this box

There are a limited number of places that fit all these criteria. Those cited most often lie within a slender band of the temperate zone whose northern boundary runs east from the Canadian prairies to the Nordic peninsula; and to the south, from North America‘s Great Lakes to Latvia and Estonia. Above that zone, though warming is rapid, the growing season is not yet fully reliable, and wildfires are problematic under global warming. South of that zone, the worst manifestations of climate change – cyclones, sea-level rise, unbearable ambient temperatures and heat waves, drought, fire, and more, will be at their height.

Futurist Khanna dubbed this band the New North, “a collection of geographies such as the Great Lakes region and Scandinavia that are making significant investments in renewable energy, food production, and economic diversification.” But of course, they are also cool, hilly, have enormous reserves of fresh water, and are either inland or have long head starts dealing with coastal-protective infrastructure. As their northern range thaws, they will also have vast new agricultural, mineral, and oil reserves even as the southern regions’ resources – agriculture in particular – face harsher growing conditions than before.

Within this northern zone lie several glamorous locations like Copenhagen, Reykjavik, and Toronto. Less exotic spots, like Duluth, Buffalo, and the Estonian city of Narva – current population only 55,000 – have room for expansion.

The aurora borealis dazzles in the skies over Reykjavik, Iceland, January 2015.
Photo by Sergejf. Source: Wikimedia Commons

As noted above, some locations outside this belt have not, up to now, been able to support large populations. Ironically, a potentially useful effect of climate change is that, while it is broiling and stir-frying the middle latitudes, it is likewise opening areas to the north and south that were previously too cold, ice covered, or stormy. Places like Siberia, Greenland, the Norse countries, Iceland and even, perhaps, portions of Tierra del Fuego, are warming quickly, and are soon to become more fecund. If the winds hold true, they will soon also be far more populated.

To be clear, this opening of the cold lands is not to be desired in the normal course of events. Their climate was more appropriate to the mammoth than to man, and so they’ve remained largely pristine. Billions of tons of carbon are sequestered in tundra, forest, and peatlands, and many species fostered there will likely perish if humanity clusters there more thickly. But the reality of our failure to confront carbon emissions sooner means billions more people will have to move… somewhere. The thawing of the formerly frozen north and south is happening and will result in significant human immigration.

Consider Vladivostok, a port city just over 400 miles (680 km) from Pyongyang, but with strong infrastructure and only 600,000 inhabitants. This and many other places in the New North will likely be hotly sought after as milder temperatures move in to stay. Some like Duluth, with a mere 85,000 residents, are actively using this status to court climate refugees in order to boost that number and gain significant economic growth. As the New York Times explained, “they sense an opportunity in climate change,” and they are determined to make the most of it.

The Red Bridge, Novosibirsk, Siberian Federal District, Russia.
Photo by Mikhail Pavstyuk / Unsplash

Indeed, Khanna asserts, both Russia and Canada would “benefit massively from doubling or tripling—or, in Canada’s case, quintupling—their populations. Climate migrants wouldn’t be moving into barren spaces: Russia has more than a dozen cities of under one million people whose death and emigration rates far exceed the birthrate.”

Siberia, for example, the classic frozen ‘waste land,’ is seeing a significant shift towards a livable climate. “It’s a process that is likely to accelerate,” notes the New York Times. And a Russia that has long struggled to grow enough to feed even its own people, “hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.”

The Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada check all the climate boxes above. The area holds a fifth of the world’s fresh surface water; it’s far inland and virtually immune to sea-level rise; it is generally a few degrees cooler than coastal or southern cities[1] with plenty of rainfall; and while areas such as Chicago are postage-stamp flat, most are well above the level of their respective lakes.

Old and new construction in Nuuk, Greenland, August 2019. Photo by amanderson2.

Source: Wikimedia commons.

Finally, Greenland may be the world’s largest island but, with less than 57,000 people clustered along portions of its coast, it may yet become a thriving, highly populated human colony. Tierra del Fuego, too, is losing much of its glacial ice, and warming should permit more people and crops.

Will that be enough space? Will there be enough new or underexploited land to accommodate everyone? It remains to be seen. Billions will be affected. Whole populations are slated to move. Everyone will need a place. As futurist Khanna put it, people in the New North and other safe zones may find relative climate peace; but “they should expect a few hundred million new neighbors, too.”

It is rare for most governments to proactively protect living systems. It’s so infrequent, in fact, that any instance should be cause for celebration. So, when Hawai’i, Florida, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Palau, and several island nations banned certain sunblock ingredients believed to harm coral reefs, we put the champagne on ice.

But when these bans got ahead of the issue, did they also get ahead of the science? Some researchers are asking if the banned substances – clearly harmful to coral in high concentrations in the lab – are actually damaging coral in the wild; while others, more importantly, question whether their replacements are, in fact, coral safe.

Corals and other marine dwellers are already crushed by so many pressures – heat, acidity, fishing, invasive species, coastal construction, shipping, and sewage pollution among others – that adding sunblock to the list is simply piling on. But somewhere between 6,000 and 14,000 tons of the stuff is estimated to be released into coral reef waters annually, so understanding the impact of UV screens is critical.

Snorkelers, Blue Lagoon, Indonesia, in 2019. Photo by Taylor Simpson / Unsplash

Indeed, with coral tourism generating around $36B in local revenue and producing some $375 billion in commerce overall, further coral degradation is an enormous threat. Clearly, action must be taken, and the local authorities listed above have taken it by banning several so-called organic – chemical – UV blockers.

The Parks Service, for example, says flatly that “sunscreens that include the ingredients oxybenzone, octinoxate, and avobenzone, which absorb UV rays, can harm coral reefs, leading to coral bleaching and adverse effects of reef reproduction.” There is some strong laboratory evidence for this claim, and tests have found these substances in reef waters and in the tissues of some marine animals.

But the Service and others are going farther, actively steering bathers to ‘inorganic,’ mineral-based sunscreens, notably zinc oxide (Zn0) and titanium dioxide (Ti0₂), nano-sized metal particles that physically block, rather than absorb, harmful light, and that are believed to be benign for coral. Dozens of sunscreens are now being marketed as ‘reef safe’ and ‘coral friendly’ leading one 2020 Marine Policy white paper to urge the creation of “clear and consistent ‘reef safe’ labeling standards,” which, it says, would “enable individuals to make more informed sunscreen purchasing decisions.”

Bleached Acropora coral colony in the Andaman Islands, Indian Ocean. Photo by Vardhanjp.

Source Wikimedia Commons

But are there ‘more informed’ decisions to be made? Is it known if these mineral-based UV blockers truly coral safe? Or that the chemicals listed above actually harm reefs in situ? “The science about the possible threat that sunscreen poses to the environment,” Consumer Reports asserted this August, “is far from settled.”

Apparently, the National Academies agrees and has called on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to conduct a thorough risk assessment of all commercial UV-blocking ingredients, encompassing dangers to both human and marine life. In the Academy’s words, “the risk assessment should cover a broad range of species and biological effects and could consider potential interacting effects among UV filters and with other environmental stresses such as climate change.”

The supposedly coral-friendly components, Ti0₂ and Zn0, “are often considered ‘reef safe’ despite limited information on the toxicological effects of these compounds in corals,” according to the author of a recent study.

Man with black (Ultraviolet-A) light. Image by Klaus Hausmann / Pixabay

Ti0₂ appears to more-readily block the UV-A rays associated with aging skin, while zinc oxide Zn0 handles UV-Bs, which burn exposed dermal tissue. Together, they create a formidable screen for human skin and, when applied as indicated, adequately protect the skin from harmful radiation.

But on coral, there is substantial laboratory evidence indicating that high concentrations of these metals are harmful, even fatal to corals, promoting expulsion of critical symbiotic algae, tissue mortality, and more. However, points out Consumer Reports, “the levels of those chemicals in the water, on average, are still quite a bit lower than those reported in the majority of studies to be toxic to marine life.”

In fact, it is difficult to measure mineral UV blocker toxicity in wild aquatic environments “in part because these minerals occur naturally and, in nano form, are currently impossible to distinguish from commercial particles in sunscreen.”

Vietnamese nón lá rice-straw hats in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Photo by Dan Kempner. Source: Wikipedia

In other words, we don’t truly know, as yet, whether any of the commercially available sun-blockers, labeled ‘reef-safe’ or not, actually merit that title.

Yet the whole argument could, with the cooperation of the public, be rendered moot. Since at least the bronze age, humans have employed simple sun-blocking methods requiring neither nano minerals nor chemicals.

Japanese women with parasols. Japanese woodblock print. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Parasols, for one: brilliantly effective and still popular as sunshades in many parts of the world, parasols go back some 3,000 years. Wide-brimmed hats, keffiyeh[1]-style scarves, along with sunglasses, gloves, and other photoprotective gear, offer excellent UV shielding on land. In the water, if the maximum-exposure trend of Speedos and bikinis once gave way to the more sedate styles of the past, bathers could receive maximum UV blocking with no impact on coral. Sleeves, rash guards, and wetsuits[2] keep the sun away and never wash off.

We don’t truly know which, if any, commercial sunscreens are coral safe. Neither, it seems, do the governments banning some, and the companies promoting others as benign.

Surfers wearing ‘rash guards’ or ‘rashies’ on Punta Carnero beach, Ecuador.
Photo author: Mathias Poujol-Rost. Source: Wikimedia Commons

While it’s terrific that, for once at least, actions are being taken to protect the delicate coral before there is a massive public outcry, that is not enough. We need to know such things are safe before we promote them. In the meanwhile, a return to simpler methods that can be worn or held, and that don’t rely on dubious creams and sprays, seems prudent. And the sooner that risk assessment is undertaken and completed, the better. The race has a responsibility to protect human skin, but also the last surviving coral reefs.

References:

[1] There are many language- and location-dependent spellings for this garment

[2] It should be noted that the synthetic microfibers comprising many of these garments, as we explained in Nano Air: The Plastic River is Not Wet, have environmental issues of their own, including coral degradation. There is significant evidence that corals are ingesting them in significant quantities that serious harm is done thereby, from “host–symbiont relationship [bleaching], photosynthetic efficiency, tissue necrosis, calcification rates, energy demand, reproductive success and overall fitness,” and more. However, the majority of micro-and nano plastic (MNP) reaches the ocean from either microplastic degradation, from the washing-and-drying process, or from the air, rather than from actually wearing such garments while swimming.

When the ancient Hebrews (apocryphally) crossed the Red Sea, with 600 chariots at their heels, they likely transited the Gulf of Aqaba or its sister, the Gulf of Suez.[1] However, even if they survived descents to average seabed depths of 2,624 ft (800 m) and 131 feet (40 m) respectively, and evaded the spears of their pursuers, the passage would have presented a challenge more daunting than either: coral.

Most images depict a level, sand-lined seabed under a few fathoms of water but in fact, for refugee and charioteer alike, the most immediate threat would have been the calcified spines of razor-sharp coral on the steep, irregular reefs lining both waterways. For any who made it before the waters crashed back down, triage for lacerations would have come before milk and honey.

Thousands of years later, it is the world’s reefs that require first aid. Half the planet’s coral is estimated to have died since the 1950s. Going forward, up to 90% of the remainder may be doomed over the next 30 years. Coral appears headed for extinction.

Coral spawning, Flower Garden Banks, National Marine Sanctuaries (NMS), Aug. 2005.
Photo by G.P. Schmahl /National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Yet corals may be attempting to save themselves. In a modern-day exodus, corals are leaving their tropical ranges and fleeing northwards, into warming basins and coastlines formerly too cold for their sensitive polyps and symbiotic algae. Yet, while a few species have been clocked at a blistering 8.7 miles (14 km) per year, others are not so speedy, and reef building is a tedious business. Reefs of even the fastest-growing corals build out at only about 10 cm per year. Indeed, scientists estimate the Great Barrier reef (GBR) took about half a million years to form.

Besides, new reefs farther north won’t save those left behind. Coral migration is so slow, and global warming now so rapid, that most if not all the world’s reefs are doomed – without human intervention. Fortunately, there is hope at the site of the original Exodus. The same bright and teeming Red Sea reefs that Moses may have cursed as they gouged and sliced his sandals, are thriving almost as well as they did in his day.

Beds of Red Sea coral near Hurghada, Egypt, 2010. Photo by Kallerna. Source: Wikipedia

But how? And how can science leverage the answer to save suffering reefs elsewhere? Researchers and marine engineers are racing to find out, with only a few decades to work with until modern reefs are functionally dead.

Scientists’ options, however, are limited. The primary causes of reef degradation and death – global warming, marine acidification, and pollution – are still escalating. In the near term at least, humans can neither cool, nor alkalize, nor cleanse the oceans.

Happily, the answers provided by Red Sea coral may lie not in shifting their range or rehabilitating their habitat, but in the genes of the corals and their algal symbionts themselves. Noting that many Red Sea corals are managing warmer, more acidic surface water better than those elsewhere, some scientists are testing them for the specific genes that make them hardier than corals of the same species elsewhere. If such varieties could be identified, improved, accelerated, and, in a sort of polyp diaspora, sent far and wide to re-colonize the world’s reefs, then coral may yet have a future.

Symbiodinium symbiotic zooxanthellae microalgae, necessary to coral nutrition,
but expelled by coral under heat stress. Photo by Todd C. LaJeunesse (2018).
Source: Wikimedia Commons

This methodology is being applied successfully to other warming-challenged organisms: as we noted in Vietnam Varietals (Nov. 2021),the genetic properties of critical flora and fauna are being cataloged for favorable genetic traits that allow them to thrive in 21^st-century conditions – warmer, colder, saltier, more acidic, more polluted – conditions better than their cousins. As for corals, of the 2,500 or so known species, about 800 are reef builders and, of these, some twenty climate-resilient species have been identified in the Red Sea so far.

But how did they get there? Why are there corals which can withstand temperatures more than 5˚C over mean temperature in their home waters?

The answer, it appears, is that these were not the original waters of all the corals living there. Some, like the Israelites themselves, made an exodus from far hotter and more inhospitable places, such as the Arabian Sea off the Horn of Africa, reproducing and starting new colonies. Some polyps had adapted well to heat stress, and scions of these colonies moved – over some twenty millennia – into the calm, pellucid, and cooler waters of the Red Sea.

Coral column in the Red Sea, Egypt. Photo by Erwin ‘Tauchteufel’ Cox / Pixabay

Their descendants still retain that inherited resistance to heat stress, making them excellent candidates to repopulate reefs laid waste by warming seas. “One degree above an area’s summertime maximum monthly mean sea surface temperature for a period of a week (generally given as Degree Heating Week, or DHW) can be enough for bleaching to occur,” explains The Independent. “But these [Red Sea] corals have been known to survive a seven-degree rise.”

It should be noted that parallel research is ongoing regarding the symbiotic algae that inhabit – and through photosynthesis both feed and tint – coral polyps. It is the expulsion of these algae under heat stress that causes the ‘bleaching’ effect seen in dying corals. But in fact, it is becoming clear that the corals themselves aren’t so much expelling these algae, but rather, “in the events [sic] of high water temperatures… the algae becomes stressed and may escape into the water column.” In some ways the search for heat-tolerant strains of coral is also an effort to locate or create heat-tolerant varieties of their symbiotic algae.

There are several approaches currently under investigation. Certain researchers are using simple breeding techniques – genetic manipulation done every day with plants – selecting for, or removing, specific traits. Once they find an appropriate candidate, to protect genetic diversity the super corals are crossbred with those already on the target reef. “During breeding, the heat-resistant corals have a small advantage over the others and reproduce more as temperatures are slowly raised, meaning the entire population gradually becomes more heat-resilient,” the Independent explains. This accelerates a process that, without intervention, would require many millennia. With only a few decades before Earth’s reefs are expected to be effectively dead, any hastening of the process is critical.

Photo by Anirudh / Unsplash

Other scientists – less patient, perhaps, or more desperate – aren’t waiting for natural processes: they are reengineering corals to breed varieties with climate resilient characteristics. Either way, it’s a tedious and tricky business. As one coral scientist noted, “the Great Barrier Reef is the size of Italy — it would be impossible to repopulate it artificially.”

But human reef-reforming efforts are even trickier than that. Just this year, a team of Israeli scientists found that a particular species of branch coral, a “common symbiotic reef-building coral Stylophora pistillata from the Gulf of Aqaba,” exhibited excellent resistance to heat stress, with high tolerance and resilience up to 34.5˚C, offering “real hope for the preservation of at least one major coral reef ecosystem for future generations.”

With a range that “extends from Madagascar, East Africa… through the Indian Ocean to northern Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, New Guinea, Japan and many island groups in the western and central Pacific Ocean,” this species appears perfectly positioned to repopulate many stagnant reefs.

However, there are other forces at work on reefs besides warming and acidification: fishing, dredging, and plain old pollution also take a toll. Subsequent studies of Red Sea stylophora pistillata found that warmer temperatures render that coral more susceptible to degradation from copper (Cu), “a common marine pollutant of coastal environments,” which suppresses coral’s ability to form skeletons.

When Cu pollution is combined with higher water-acidity levels, yet another study found, the damage is immediate and devastating. As a candidate species for reef reconstruction on far-flung reefs such as the Great Barrier Reef (GBR), the Belize Barrier (BBR), or the Apo Reef in the Philippines, to name a few? Very likely not.

Reef degradation has been moving rapidly and, to this point, the human response has been flaccid. But at least there is now significant research and several possible solutions for rebuilding – or at least re-seeding – global reefs, with specific coral strains that can resist global warming. The work is focused, notably, on the corals that must have lacerated the Israelites in their dash for freedom, the corals most closely associated with migration and diaspora: the super corals of the Red Sea.

[1] There is modern debate as to whether the body of water crossed in Exodus references the ‘Sea of Reeds,’ possibly a now -defunct lake, rather than either of the Red Sea Gulfs.

It is the theory that determines what we see.

– Albert Einstein

In the early 1980s, an area of very low ozone (an ozone ‘hole’) was discovered over Antarctica. What was especially surprising was that it had been growing, and was visible to the right systems for quite a while, without being reported. Why? The monitoring system’s design.

It turned out that the systems for detecting ozone concentration were programmed to reject very low readings (below 180 Dobson units) as a quality control measure, since there had never been a reading below 200.

Unfortunately, the data for October 1983 contained many, many such readings – all of which were automatically discarded. A hole in the data hid the hole in the ozone layer.

Luckily, two things prevented the hole from going undiscovered forever:

• First, the system was set to notify people when a reading was discarded, so that someone could manually look into it and figure out why it had happened. (In this case, people did so)

• Second, a group of researchers from the British Antarctic Survey analyzed the data independently and brought up the hole in a now-famous letter to the journal Nature in 1985

Surveillance balloon over Billings, Montana, Feb 1, 2023. Photo by Chase Doak.

Source: Wikipedia (CC4.0)

Almost 40 years later, a similar situation unfolded when a Chinese spy balloon was spotted over (and later shot down over) the United States. Following the discovery, US air defenses were recalibrated to stop ignoring objects that were flying slowly and emitted little or no heat – and when that was done, they immediately discovered several similar objects.

Systems limitations had made it possible for a large balloon, one was easily visible to radar and tens of thousands of feet up, to metaphorically “fly under the radar.” It hadn’t flown under the radar, but it had been beneath notice.

Sustainability Holes
These examples are replicated many-fold when it comes to environmental and social issues. In business, precious few companies are truly ready when a big environmental or social concern rears its head – for example, in spite of the availability of pandemic insurance before COVID (but after Swine Flu, Bird Flu, SARS, MERS, etc.), only a single company actually purchased it.

When you look…through rose-colored glasses, all the red flags just look like flags.
– Bojack Horseman (by Raphael Bob-Waksberg)

It’s not just COVID, either. Consider a different thinking hole: climate risk. For years, I’ve been making three mutually-reinforcing points to financially-oriented audiences:

• Companies are far more vulnerable to climate disruptions than they think (because of submerged risks, such as that their suppliers, the ports they use, their customers, or others are affected)

• Companies purchase very little formal insurance against many of these risks*

• Since they don’t have formal insurance against these risks, they are by definition self-insuring. But they don’t think of it that way, and therefore they’re unintentionally self-insured, meaning that they’re not taking the risk-reducing actions they should

• Companies may have natural disaster insurance, but they’re extremely unlikely to have any sort of coverage for a loss of revenue caused by their customers experiencing a natural disaster, or a war spiking the price of oil, or a pandemic causing the price of container shipping to skyrocket (e.g., from around $2,000 to over ten times that much)

Soyuz rocket launch over Russia. Photo by Statuska

Normally, the reaction from finance professionals and other executives is to say something like, “I see. That makes sense, but I hadn’t thought about it that way.”

Like the US air-defense system, these executives had all the tools (risk models, insurance and self-insurance best practices) needed to incorporate climate risk in their thinking in a more complete way, but their systems weren’t set up to focus on it.

Photo by Broesus / Unsplash

Plugging the Hole
When there is a hole in awareness, there is a hole in action. Luckily, the ozone hole was discovered, and international action to address the problem followed. And when US defenses were recalibrated, and found more balloons, they took action.

But companies still allow far too much risk to go unseen – and un-acted-on because their systems are set up wrong. They’re primarily set up to look at the yesterday’s risks, along with those that are right in front of them.

But this is a solvable problem. Of course, you can tactically become more aware of climate disruptions and pandemic risks and do more to prevent and prepare for them. That’s a good start.

Photo by Alev Takil / Unsplash

Going beyond responding to a few specific issues – developing the capability to see more clearly – is even better. One way to do this is to let your values guide what you see, becoming “values lenses.”

There’s more about this* in my book The Value of Values, including what kinds of values and how to turn them into better lenses, but here’s a start:

When you let the desire to make the world a better place guide where you look (including where people are more vulnerable) and what you look at (e.g., social and environmental issues), you help close unintentional holes in your thinking. And you see much more clearly – and much farther.

* There’s more about values lenses, COVID insurance, and unintentional self-insurance in my book The Value of Values (which will be published by MIT Press in February 2024).

Until now, measuring sustainability’s impact on consumers has mostly been short on fact and high on emotion. We want consumers to care about sustainable products and responsible businesses and to demonstrate that when they purchase. But do they?

Northeast River Supplies (NRS), one of the largest paddling and water-sports outfitters in the world, asked Valutus and Triple Gap for some clarification on this very point.

NRS has been a sustainability and social responsibility leader for years but refrained from using that as a selling point. They’d been working hard to reduce and improve packaging, to source sustainable materials, and to do right by stakeholders, planet, and social fabric, but had never shouted out those facts. Even when their retiring founder elected to convert NRS to 100% employee ownership rather than sell to outside investors, they kept it low key. (Look, we get it: we agree people should do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.)

Photo by Daniel Aronson

Even so, recently NRS began to wonder what might happen if consumers knew of their values, their commitment to doing the right thing – just because it is right? Would that increase revenues? And could they learn how much value the market places on brand-level commitment vs. product-level initiatives?

Now, we at Valutus have always believed – and have shouted long and loudly – that values create value. Not just value for the planet, nor even for the satisfaction of doing good, but value in actual, countable, spendable money. We’ve known from our previous research over the years that both brand and product-level awareness of sustainable commitment would have an impact on consumer choice. Here was a chance to add a great deal more evidence in a different market segment.

Photo by John Erlich

First though, we had to collect that evidence. We were able to contact an incredible 220,000 people, receiving some 23,000+ responses.

Partnering with Triple Gap, we contacted individuals on NRS’s mailing list to see just how much values mattered to them. We also compared the responses to those of representative US consumers who weren’t NRS customers, to see if there was a systematic difference.

This combination gave us reach both deep and wide to test whether communicating a given product or company’s sustainable / responsible nature made people more willing to buy.

We also wanted to learn how price sensitive preference for these attributes might be. Sustainable manufacturing and operations can come at a cost and, though NRS’s pricing is competitive with that of its peers, sometimes doing the right thing might mean doing the more expensive thing. If a price increase were necessary in some cases, could sustainability blunt the impact?

Source: Valutus and NRS

To find out, we used our Customer Science approach, which differs from traditional research by avoiding questions that may not be answered accurately, such as “would you be more likely to buy a sustainable product?” Instead, we had people choose between real products, with prices, reviews, etc. appended, though with no visible brand markings and little additional verbiage (in the course of collecting over half a million similar data points for others, we’ve tried with brand markings and product slogans as well).

We did this in two ways:

• Presenting consumers with a choice between one NRS product (e.g., a life jacket) and its top competitor
• Giving them a choice between identical products in different colors (e.g., commodities such as shirts)

Would adding sustainable qualities to one of the products or companies make a difference? Would more people select that one, all else being equal?

To find out, we added sustainable attributes to an item – such as being made from 100% recycled fabric, being Fair Trade Certified, etc. – in each comparison. Then we again had consumers choose.

Next, we did the whole thing over again – same products, same attributes – but we increased the prices of the recycled, fair-trade, and responsible versions. This enabled us to see the changes in consumers’ price sensitivity.

The results? Outstanding. As it turned out, adding any of these attributes generated a small, but significant, increase in preference. As expected, more traditional attributes such as style and color mattered much more, but when comparisons on those points are relatively equal, sustainability and CSR considerations can tip the balance.

Backpackers at Upper Gospel Lake, Idaho. Photo by N. Wassmuth courtesy NRS

Product Environmental and Fair-Trade Attribute

• When the “100% Recycled” attribute was added, preference for an NRS life jacket – already priced higher than its competitor – rose. Even after a price increase of more than 10%, the recycled life jacket was preferred as much or more than when neither was sustainable. The words “Fair Trade Certified” also lifted preference when there was no price increase and kept that lift even when the price was higher
   
• A different NRS life jacket saw the number of people choosing it rise significantly when either “100% Recycled” or “Fair Trade Certified” were included. Both also beat their original preference even after 10%+ was added to the price
   
• An NRS shirt with a lower starting preference score (i.e., its baseline was lower), was selected far more frequently when it was sustainable. Once again, even after an increase in price, the shirt maintained much of its preference gain

That is a far more abstract idea, and we needed to know what the impact would be. So we did another round, but this time we tested what happens when the manufacturer is an environmental or social leader.

Photo by Daniel Aronson

Company Social and Environmental Responsibility / Leadership Attributes

When the verbiage was about the company itself, rather than its wares and materials, preference increased again… big time. Below are a few examples:

• One NRS shirt saw a truly significant bump when manufacturer environmental leadership was present, and even a slightly higher one when social responsibility was tested
   
• A different NRS shirt saw preference rise by double-digits from environmental leadership, and by a slightly higher amount with social leadership included

Wow. When customers know a company and products are more sustainable, that lifts preference enough to make a real difference? This is good news – very good!

Okay, so now we know. When a product self-identifies as responsible or sustainable, people show increased preference for it. But what happens when, rather than the product, the company that makes or sells it is so identified?

Photo courtesy NRS

Where Do We Go from Here?

The question now is, what does all this mean in terms of revenue for an actual real-world company? The apparel market’s overall growth rate is forecast to be just over 5%, well below the preference gain we found. Consider the impact at scale if even a portion of a corporation’s offerings saw results like ours. It could add the low-hanging revenue they would have to work long and hard to achieve otherwise.

In the case of NRS, of course, no massive course-correction is needed, since they already care about doing business the right way. Still, though they’ve already earned their credibility, based on these findings, NRS is doubling down on its long-held philosophy that doing the right thing is doing the smart thing.

“We’ve always believed in the importance of doing business the right way,” noted NRS Marketing Director Mark Deming, “but it was still powerful to see that benefit quantified in sales-and-dollar terms. Working with Valutus, and using their Customers Science research method and InVEST financial valuation model, we were able to demonstrate the business benefit of values-based actions in a way that was both credible and actionable.”

Their task now is to build on what they are already doing and to communicate effectively with distributors and consumers, something that can be done with very achievable marketing changes.

“We’re using the results to shape marketing, product development, and strategic decisions,” Deming continued, “in order to build on our existing environmental and social commitments and get even more value from them.”

Photo by Tamara Bitter

For other companies, capturing the benefits we uncovered may involve truly leaning into sustainability to allow values to bring them value. But how much value? Will the results be worth the investment? The answer appears to be yes – the benefits will be much, much more than worth it.

Quantifying Value

As NRS’ Deming explained above, we ran scenarios using the Valutus InVEST model and found that the effect of people seeing a company’s values had a significant bottom-line impact. Doing good, NRS found, does indeed lead to doing well, if you tell people know about it.

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Note: NRS presented on this work as part of a panel on Consumer Preferences and Behaviors, in San Diego on Monday, October 18, 2021 as part of the 2021 Sustainable Brands conference.

The current version of ‘trending’ is the video of the guy asking the dude about the thing. Punch up the media analytics, count the clicks, et voilà! It’s trending.

That’s not a trend. It won’t help your business know what your customers and other companies are doing, how they’re viewing issues, or the solutions industry leaders are putting into place over time.

A trend is the “general direction in which a situation is changing or developing.” Ideas, opinions, and innovations evolve, as do the methods for tracking them. Most are mired in media metrics, or 20^th-century tracking.

But one method – ours – is E3Evolution, a better choice for those who need to know which trends sustainability leaders are seeing, what they are saying about them, and any steps they may be taking to address them.

Using proprietary tech, E3Evolution can analyze and categorize thousands of pages of communications, helping companies stay abreast of which issues are growing, and shrinking. One conclusion from the data is that leaders are talking a lot more about a lot more issues than they used to, even as little as 5 years ago. An analysis of what they are saying helps others keep up with what’s most prominent today.

In the graphic above, for example, E3Evolution measured a wide variety of trends by looking at the top 40 sustainability leaders in North America and examining what they talked about in their external communications. This helps companies understand the change in overall expectations and specific issue expectations. In other words, it helps them keep up with what’s most prominent today.

The trends can be tracked over any period – over four years, as in the above graphics, or in detail over a single year, as below. As you can see, some issues have a lot more momentum behind them than others. These are the top movers.

E3Evolution tracks different regions, and the differences between them can be instructive.In Europe, for example, as in the comparison graphic below, trends show a very different arc than those of North America. Trends seem to build momentum more quickly in Europe, with North America having to catch up; but Europe’s trends also peak sooner than North America’s, where trends have a lot more recent momentum. Any company needing to understand the differential between the expectations of different regional customers and regulators will find value in this data.

E3Evolution is updated every six months, which keeps the trend stream both current without clutter.[1]

[1] A 2-year subscription to Valutus’ Stakeholder Science, which combines stakeholder insight with issue foresight, includes an E3Evolution subscription in addition to

• 4D Materiality
• 30 in ’30 Research
• VIEWS –  Valutus Issues Early Warning System

In his prescient 1907 novel, The Wonders of 2000, Emilio Salgari described “huge floating islands… equipped with huge wheels similar to those of your old mills, and towed up to the Gulf Stream, mooring them firmly.” These turbines – for such they were – would take energy from the steady currents of the Gulf Stream and transmit that electrical power through “submarine cables, similar to those that you used for transatlantic telegraphy.”

While the prototype Gulf Stream turbines of today are not moored, like Salgari’s ‘mill wheels,’ but instead drift like kites some 80 feet down in the water column, his concept of using ocean currents to make electricity were spot on. Several projects beta-testing feasibility, turbine design, and cost effectiveness are underway to bring blue energy from the Gulf Stream to the mainland via cables – just as Salgari envisioned.

Of course, modern oceanography has revealed that the Gulf Stream is but one of many such currents in a vast global system. These oceanic rivers – some warm, some cold – transit every ocean and coastline on the planet. The Labrador Current. The North Atlantic Drift. The Kuroshio. The South Equatorial. The Mozambique and the Alaska; the warm Agulhas current flowing down the East Coast of Africa, and the cool Benguela running up the West.

Such currents are perpetuated by Coriolis winds, by variance in ocean depths, by salt gradients, and by temperature. They have been exploited over the years – for shipping routes, fishing, and comprehending global climate patterns – but never, up until now, for harvesting electrical energy.

Photo by Norman Kuring, NASA Earth Observatory.

Just as humanity harvests only a miniscule fraction of the 173,000 terawatts of solar energy continually falling on Earth, we have as yet to make use of the incredible kinetic energy produced by the world’s waters. The Florida-to-North Carolina section of the Gulf Stream alone offers an estimated 163 Terawatt hours per year (TWh/y) in renewable, carbonless power.[1] For context, the United States uses 4,146.2 TWh/y, meaning just this stretch of the Gulf Stream, if fully exploited, could provide almost 4% of the nation’s energy needs.[2]

That may sound small, but the Gulf Stream and others flow north along the southeast U.S. coast, while the California, North Pacific, and Alaska currents also cradle America’s shores. The Greenland current could potentially supply a significant chunk of that island’s needs, the Labrador borders all eastern Canada, while every other continent on Earth is touched at some point by these energy-rich oceanic rivers.

Unlike riverine hydropower though, oceanic turbines must be laid in salty, marine offshore environments, and the electricity harvested must be cabled to shore, a significant technical challenge. As the fastest-flowing ocean current – hence the one with the greatest electrical potential – the Gulf Stream is the logical place to start.

Artwork depicting a cable-tethered undersea turbine design.
Source: Wikimedia Commons

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Southeast National Marine Renewable Energy Center (SNMREC) at Florida Atlantic University has been studying problem and engineering equipment with an eye to accelerating commercial implementation of ocean current power generation.

There have been concerns that, as with fishing, dams, and other human activities, marine wildlife and even the Gulf Stream itself might be adversely affected by floating turbines. However, an exhaustive 2020 study by Ocean Energy Systems (OES), a subgroup of the International Energy Agency (IEA), studied this question and found that, as the Washington Post put it, such structures were “unlikely to harm marine life, change their habitats or affect the natural flow of ocean waters.”

There are threats to the Gulf Stream, however, and to its global family of currents, that could have impacts far beyond the viability of marine power generation. Some models have shown that climate change itself is destabilizing ocean current patterns planet wide. That would substantially impact climate, weather, marine migration, marine salinity, and a host of other critical systems across the globe.

In the meanwhile, Salgari, that champion of fictional swashbucklers everywhere, nailed both the need for more power, an accessible source just off the American coast, and a means for exploiting it. Bravo, signore, bravo!

[1] Eight billion gallons-per-minute flowing at a maximum speed of 4.8 knots per hour (5.6 mph / 9 kph).

[2] The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that all forms of marine energy  – “wave, tidal, ocean current, ocean thermal, and riverine in all 50 states” – would render 2,300 terawatts annually, equivalent to “57 percent of all U.S. electricity generated in 2019,” enough energy to power 220 million households.