9 Comments

Love this summary! And resonates a lot with my experience at other climate / environmental conferences, the feeling that the answers are far simpler than we are willing to accept. Making changes seem impossibly complicated is a dangerous tool for climate delay.

Expand full comment

Thank you Cass! Yes, I think I will have an embargo on attending conferences/COPs with corporates for the time being (unless someone is paying me to speak haha) because it feels like I'm going crazy. The new climate denial is climate delay through overcomplication for sure.

Expand full comment

Beautiful and truly threadbare summary of the Summit - thank you for sharing Ruth, and thank you for also posting about Owning It. I loved Paul Polman's reminder that really it all just comes down to us: "Do you care?"

Expand full comment

Thank you so much Rachel. Your newsletter about the summit was also excellent. On the 'Do you care?' - the problem is some sustainability managers might very well care but they are working for profit-driven businesses with all the wrong incentives in place. If their efforts don't tell a good marketing story or offer return on investment, they will be scrapped. The CEOs and CFOs do not care. They should be the ones at these summits (or better, on the ground in their factories and farms in sweltering heat and floods), as they have the most to learn!

Expand full comment

Yes couldn't agree more. The "us" needing to be humanity at large, and not indeed the small subsection of those already bought in and trying to do the work but being so restricted on it by the nature of the system they're a part of. It's how we get those people in the rooms (and in the factories et al!) to shape this with us.

Expand full comment

Thanks for your raw honesty.

Expand full comment

Thank you Lavinia! And for yours - I have been loving your recent newsletters.

Expand full comment

Great summary. I love the clarity of produce lees, pay living wages, use less fossil fuels. If every brand oriented around those goals imagine where we could be!

Expand full comment

Thank you Amelia. Yes - any brand is welcome to use my simple 3 pronged sustainability strategy...instead they'll hire a £££ consulting firm to create another circularity project :)))

Expand full comment