Forget obedience… let’s Align on Anticipatory Rebellion
While the crowd at Davos seemed ready to acquiesce in “anticipatory obedience” those of us that choose to stay the course will profit (and help)
“Anticipatory obedience”… that was a phrase I heard picked up during conversations in Davos this year. The belief that given the rhetoric (and executive-order led actions) by the new US Administration, titans of industry should proactively start changing their narrative and priorities away from climate change mitigation. The posse of tech billionaires at the Presidential Ignaguation seems to validate this belief.
I’ve never been one to be very obedient so to that belief I say… It’s time for Anticipatory Resistance! Or to quote Trump directly from his Davos Zoom call“This is not a time for pessimism. This is a time for optimism. To embrace the possibilities of tomorrow…”
(of course this quote is out of context and what Trump was referring to was a call to “reject the perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse. They are the heirs of yesterday’s foolish fortune tellers”. I haven’t felt that seen by a description since Theresa May identified me as a “citizen of nowhere!”)
But it seems that in all the acquiesence being whispered in the not-so-snowy streets of Davos, others were taking a stance by making the opportunity and the business case clear (to an obsessively capitalistic audience).
As Mark Carney pointed out there is “There’s a ‘massive disconnect’ between what some of the heavyweights of global finance are saying and the wave of money flowing into green projects.”
Another financier-turned-politician-turned-climate-warrior, Tom Steyer made the momentum unmissable: “The energy transition is both urgent and unstoppable. While climate science reminds us of the risks of inaction, the accelerating pace of technological innovation and market adoption is a powerful counterbalance.”
Or as Katie McGinty, CEO of Johnson Controls noted: “The interplay of climate action with other critical concerns offers a unique opportunity for CEOs to pursue decarbonisation as a distinct competitive advantage.”
But maybe it’s important to speak less about carbon mitigation -or the fact that 2024 was the first year the planet surpassed 1.5 degrees - and instead change the narrative to providing resilience, risk-avoidance and capital preservation (see LA Fires — cost: $30bn and counting, Spain floods — $1.8bn, Hurricane Helene — $200bn). As that expert, Al Gore (who BTW has been annoyingly agitating about this since 2006) said:
“Extreme weather events cost $3.54 trillion in the last ten years, $795 billion more than the previous ten years.”
According to the WEF itself “Businesses that fail to adapt to these physical climate risks could lose up to 7% of annual earnings by 2035.”
So with all due respect to those captains of industry… F**K obedience. For those of us that stay the course, the capitalistic outcome will be amazing… and as a helpful correlation we might have saved those obedient folks trillions of dollars…along with millions of lives.
LFG!
