[MUSIC]
Greetings from Stanford University.
I'm Bill Barnett, professor
at the Stanford Doerr School of
Sustainability and the Stanford
Graduate School of Business.
>> And I'm Charlotte Kramer,
a student at Stanford.
>> And we have with us here today,
Professor Dror Etzion from
the University of Vermont and
Professor Tarun Khanna from
the Harvard Business School.
And Dror, Tarun, Charlotte, and
I were all today at this conference
on organizations and
environmental sustainability.
The second year in a row we've run
this conference and two days
of really fascinating papers.
Let's go to you first, Charlotte,
you were at the conference.
What were your takeaways?
>> Yeah, that's a good question.
I think going into it,
I was really confused,
organizations, okay,
what kind of organization,
every organization under the sun.
And I think that's really what we
did kind of see at this conference.
We were talking from anything from
cement companies to local
entrepreneurs to low income houses.
We really talked about
the organizations that I think
are left out of the climate
conservation so often.
And I enjoyed the discussion on
microclimates as well, and
sort of seeing how individuals on
a much smaller level can be
directly impacted by the effects of
climate change.
>> That's interesting, and
from your first comment there,
Charlotte, on organizations,
it is interesting how so
many discussions of sustainability
either go down to the level
of individual human behavior.
What's my carbon footprint?
How do I behave?
Or they jump all the way up to
the level of broad policy, and
society, and economy.
And as you just said,
folks who study organizations
are the in-between,
and by their nature, they study all
sorts of organizations.
>> Yeah, and I think definitely,
we saw also in the conference some
more typical for-profit business
companies and a topic that came up
which would cause me to think a lot
was around the business case for
sustainability.
Because kind of the intuitive feel
is that we want organizations to be
involved in this, there has to be
a monetary incentive to it.
And then we had some people who
are saying, well, maybe that's not
the main thing, maybe that's a bit
too simplistic and there's other
ways in which organizations might
find purpose or find rationales for
going in that direction.
And Tarun, I think, has
thought about that issue as well.
>> Yeah, I mean, I'm acutely
conscious of the context within
which the organization is situated,
right?
So as you know, most of my work is
in developing countries.
We reference the work on
microclimate, and it's really
important to be cognizant of what
is a setting from which we're
trying to learn something and
infer something.
And then I propose you're coming
about such
a wide range of organizations.
For us to be able to take
the insights from one study and
apply them to another, you need to
sort of have some, I don't know,
some ability to abstract maybe.
And say, well,
this is what makes those lessons
applicable to somewhere else, or
this is what doesn't make them
applicable to somewhere else.
And I really found myself having
fun playing with the different
ideas, playing with the different
levels of aggregation,
the individual, incentives,
the organization's national policy,
the regulations.
It was just like a, I don't know,
like a smorgasbord of
stimuli in some ways,
which I really hated blasphemous.
>> Yeah, absolutely, we know.
Dror, you were part of one of
yesterday's sessions,
all about data.
And there were a number of things
in the data session that I found to
be really striking, but I wanted to
come back to you on that, because
you've been working on that.
What were your takeaways from
that session?
>> Well, that session, and
I think we saw it throughout,
we just mentioned the body sensor
data, millions of data points about
people in very hot environments and
how that influences them.
Today, we had,
I think it was a 50 million data
point set about housing and
energy efficiency data in Georgia.
And we're just seeing the emergence
of really vast, well-done,
high-quality, free often data
sets that allow us to see so
much more to analyze trends better,
to understand what are the ways in
which we can make progress on these
issues.
I'm very optimistic in terms of
what increasingly our ability to
collect, synthesize, understand,
and analyze data is going to allow
reearches and others.
I think anybody basically in
the world to help us make progress
on these issues of sustainability.
>> Can I come back to you on that?
Maybe push back a little bit, Dror.
I can imagine somebody at home
listening to us say this saying,
well, these researchers,
they really love their data, but
what are we getting out of this?
What is the payoff in terms of
understanding sustainability?
>> Well, I think, I mean, this is
the typical academic answer.
If you don't have good data
underlying some suggestions that
you make to policy makers or
to businesses, how to run their
business, then the advice that
you give is not very good.
Now, of course,
there is other ways to empower or
motivate people to make decisions.
I do believe that some kind of
pretty solid understanding of maybe
a few alternatives, we try this,
it doesn't work as well as that, is
a good thing for us to do and a way
for us to contribute to people.
I don't think it's always grounded
in data, but I think for
people who use it well and have
good intentions, it is actually
quite a valuable [INAUDIBLE].
>> Okay, that's a good point.
Okay, I take that as a good answer.
It's about the decisions that
people make in terms of businesses.
Now, coming back to you, Tarun,
there was a paper yesterday in that
data session that was really
focusing in on the consequences to
human health of heat.
And boy,
data made a huge difference there
in a way I was really impressed by.
>> Yeah,
that's a people way I think we can
see very clearly an answer to your
question, Bill.
Which is, without the data,
you literally don't know when to
tell the informal worker in a very
hot environment in that study
setting in India when he or
she should stay home to avoid heat
exposure, which in turn causes.
I really love that the presenter
went all the way into medicine and
found some really hard hitting,
a no pun intended medical output
variables that social
scientists don't normally look at.
But to say that, look, if you
expose somebody to excess heat or
what we call wet bulb temperatures,
and there is no intermediating
organizational structure to shelter
that poor person from the heat,
well, you get kidney failure.
So there's a consequence, Bill.
It's [LAUGH] pretty dramatic and
pretty direct.
And then going all the way to
the other extreme the paper that we
saw today, that Dror also
referenced on on rural Georgia.
The idea that a national level
policy could trigger such important
adaptation effects through these
so-called block grants that
are a way in the United States to
decentralize the allocation of
monetary resources as opposed to
have some centralized puba deciding
how to use the money.
That's pretty cool,
that's data in action in some ways.
So like you, I love the panel that
Dror was part of, also.
>> It makes me smile to hear this
conversation, because so actionable
to the point you just made, Dror,
on business decisions being driven
by knowing things.
And same with your point then,
Tarun, on understanding the impact
on human health because we actually
measure things, and it takes me
back to when I met you, Charlotte.
It was last year,
if I remember right, and I was your
professor in the introductory
course on sustainability.
And for those listeners,
if you can imagine, when you were
a freshman, if you took a course on
sustainability that touched on all
the heavy issues, basically, the 19
sessions that you really ought
to know about, but it can be tough.
And I think we were at about week
five in a ten week quarter and
you came up to me and said,
Professor Barnett, I
really need some good news, right?
I mean, I've remembered exactly
your words, but it was kind of,
do you remember this?
>> I do, I'll never forget.
>> [LAUGH] Does this conference
help a little, and you can say no,
I just want to know,
how does this go conference then?
>> [LAUGH] >> I think for me, it's
really funny that you brought that
up, because I was thinking that
exactly during this conference.
I was like, my God, all this data,
we're learning so much, but
what are we doing?
Because for me,
the way that I see it, and I work
with a lot of data all the time,
I study computer science here.
I think it's very easy to organize
data.
I've done it before,
I know how to do it.
And for me, I know data.
But then, when I look to see what
the world is doing and what
real-life organizations are doing,
if it's not done through
a capitalist, self-motivating price
mechanism, it really isn't done.
So when we talk about data
in microclimates, I was like, okay,
but who's doing it?
Who's looking out for
the little guys? Sure, we have so
much information on how these
people are dying of heat stroke and
struggling in these conditions.
And now we know, and
it's great that we know, but
what are we doing?
>> I see, I see, yeah,
go ahead, Tarun.
>> Charlotte, I thought you would
say after Susan's keynote this
morning [LAUGH] when she spelled
out all the doom and
gloom in Charleston.
>> And of course, by Susan,
Tarun, you mean Susan Crawford from
the Harvard Law School, where she
gave this terrific keynote based on
her book, Charleston.
>> A setting which is a coastal
city in the United States and
very low lying coastal city and
uniquely susceptible to pretty
small levels of sea level rise that
we're almost certain to see
in the next decade or two at most.
Juxtaposed with,
as you just put it, the little guy
really getting messed up because of
the racial legacies of how housing
policies have played out.
And the complete and utter inaction
in response to blizzards of data
that are available,
I thought you were going to say,
Professor Barnett,
I still need some really good news.
[LAUGH] >> Yeah, yeah, and
I think we all do.
And what makes me so happy to go to
these conferences and
to be here to speak with amazing
professors such as yourself
is that there kind of is hope.
I rememebr exactly what I wrote to
Bill, I read it often, and
I was nasty.
>> [LAUGH] >> I think about state
of the world.
>> But I become more and
more hopeful, especially when we
talk about things like this.
And when we realize kind of
the complexity of organizations and
begin to work with that.
>> I think this relates to a theme
in the conference that came up was
the issue of adaptation.
And I've always had an idea that
this is a really a double edged
sword, this word,
because on the one hand,
we do want to encourage adaptation.
And we want to make sure that
people who need the support and
have the ability to escape extreme
conditions have a way to do that.
And then over a longer term to move
their houses to where they need to
be so they won't be flooded, and
these are all things that
came up in the conference.
But at the same time, I think we're
also adapting in a way that I find
very worrisome as you were saying,
where is the outrage,
all of this information is coming
at us and we hear it and we adapt,
we kind of just tune it out.
And I think that form of adaptation
is really quite dangerous.
So I'm always curious about,
what is the right adaptation that
we want to encourage versus what is
the adaptation that is just leading
us to continue to accept this and
not do enough?
>> Sure,
I'll tell you, it takes me back to
the old psychology literature on
self-efficacy.
There are different ways we can
make ourselves feel better, right?
One way is just to have
the news be good, right?
So when people come up and
say good news, and I know with you
professors and Charlotte,
as you go on with your career,
this will come up.
The staff often come to me and say,
give me some good news.
We gotta publish some good news.
And I always come back to that and
say, I'm going to tell you actually
what's happening, okay?
I'm going to tell you what's
happening, but
there are other ways to feel good.
There's two other ways.
One way is to block and deny, okay,
what you're getting at, Dror,
right, where we could just tune it
out, and then feel good because
we're simply not accepting it.
Obviously, that's not good for
the world not good for us, right?
And the other way is to
find a way to take action.
So interesting that even in tough
times, if humans can do something,
they feel better even though
the context is still kind of tough.
And in that sense,
actionable consequences coming
or actionable results from our
research might be useful.
>> If I may say, I think
there's a third way to feel better,
especially as a corporation, and
that is greenwashing.
So one of our papers spoke about
this quite in depth about how
companies who are under ESG
pressures and who are being
prompted to divest from certain
things will divest from unclean,
really CO2 emitting plants.
But then we'll sell them to private
companies or
private equity firms that don't
have those same regulations.
So you can imagine the CEO and
all the investees and
everything feeling pretty good
about themselves when really,
it doesn't seem like there's been
any significant change.
And again, that
sends me to the everything sucks.
>> [LAUGH] I gotta say, Charlotte,
that's awesome.
And now, the next time I give
a talk on this topic, I'm going to
throw that third one in, and I'll
try to cite you when when I do it.
>> So I'm struck by Dror's very
playful use of the word,
adaptation.
And it just makes me think that
rhetoric is so important.
And we saw traces of that
throughout the conference when
people were talking about symbolism
and framing and
how people interpret things.
To me, as somebody starting to get
interested in climate change
effects on the 7 of the 8 billion
people who don't live in rich,
luxurious surroundings,
[LAUGH] I think very much ofclimate
mitigation, which you tend to see
people focused on in.
The fancy universities in
the world, the rich countries, and
climate adaptation,
which is really the poor rest of
the world that just has to
deal with the nuisance that's been
visited upon them by the rich
people [LAUGH] in some ways.
But Dror brings up a very important
point, so I had two thoughts.
One, Dror brings up a very
important point that adaptation can
be the way that you described it,
which is individuals just tuning
things out.
And the second thing I thought,
which was very cool, I expected,
and I looked at this conference
agenda that it would mirror
the 90/10 split in the way research
dollars are going to climate
research, which is 90 for
mitigation, 10 for adaptation.
But actually, every single paper in
here is about adaptation in one
form or the other.
There's actually nothing
on mitigation, which
is really interesting [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH] >> We didn't set it up
that way, we just responded to
people's submissions.
And I think it has to do coming
back to the organizations issue
that Charlotte started us off with.
It has to do with the kinds of
organizations that have
self-selected to participate in
this conference.
It's very cool, actually [LAUGH].
>> So picking up on Tarun's comment
on the 90/10 split, a number that
stuck with me, and I think,
maybe one of the things that I'll
follow up on after the conferences
is somebody mentioned an 80/20
split that I found fascinating.
That 20% of the impact on the world
or environmental sustainability is
our individual choices,
whether we choose to take a flight,
whether we choose to take
a reusable bag or a straw.
And 80%, though is structural or
systemic, which means things that
are kind of baked in, that are very
hard for us to change, where we
don't feel that we have that much
agency in terms of choosing this or
that option better or not.
And I think organizations, as you
mentioned, Charlotte, organizations
are a big part of the routines and
the structures that we live in, and
we have to change dramatically in
order to get to that 80% additional
change that could happen in
the world.
And I was just fascinated by
that number, and
it's something I'm going to take
away from this conference with me
to think about a bit more.
>> So I have a more selfish
self-reflection, introspection,
[LAUGH] which is, the two-day
workshop reinforced in me why,
given a choice between existing as
an academic in a discipline-based
environment and
a choice of existing
in a phenomenon-based setting,
I'd much rather be in the latter.
It's not a value judgment, it's a
taste function issue and just being
around people who were sort of very
interested in climate change and
sustainability, whether they were
applied math people, economists,
sociologists, ethnographers,
engineers, lawyers, physicians.
It was just very cool.
>> Yeah, I agree.
I think, for me,
what was really most notable
about this conference is that not
a single sector went untouched.
I mean, we were talking about
everything under the sun and
it's so comforting to know that
really so many academics, so
many organizational academics are
studying these things and they're
finding this data, and hopefully,
they'r giving people advice.
Giving policymakers new ideas,
new ideas for companies on how
to reach these climate goals,
and it's comforting, yeah.
>> Well, thanks to you, Charlotte,
and Dror, and Tarun,, and
to the listeners, until next time.
>> This day Stanford Initiative on
Business and Environmental
Sustainability podcast series is
sponsored by the Stanford Graduate
School of Business and the Stanford
Doerr School of Sustainability.
Music by Charged Particles,
that's Caleb.
That's for Mike Rock and
John Crostini.
[MUSIC]