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[MUSIC PLAYING] ANDREW KAROLYI: We have a theme today. The theme is about climate finance, climate sustainable finance, and, more broadly, the issue of sustainability, the importance of it as a discipline of research for our college, college community, the importance of ways in which it translates into how we foster a community of learning for our students on these very topics.
It is so apt and proper that it happens to be synchronous with some very important meetings that are happening over in Glasgow at COP26, how countries are gathering, their leaders are committing to make net zero by 2050 a reality, and binding ourselves to the commitments that were part of the Paris Accords not too many years ago. And of course, this is one of the many themes, but this is a really, really important theme for our college.
Glen Dowell, he's the Henrietta Johnson Lewis Professor of Management in management organizations in the Johnson Graduate School of Management and a specialist in the area of sustainable finance and business. Mark Milstein, on the left, is our professor of practice also in management organizations. He leads our Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise.
Everybody wants to hear-- You're there. You're taking part. You're going to come back, and you're going to bring back all the things that you're learning and you're experiencing. And I just thought maybe we could hear from the kinds of things you're seeing and what reflections you have on those things. So I don't know. Glen, you're going to go first.
GLEN DOWELL: Yeah, sure. Thanks. Thank you, Andrew. And thanks, everyone who's tuning in. It's a huge privilege to be able to represent Cornell, the College Johnson at this event. It's really an astounding series of meetings and exhibits. And it's overwhelming. I'm still trying to make sense of some of the things we've seen.
But one of the things you asked us to think about a little bit, what we've observed at COP that we can take into our teaching, research, engagement work. And I think there's a few things that really popped up over the last 4 days for us. One is, for me, I'm lucky enough this is my second COP. I attended in 2017 in Bonn. And the tenor of the discussions from the business side, it's just totally different than it was even four years ago.
This is just a complete sea change in the way businesses are engaging with climate. So the commitments are stronger. They're more transparent. There's a real commitment to auditing, to science-based targets, to the kind of things that will give businesses a chance to instead of being pilloried often or seen as dragging things back to really lead in some cases and be upfront of even what some of the governments are doing.
There's a real commitment to standardization in the way that we're measuring climate issues, greenhouse gas emissions, and so on. There's a change in tone from reducing harm to innovating and thinking about inclusiveness and, really, how can we not just fix the problems we have in terms of climate, but how can we use that as a lever to really change the dynamic between communities, for example, and to think about some things around environmental injustice that have festered for way too long, both within countries and across, of course, across countries?
And one of the things that was really interesting, I've been attending some events outside of the main COP venue put on by The New York Times and by other entities. And it's really interesting that companies are saying left and right that it's not about selling these issues to their employees anymore. It's really the employees are buying in and ready to engage. It's about actually fostering that kind of commitment that the employees already have and focusing it on the goals, which is really refreshing. It used to be a lot more like, how does top management sell this to employees? Or how do they connect the dots for people?
But what we're also hearing is a critical need for employees across the spectrum of industries who understand these issues and have the skills to implement, whether it be innovation around clean tech or things like installation. Today is the built environment day. And a lot of that comes down to retrofitting existing buildings. And there's a critical lack of human capital that's skilled at those kind of jobs. And so it's really become an issue all the way through the organizations from top management down to frontline employees to have the kind of skills that are needed to make the changes that every industry needs to undertake.
For us, personally, at Johnson and at the College, I think what it's reinforced-- Mark and I have had a chance to talk about is that this is not a siloed issue. It can't be anymore. It's got to be something that every one of our programs and within Johnson every one of our immersions and intensives engages with. It's just not-- it's not enough to have two world class experts such as ourselves deal with this. We have to have every program touch on it in some way.
And I know we're really excited about some of the things we're rolling out at Johnson and across the College in that regard. But for example, I went to a phenomenal session on the use of cloud computing to help tackle climate issues. And it really works in two ways. So you move some of your data off of dedicated servers that you have and onto the cloud. You've reduced emissions just because you've gone to a more efficient method of managing data.
But it's also the fact that, then, the data are available for crunching big data and running the numbers and innovating. And so it's really an exciting issue for companies to really tackle. And it obviously points to all of our digital programs that we're rolling out. Should be thinking about how those digital skills can be used towards sustainability.
And we're seeing it, obviously, in marketing. And yes, Andrew, we're seeing it in finance. Finance is everywhere here. It's a big piece of it. How do we finance these issues at the large macro level, the promises that were made to the lesser developed countries? But how do we finance? How do we put together deals in new and innovative ways at the firm and at the initiative level?
And then, finally, for research, I don't think you can walk around something like this without getting really excited about ideas for research data that are available. There's a new satellite coming online next year. It's going to have real time really micro methane emission data.
And methane is probably-- it's actually the first thing we should be tackling, because it's so much more potent than carbon dioxide, but it also dissipates much faster. So if we can go after methane, we can use these new data sets that are coming online to really see where the big emitters are. And we can look at some issues around how to put pressure on those companies. It's really exciting.
MARK B. MILSTEIN: Yeah. And I think what I'd add to that is on the one side, there's a lot of opportunity, aspirations, and hope. But you're also getting a lot of attention from the multiple stakeholders that are both in the meeting and outside of the meeting. A lot of concern about whether or not we'll be able to meet the science and address climate change in a way that doesn't leave the world irreparable.
And so there's definite acknowledgment. Even in the business meeting, there's a morning meeting of business interested NGOs. So in our case, or business community's case, that's international Chambers of Commerce, local Chambers of Commerce, organizations like that. And this morning's had an address from a vice minister from the Japanese Ministry of Economics, Trade and Industry. And folks there were saying that there's a lot of trust that has to be built up by the business community. There's a lot of feeling among many people here that the business community has been far on rhetoric and short on action.
This evening, right before the plenary session-- there was the closing plenary session. There was another plenary session where there was a young activist from Africa who really set out a damnation of the business community for talking a lot about climate change, talking a lot about wanting to care about sustainability, but really failing on the action front. And it causes you to think through a little bit. If a business school isn't bringing sustainability to its students, what is the service that's providing society at this point? Because this is so critical across the board for so many people.
On the other hand, as Glen is saying, the amount of innovation, the amount of money that has the potential to come into the fight against climate change, is very exciting to folks. And so Secretary Carrie, at a side event I was at a few days ago put on by Bloomberg, said that folks are getting concerned about whether or not governments are going to step up with 100 billion, billion with a B, $100 billion that was promised six years ago in Paris for less developed nations for loss and damage suffered from climate change.
He pointed out that if you take the two biggest economies out there, US and China, the best they're talking about is billions. What we need is trillions of dollars a year spent on this problem. And only the private sector has got those kinds of resources. And so in his mind, you have to have the private sector really come in and work at this. Anything short of that will be a disaster for everybody.
ANDREW KAROLYI: And if there's one area in which I can imagine us just absolutely racing to the lead relative to many of our business school peers out there is the fact that we've got this incredible pantheon of scholars focused on climate and sustainability, climate change, climate change economics, and a huge appetite for big data analytics and distillation.
GLEN DOWELL: I guess no one is going to complain if I'm a cheerleader for the College at this point. But I think there's not another place that's positioned better to do this, especially when you add us in with the Atkinson folks, and they--
ANDREW KAROLYI: Correct.
GLEN DOWELL: --screen your capabilities. We have-- one of the core authors of the IPCC report is a colleague of ours at Atkinson. And all these people, they just-- it's an amplifier to the kind of things we can bring to the College.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
SC Johnson College dean Andrew Karolyi talks with Professors Glen Dowell and Mark Milstein about COP 26 and the imperative of sustainable business education. From Business at a New Threshold: Harnessing Finance and Data for Sustainable Prosperity . November 11, 2021.
