The Augean
stables. Thor’s
drinking horn contest.
Prometheus and the
eagle. The task of
encapsulating 2020 is indeed Herculean.
Still, difficult as is the chronicler’s task, we can only hope we’re less akin
to Sisyphus, and need not roll a boulder such as 2020 uphill year after
year.
Shattered expectations
In January we predicted … well, nothing we predicted could account for the
all-encompassing, world-shattering
COVID-19 virus that
crashed economies, trashed social norms, killed almost 2 million
people to
date — thereby demolishing the hopes of prognosticators everywhere.
Even so, let’s see how our predictions fared.
First, we said in our
January PreCap that
young people would take over the climate battle. We had just seen the
unprecedented, Greta Thunberg-inspired Global Climate
Strike;
and it seemed full of promise. Yet, how can kids continue to cut school to
protest on Fridays when schools are closed and they’re not allowed to gather in
large numbers? Still, they made their impact felt. In the recent US
elections, for example, NBC News exit
polls “suggest
that 65 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 voted for Biden” —
the candidate who embraced climate change as a key issue. That is “11 percent
more than any other age group.”
In addition, the youth climate movement now has moved beyond Thunberg; and other
young voices are insisting on climate action. Though
COP26 in Glasgow — scheduled for last month — was
postponed, young people from 140 nations gathered online at their own COP,
culminating in a “statement of demands.” The young continue to be on the march.
We predicted that global courtrooms would be deeply enmeshed in climate
litigation, in suits brought against petrochemical interests and nations
unwilling to go “green” enough. Indeed, Norway’s Supreme Court heard a
case brought
against the government — although its decision allowed continued North Sea
drilling (Denmark, meanwhile, has decided to
curtail its
oil operations). Lawsuits aplenty have dogged the Trump administration’s
relentless dumping of environmental
regulation
and gutting of the Clean Water Act.
We noted that climate accountability would also take place outside the
courtroom. We specifically mentioned insurance; and 2020 saw insurance
industry stories about climate
risk.
But 2020 also brought major changes in reporting on sustainability, such as
the UK requiring TCFD reporting economy-wide by
2025.
We asserted that the US presidential election would be fought partly on climate
change policy; and it was indeed among the top three issues noted in exit
polls,
considered by two-thirds of voters to be a serious problem. Climate, coronavirus
and the economy topped the list.
The virus, of course, was tops; but we’ve
noted elsewhere how
climate has continued to be a central issue for individuals, even as COVID-19
raged around the world. As the Washington
Post
noted: “Two big issues dominated the 2020 election: the economy and the
coronavirus pandemic. But voters concerned about climate change still helped Joe
Biden win the White House.”
We suggested that demand for plant-based meats would continue to skyrocket; and,
for once, the pandemic gave this prediction a boost. The notion that COVID-19
likely arose from animal meats, and that US packing plants were virtual
super-spreaders, apparently led many to try going
plant-based
during the crisis.
Innovator Impossible Foods went
international for
the first time in 2020; and “sales of the plant-based meat are displacing
animal-derived meat sales,” according to an
analysis commissioned
by the company. Meanwhile, Beyond Meat’s second quarter net revenue (the
first full quarter of the pandemic) rose by 69 percent, beating
expectations —
in spite of plummeting restaurant revenue due to COVID.
Finally, we forecast that carbon emissions would continue to rise over the next
two decades due to international reluctance from the US and China to engage
with climate change. We were wrong; carbon emissions fell in 2020 — but for all
the wrong (pandemic- and wildfire-related) reasons.
Unsplash users voted this stunning image of the red skies over San Francisco, thanks to this summer's devastating wildfires, Photo of the Year for
2020. Its selection shows that climate is top-of-mind, well
beyond the sustainability field. | Image credit: Patrick Perkins
Much of the time, 2020 felt like endlessly rolling a heavy stone uphill day upon
day, only to watch it tumble down again. Yet, in truth, we have done good work.
We have labored and we have hauled that boulder farther up the slope, in spite
of everything.
There is a long way yet to go … and, well, 2021 will unfold as it does; and we
will deal with what comes. For all the trial and tragedy, the drama and the drag
of 2020, there is so much more to do. And do it, we will — together.
On a brighter note: Our top 10 stories of 2020
Aside from our prognostications, we at Valutus published another 60+ articles
and papers during 2020. Some were simply about cool and useful innovations,
others about critical, social upheavals and trends — but all were woven into the
fabric of this turbulent, tragic, but nonetheless hopeful year. Here are the top
10.
Submerged risk – and the risk of being submerged
We wrote a lot about risk this year (more below); but
in Atlantis,
we noted the consequences of sea level rise are much bigger and broader than
commonly thought — such as $14
trillion in infrastructure
damage and over 4,000 miles (6,400 km) of fiber-optic cables so crucial to
internet and data traffic.
The two tipping points
As a world, we face not one tipping point but two – an environmental tipping
point and a social tipping point, where action takes off. In this
article,
we explored the dynamics of tipping points, the diffusion of change; and we
showed graphic examples of the difference between linear and exponential progress.
The truly committed
Early in the year, we took note of the companies
that are catalyzing
others, companies such
as Danone, Microsoft,
Nestlé, Ernst and
Young,
and other organizations, large and small, that committed to world-leading goals.
Natural — and financial — disasters
We wrote about the conditions making more cyclones more frequent and
powerful,
then watched as there were more named storms in the Atlantic — and more US
natural disasters with price tags over $1 billion, and more acres burned by
wildfires in California — than ever
before.
Counting on accountability
Climate forensics and
attribution are
bringing GHGs into courthouses and creating the specter of legal liability.
While lawsuits to date haven’t had much success (as we noted above), the same
was true of tobacco suits – until that changed.
The long wrong
In 1970, Milton Friedman said the sole responsibility of business was to
make a profit, “so long as it … engages in open and free competition without
deception or fraud.” Fifty years later, we talked back to
him,
pointing out the “deception and fraud” involved in turning a blind eye to the
real value of the environment and society.
En-gendering equity
We wrote a lot about women this year, including a special issue of our
newsletter devoted just to issues of gender equity –
in business, education
and government.
But we’re especially proud of our article on
RISE
— our metric (and associated tool) for assessing gender equity — which lists the
six key dimensions to include (including ones missed by traditional measures).
The ends of odds
We wrote a lot about risk this year, but our most ambitious effort
was upending the traditional ways of understanding
risk.
In our article, we show what’s wrong with the usual way of thinking about risk
and provide examples of how it should be done (we even threw in a sneak peek at
our risk dashboard tool).
Parsing the pandemic
Of course, COVID-19 dominated much of our year, as it did for the world. We
wrote about what it meant for foresight and
planning,
helped launch the COVID
Covenant,
and hosted webinars about the
reset required. But our top article on it was our piece about how COVID showed
that we are bankrupting
nature.
We think it brings a different, more systemic perspective to this critical
topic.
The Value of Values
Valutus has always been about value and values. They share the same root (that’s
where the name Valutus comes
from), but the idea
that values have value still hasn’t caught on like it should. That’s where my
new book, The Value of Values, comes in, and why we published a summary/preview of
it.
Published Dec 28, 2020 7am EST / 4am PST / 12pm GMT / 1pm CET