[MCN] Too many boardrooms climate incompetent : Kids can complicate parents' thinking on climate

[Lance Olsen]

Financial Times  Jan 30, 2021

Climate change 
Too many boardrooms are climate incompetent 
There is a striking lack of directors with expertise in climate change and ESG issues 
PILITA CLARK 
https://www.ft.com/content/611522b7-8cf6-4340-bc8a-f4e92782567c <https://www.ft.com/content/611522b7-8cf6-4340-bc8a-f4e92782567c>

Excerpt 
Not that long ago, I found myself on a video call with a group of business people where a man who once ran a very large company said something unexpected. He revealed a survey of boardrooms he had been involved with had found that just 7 per cent of board members were “climate competent”, meaning they knew enough about climate change to understand how it could affect their business. .

There were audible gasps when he said this, but there should have been no surprise. The dearth of boardroom climate expertise is actually worse in some places, according to a new study from New York University’s Stern Center for Sustainable Business. When its researchers combed through the biographies of 1,188 board members at the 100 largest US companies, guess how many directors they found had specific climate expertise? Three. That’s 0.2 per cent of the total, just 6 per cent of whom had broader environmental experience. 

At a time of ballooning investor demand for climate action, these numbers highlight the stark gap between what companies are saying about cutting carbon emissions and what they are actually doing.  What is being said is striking. Since the start of 2020, the number of the largest companies with a net-zero emissions target has tripled to at least 1,500. 

Yet too few firms have a detailed plan for reaching those targets, which is no surprise considering the state of boardroom climate competence. This might not matter if global warming was no problem for companies. 

End of excerpt  

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Nature Climate Change Published: 06 May 2019 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#article-info>

Children can foster climate change concern among their parents
Danielle F. Lawson <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#auth-1>, Kathryn T. Stevenson <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#auth-2>, M. Nils Peterson <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#auth-3>, Sarah J. Carrier <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#auth-4>, Renee L. Strnad <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#auth-5> & Erin Seekamp <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#auth-6> 

Abstract
The collective action that is required to mitigate and adapt to climate change is extremely difficult to achieve, largely due to socio-ideological biases that perpetuate polarization over climate change 1 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR1>,2 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR2>. Because climate change perceptions in children seem less susceptible to the influence of worldview or political context 3 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR3>, it may be possible for them to inspire adults towards higher levels of climate concern, and in turn, collective action 4 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR4>. Child-to-parent intergenerational learning—that is, the transfer of knowledge, attitudes or behaviours from children to parents 5 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR5>—may be a promising pathway to overcoming socio-ideological barriers to climate concern 5 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR5>. Here we present an experimental evaluation of an educational intervention designed to build climate change concern among parents indirectly through their middle school-aged children in North Carolina, USA. Parents of children in the treatment group expressed higher levels of climate change concern than parents in the control group. The effects were strongest among male parents and conservative parents, who, consistent with previous research 1 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0463-3#ref-CR1>, displayed the lowest levels of climate concern before the intervention. Daughters appeared to be especially effective in influencing parents. Our results suggest that intergenerational learning may overcome barriers to building climate concern.

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“The emphasis on consensus in IPCC reports, however, has put the spotlight on expected outcomes,…"
 
“...it is now equally important that policy-makers understand the more extreme possibilities that consensus may exclude or downplay.”
 
Michael Oppenheimer,  Brian C. O’Neill, Mort Webster,  Shardul Agrawala . The Limits of Consensus. Science  SEPTEMBER 14 2007

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