As an individual, I don’t feel like I can do much to help head off the climate crisis.
In fact, I’m personally making it worse. I try to do my part, of course: I switch off the lights when rooms aren’t being used, I sort my garbage, I’m eating less red meat, I haven’t owned a car in over twenty years, and I vote for people who believe in change.
But my job requires flying to conferences around the world, so my carbon footprint is worse than 99% of the world’s population. I’m writing this in a city that sprang out of nowhere in a desert.
I believe that human-driven climate change is an existential threat. But it feels hopeless. To channel Greta Thunberg: “Why is nobody DOING ANYTHING?! “
It’s easy to descend into apathy—after all, I’m not personally going to be around to witness most of the worst effects—and the evidence shows that I’m not alone: most people believe in climate change, but don’t see how they can make a difference.
But I do have one hope: as a representative of a company, I have a chance to do more than I can alone.
I’m told that SAP customers generate 87% of total global commerce. And SAP is deeply entrenched in most of the worlds most mission-critical but energy-intensive industries such as oil and gas, transportation, and retail.
This means even small changes in energy efficiencies across the business processes handled by SAP systems can make a big difference to the planet.
There’s been a tipping point this year. People are seeing the results of climate change with their own eyes and want to transact with organizations with purpose. But above all, the accountants are now on the hook: new regulations on everything from carbon footprint rules to plastics taxes to labelling transparency mean that sustainability is now a required, auditable part of running organizations.
Every organization I talk to is now taking sustainability seriously. If you help run an SAP system, you can help make the planet a better place.
I find customers are pleasantly surprised by just how many sophisticated tools are already available to make sustainability profitable and profitability sustainable.
Please run, don’t walk, to using them and implementing them!
#sustainability #innovation #intelligententerprise #climatecrisis #esg
image: public domain image of Archimedes’ lever (“Give me one firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.”), with my addition of the flames using the ProCreate app on iPad.