Monetising Climate Change

With COP29 (the UN's big yearly climate change meeting) coming up in a few days, in this video, I’ll dive into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks and how major consulting firms—might be using carbon credits, ESG ratings and other corporate smokescreens, to help their fossil fuel clients cash in rather than create change. From the UN’s climate conferences, to the fossil fuel giants and the entangled world of consulting, I’ll unravel who truly profits from ESG frameworks and sustainability consulting #ESG #Sustainability #COP29 #UN #CarbonCredits #ESGRatings #ESGFramework #Consulting

0:00 Intro
03:45 A short history of sustainability
07:07 The consulting industry & ESG
08:45 Marketing "sustainability practices"
11:04 Consulting fossil fuel & COP
20:14 Consulting governments
23:32 Carbon offsets
28:50 ESG reporting standards and frameworks

Here's the link to a document where I list all the sources I used for this research:

I mostly post photos of my cats

We produce all our jewellery in Germany and France and have a lifelong guarantee - and with the code 'CONSULTING=SCAM' you get 10% off your order :)

[hyvsan]

Monetizing how others monetize climate change is next level

[Richard.Goldenman]

The range of hilarious music you used when discussing consultancys is *chefs kiss*

But joking aside, as a Procurement professional in the public sector, i get involved with ensuring stopping consuntancies from bs'ing delivering social value (which is parrallel to enviromental) when bidding on contracts.

I hate seeing dribble and want to see deliverables for social value because of the profits of the contract they win....

I loved the presentation of the environmental conflict of interests and really ties together how entangled it really is!

[ocaio]

I relate with you getting disappointed with your role as a consultant.

I'm an environmental engineer, who's worked for a big player of the energy sector involved with this ESG bullshit.

After a few years, it became so clear to me that it was pure bullshit that I just became totally disgusted by it, which ended up making me give up the profession altogether.

[martita]

I’m so happy to have found you. Great work! You’ve earned one more subscriber.

[madjarov]

I used to work at a bank. I quit for the same reason (and am now a brokie too) but for a while I really thought "we're one of the good guys" - not without cause, we really did do some cool stuff that helped people, and we could do it because we were rightly considered to be on the forefront of innovation, which led to higher profits, which allowed for doing some actual good with the budget. (At least that's how it looked from the bottom up, which I never rose from.)

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say I was being groomed for great things (despite my lack of higher education). I was head of the innovations team, president of our Toastmasters club, I helped people win some awards, first-name basis with the national CEO. I worked until midnight not because of, but despite my HOD (who often gently told me to go home). But I noticed some things. Our entire "innovations" department seemed to be a PR label for "the department that fixes problems that incompetent or corrupt leaders created". I started to question things, and people didn't like being probed, which led to some bizarre meetings, like one where one person in a badly-performing dept was simultaneously asking us to solve some system problems in his space, and being angry that we were talking about them. But on the whole, things seemed to be moving up and I was excited to oil this machine so it runs even better.

That all changed with COVID. Initially, my outlook was reinforced: Many of us started working from home, the company announced that amid all other corpos doing massive layoffs, we value our people and vow to not do that. I'm no economist, but I knew this was a mistake. I thought they were buying goodwill with a cheque they couldn't cash, because the economy was tanking and the bills have to be paid.

That's when the dam burst. Some departmental reshuffling was to be expected, but as my own department got absorbed by another, and I saw what would fill the inevitable cracks: Worker exploitation. Our new KPI structure was such that it was impossible to get a halfway decent work performance rating. As in, it was literally impossible to qualify for a bonus or even a raise on par with inflation - both things that were unofficially promised (and delivered) to everyone not undergoing performance management. But it was done in a way that was hidden by math - very similar to exploitative video game currencies, for those familiar with them. You had to convert your productivity hours into a rating, then to a percentage and combine it with some other indicators, then back to a percentage and then to your final rating. Most people didn't look into this and instead just used the handy-dandy spreadsheet provided by the team leaders, and they would just input their numbers and report the final number that came up.

But my autistic ass did look into it, and found the skeleton in the machine. And I started making noise. This was during the departmental reshuffle, so many things were up in the air, and I thought "this must just be an arithmetic oversight, I'm sure they'll sort it out before finalizing". I CC'd everyone that this affected, which was just under 100 people. Management said something like "thank you for bringing this to our attention, we will look into it." And then, nothing. I bumped the thread after a week or two, and got told basically "sorry for not replying earlier, but we looked into this and found no problem". I still thought maybe they didn't understand, so I clarified: This means nobody can get a raise or a bonus, even if they are literally robots being 100% productive 24/7. I corrected the formula and plotted both the current and correct method of calculation. And still CC'd everyone. A few days later, I was told I'm being rude (which, to be fair, I kind of was - I said "either management is completely incompetent, which I don't believe they are, or deliberately dishonest").

Some days later still, I got a message from the HOD. There have been complaints about me. From customers and coworkers. That I'm rude and unhelpful. Recordings of this behaviour were sent to me, proving this rudeness: One from two months, and one from a couple of weeks prior. (My "transgression" was that I didn't provide information to these people because they failed to answer some security questions. I was following procedure to the letter.) I was asked to admit guilt. I didn't. I said I've done nothing wrong. They said okay, now you're getting a second written warning for the same crimes, how do you like that? I refused again, for the same reason. Another week later they made it a final written warning. Same answer.


At this point, my former view of the company was completely shattered. I didn't care about my job and it showed. I was doing the bare minimum to get by (and honestly kinda less than that sometimes). I was called into a hearing to defend my job. They concluded that I was underperforming and should be fired, but were giving me a chance to keep my job, so I was under performance management and "serving" two simultaneous extended final written warnings. I appealed the decision (which required getting involved with a workers' union, where my rep absolutely repulsed me with the underhanded, deliberately dishonest slimy practices they were engaged in - think Evrart Claire from Disco Elysium). I told him, on the record, to stop lying. He said "then I will recuse myself" and left. That was a mishearing. We held another after a month. That one ended with the bank concluding that they were right all along. Shocking, I know.

A few months later, Exco sent out a company-wide memo: Anyone who wishes to resign will get full severance, and also a bonus proportional to the number of years worked at the company. (Like Margin Call but less Hollywood.) I and about 10 others took the deal. Now here I am, 3 years later.

I doubt anyone will read this, but I felt like sharing. If you did, I hope it was somewhat entertaining or useful.

[romerobjuancarlos]

This has all the markings of a corporate thriller, Anna! Thank you so much for introducing me to the "source material" website, I'm always looking for more longform investigative journalism. Cheers!

[HighKing]

Glad someone is trying to spread awareness about this :)

[cycleistic]

Thank you! Your videos need much more attention, hope they get the traction they absolutely deserve.

[Tobi-jlhc]

i hear "Nachhaltigkeit", i click like

[TheGIGACapitalist]

When I got my Responsible Investment Advisor designation I was so proud and excited. Then while reviewing the funds I was expected to promote as green and responsible, I found they contained coal companies among the many others you listed.

My concerns were met with canned responses "responsible ownership" and "activist voting". Activist voting is a thing if you're Warren Buffet or if Vanguard and Fidelity joined their votes- not an asset manager that owns 0.084% of outstanding shares.

I wish there were much stricter funds that had much higher standards.

[Kim-nhwf]

You're killing it with those videos Anna!

[Koba_]

"Scamphlet" is my new favorite word

[jodisel]

This video is so good. More people need to see that

[JamanWerSonst]

Main problem is that long term costs of fossil fuels were never priced into fossil fuels, so none of the market mechanism can possibly work towards self-regulation. (Since they all work through feedback loops that rely on accurate pricing)
This crucial fact is what corrupts this whole mess. Any good capitalist would have to agree that massive delayed impact costs(like climate breakdown) ruin markets abilities to self-regulation unless they are accurately priced in.(Big daddy Milton Friedmann himself said that)
But instead of acting accordingly, the market believers doubled down and put their blind faith into a miracle solution cooked up by the market. But thats not going to happen.
Instead what happened: neoliberal economic dogma dominated the West and reduced government competencies in favor of leaving more for "the market" to decide, so we are now looking at roughly 50 years of inaction on climate change.
Because the solution to climate change "the market" came up with was lying about it and focussing on maximizing short term, private profit instead.


Over the decades different lies were pushed.
Initially it was silence and denial: Science denial, lies about the scientific consensus, FUD campaings (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, I think this is the consultants work, they already did that for big tobacco as well when they tried to keep the public from knowing that smoking is unhealthy.
Basically the fossil fuel industry wanted people to ignore the problem, so they discredited anyone who mentioned the problem.

Fossil Propagandist became a literal job: A few very prominent fossil propagandists you might have seen: Steve Milloy, Bjorn Lomborg, Axel Bojanowski (WeLT/BILD).

So today fossil propaganda is mostly about distraction.
Common distractions are: Nuclear Power(too expensive), Carbon Pricing(too late), E-Fuels(too inefficient), Tech-Optimism (miracle solutions are not gonna happen)
Older ones might remember the "3-liter car" that was pushed like 20-30 years ago, not a serious idea, just a distraction to keep politicians from regulating your harmful business model away. Just lie about its harmfulness.
In 2009 fossil propagandists came up with the "ClimateGate" lie to discredit the COP in 2009. To this day its a good test to look up how journalists covered that event back then. If a journalist acted like this is a scandal, you can be sure this journalist is spewing fossil propaganda or is seriously stupid.

Another very german form of distraction is "Schuldenbremse". There is no better way to ensure long term fossil demand than to prevent any large scale investment into alternatives.

If you ask me this entire thing is the biggest crime in human history. A few people literally destroy our stable global eco-system, they irreversibly lower the productive potential of our entire planet. All for some short term privat profit.
The criminal energy is unlike anything we have ever seen, but there is also an incredible ideological alibi, because everyone who is a part of this crime can just justify it by saying "my job was just to make numbers go up, you can't expect me to think about what these numbers mean."


Overall I think capitalism could have been saved if fossil fuels had been priced out of the market 30-40 years ago, through the natural pricing in of long term emission damages at the producer level.
But now the entire thing is deeply corrupted and can't be saved anymore. The longer neoliberal capitalism survives, the less humans will survive.


The way things are going now we are looking at 3-5°C of warming by the end of the century. Thats not something we can prepare for or deal with. Fertile and habitable zones will shift, our infrastructure will no be able to keep up and by far the largest migration movements this planet has ever seen will commence.
I would bet that we will eventually build massive border facilities(KZs) where we industrially exterminate millions upon millions of climate refugees every year. And this state of affairs will last for decades, maybe even centuries. The nationalism and illiberalism required for these atrocities is already on the rise and being instilled in people everywhere.

It will be unprecedented mass murder just for greed. Not a foundation to build a civilization on.

[aRchAnglZz]

The shortsightedness and stupidity we can exhibit as a species can be mindboggling.

[mikepotter]

"those who forget history..."
The players have forgotten how history of the French revolution.

[rimankis]

Anna, thank you for a video!!
I rethink idea going to ESG sector now)
I’m studying sustainable management and engineering and figuring out what my future job will be. Do you have any recommendations on what things in management could have a positive impact on climate change mitigation and adaptation <3

[Croz]

I kind of feel the S and G has gotten bigger in many of these frameworks and E has gotten smaller. Probably because it's easier to do performative things with S and G than with E. ESG often gets blasted for these parts as well (because they contain the more controversial stuff like EDI/DEI), rather than E which people seem to treat a little more favourably.

[arminmadari]

Thank you for turning down consultant money to make these important videos instead

[FreshTigerShark]

As always a great video👍 More on carbon credits will be interesting. I mean, carbon trading in a capitalistic system screams 'scam' from the get-go 😂