Align Your Brand With The Big Climate Policy Moments

Those of you who follow my work have likely noticed me sharing news, links and information about California SB253 (as well as huge kudos to the coalition leaders behind it). Now that the California Corporate Climate Data Accountability Act (let’s call it CCCDAA from now on) IS, let’s get real about why this is a massive climate influence moment - and, talk about what brands and their leaders should start to do, ASAP, to be seen aligning with it.

But, to back up, my advising work has always included my monitoring of news / social channels and my strategic communications insight on how to leverage key moments, events, conferences, and dates. The way a brand communicates or “storytells” around news, announcements and national or global climate milestones is rife with momentum-building, social norm shifting OPPORTUNITY.

Thanks to watching and advising an SB253 coalition member this past couple of months, I have extra insight around why aligned brands should embrace being seen for it - and long before all the regulatory details are ironed out or they have some detailed plan. This amazingly historic legislation is a storytelling gift, put simply. Merely starting to talk about why your leadership found it important and got in early is a way to own and jumpstart your corporate climate influence.  

So, what incredible leadership-amplifying opportunity does tying your brand to the CCCDAA deliver? You now have the moment around which to tell a very true story about:

• How your smart business fits in a connection of corporate dots that will be remembered as pioneers in a U.S. emissions-reduction transition.
• How your particular sector is key, and how yours is the smartest and earliest company to jump on.
• How your leadership, and the way you communicate it, plays a huge part in nudging your peers and competitors. (Talk about climate influence.)
• How you realized that California would be just the first state where this happened, so you buckled down, got to work and enjoyed telling your story about your process. (This sounds like a good COP28 story, too, folks.)
• How climate policy actually CAN become law and how your support of it now can only help other states develop similar policy for a nationwide shift.
• How awareness and action on this will make a lot more people see how they need to support climate-acting policymakers, and how voting really, really matters so we get more of those folks in office.
• How supporting and aligning with climate policy that puts “accountability” into law IS new “climate pledge.” Get behind real action, self-select to be transparent and accountable, open up your reporting to scrutiny as a way to forward your boldness. (Years of the existence of the various corporate pledges have not seemed to get this job done). 
• How, especially if your business is a sustainability consulting firm or climate tech solution, you have a gigantic opportunity to build markets in helping aligned corporations get on it quickly (which’ll become great stories for the media to cover). 

My list could go on.

As I get ready to head down to GreenBiz VERGE23 this week in San Jose, I wanted to take this chance to (always ever-so gently) yell about why it is so worth it for companies to be jumping in early with CCCDAA alignment. This is where the real leaders will be seen, and it’ll be super obvious that you are not there .   

So, I call on you: Talk with your team today, catalyze your opportunity in this moment and jump on the first step of being merely VISIBLE for being bold enough to support transparency and accountability. I’m ready to help , right now.

News To Use

Since I stress this a lot, I wanted to be clear about what “get louder” means in the climate influence context. It means to get comfortable being seen making the climate-aware decisions. Get comfortable publicly affirming that yes, you are truly in on climate action and not shy to talk about it.

This really is just a form of “walk the talk.” But, we continue to miss massive opportunity for a lot more leaders to be doing this - and it is stressing me out. I’m over here continually monitoring and aiming to amplify as many leadership voices as I can see who ARE walking the talk (proof point: my Living Change climate leadership podcast interviews) . Media want to see and celebrate you, folks. Are you seriously resisting positive storytelling that would reflect powerfully on your brand?

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It is becoming more clear - and hopefully to a lot more people in the U.S. especially - that supporting democracy means focusing on climate and social justice. That’s why those of us who know climate-change-is-real have so much to learn from what the fossil fuel giants have been doing. And, it’s why we all should be getting a lot louder about our advocacy as citizens and leaders - and our determination to see progress on energy policy. Read this New York Times piece by Jeff D. Colgan .

The democratic argument against the proposed deal is simple. In politics, concentrated interests, like rich corporations, have powerful advantages over diffuse interests, like voters, that can distort outcomes and thwart progress. Take climate legislation. A majority of Americans want to see the environment protected, but big companies that pollute heavily have an interest in watering down legislation that might reduce their profits. As a result, progress on energy policy has been agonizingly slow.

Exxon has also taken steps to shape the way voters think about the environment by sowing public misinformation and funding conservative groups disguised as grass-roots organizations.

My takeaway: As citizens we have big power that we often neglect. We have the ability to add to the numbers of people calling, emailing, texting our representatives and using our own social platforms more intentionally. I’d argue that naming and shaming the fossil fuel companies from our smaller perches is less important (we’ve got some amazing climate media doing a fabulous job with that) than it is to be naming and faming the communities, companies, regions, and leaders with energy decision-making power who ARE rapidly moving to clean energy.

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On food systems transition, big agriculture, and censorship. A piece on how FAO leadership “censored and undermined [ex-officials] when they highlighted how livestock methane is a major greenhouse gas” by Arthur Neslen in The Guardian should be a food for climate scream-to-action.

Another FAO official, “Michel Criollo” (not his real name), remembered: “No one wanted to go to the next step of saying agriculture is a problem for the planet and we need to mitigate it – including by potentially reducing production levels or changing things in less profitable ways.”

My context/takeaway: I got into food systems and climate work by doing some leadership consulting with an NGO a few years ago. In that time, even for those like me who were passingly familiar with the ins and outs of global food systems gatherings and COPs, it seemed more and more ridiculous how the reports or results that came of those meetings always skirted the methane and land use issues of raising livestock. I’m thrilled to see much more investigative journalism on this topic. (Sentient Media is a great resource for any who want to follow this closely.) In the energy space, we fight “big oil”, in the transportation space, we fight “big auto,” and so, why have we waited this long to realize that “big ag” has always been doing the same in food? Follow it, see it, call it out and support all journalism that keeps bringing it to light.

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A note for subscribers and potential subscribers: I’m transitioning this to a paid subscription model in early 2024 - where I’ll post 3 times a month and 1 of those will be for paid readers only. I aim to make the paid community into a thriving cohort of leaders sharing their climate influence and leadership insights and questions. I’ll also use that as an advisory board of leaders who are doing the things I want to highlight in future podcast series or newsletter issues. Ideally, this will help me build the bench of amazing, bold leadership that, through my storytelling and amplification, will significantly help shift the social norm of climate and sustainability leadership. Subscribe now - you can always pay before I transition to that model - and I look forward to productive and fun engagement of such a leadership cohort!

Thanks *so much* for reading/sharing/subscribing. Please comment or message me with questions on building climate influence. I may cover your suggested topics in a future issue. In the meantime, feel free to follow me on LinkedIn or BlueSky in the meantime (I also linger on “X”.)