215 | Climate Change & Your Business: Can We Talk? with Paul Zelizer
On the pod this week, Awarepreneurs CEO and founder Paul Zelizer shares some thoughts on climate change and social entrepreneurship after the recent "Code Red" report. Specifically, Paul goes into the 3 key areas that social entrepreneurs can actually contribute to moving the climate needle in a positive direction and how we can maintain our sense of optimism and resiliency while we do this work.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
The Climate Change Effect & Social Entrepreneurship Episode with Paul Zelizer Transcript
Transcript from Otter.ai.
Climate Change & Your Business Solo episode
Mon, 8/23 5:02PM • 41:06
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, sustainable development goals, called, business, community, world, optimism, human, impact, podcast, conversation, life, resilient, climate change, meaning, challenging circumstances, tragic, lever, united nations, modern
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of The Awarepreneurs podcast. This podcast is all about the intersection of three, conscious business, social impact, and awareness practice. Three times a month, I do a deep dive interview with a thought leader in this intersection, once a month, and that's today's episode, we do a special solo episode on a topic that's relevant to our audience.
And this is one that you all have asked for. And we'll get to that in just a second. Before I get into the topic, you could go over to Apple podcasts or whatever app you're listening to the show on and do a rating and review. It helps tremendously. Thanks for considering it .
Today. Our topic is Climate Change and Your Business. Can We Talk? full transparency here? I've tried to start this episode or I started this episode multiple times. This isn't the easiest topic. It's the result of a conversation, several conversations that I've had with colleagues, clients. And most specifically, in the aware printers membership community. When the fairly recent United Nations IP cc report came out, called the code red report on climate change. The IPCC stands for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. When that came out in early August, if obviously, it's called Code Red for a reason. Basically, there is some very strong warnings and a call to action, basically saying that we are already experiencing right here right now, very significant ripple effects of human caused climate change. Number one, the climate change effect we are we're experiencing - the drought, the fires, the flooding, some of the diseases we're seeing - some of the world's leading scientists working with the United Nations are saying this is very definitely human costs. And number two, we're on a pathway for the climate change effect getting significantly worse if we don't change course, in the near term. Not an easy message.
So in that context, Awarepreneurs community members and listeners, you know, I'm willing to have hard conversations, be in uncertainty, sit with the real real, of what's going on for humans, and particularly for social entrepreneurs who care about our world and want to make it a better place. And in this conversation you asked, “What can we do? And how can we create some resources to deepen the dialogue and to start to move the needle as a social entrepreneur community?” People asked if Awarepreneurs could create some resources, and one of the things we have, one of our most visible resources is this podcast.
This episode, really came a request from our listeners and our members, I just want to thank you all for caring and show up here. With what what I do know what I don't know, all the messiness. And just the fact that I'm in the conversations … some folks literally said to me, “Paul, I don't even know who to talk to. My colleagues, my peers, my family, my friends, this isn't something that they're really interested in having conversations about . Understandably, it's a hard topic, and in some networks, I’m seen as somebody who's willing to have hard conversations. So that's a little bit of the history of how we got here.
There's really three main topics that I want to talk to you about today. And the first one is about our mindset, what's going to be helpful in terms of staying present and resilient in this really challenging conversation. The second thing I want to talk a little bit about, about personal choices, what we each eat, or where we live, what we buy, etc, etc. And number three, I want to talk about collective action, the biggest lever I know.
So let's talk about mindset. And how do you not like completely crumble with such a hard topic as us and you're looking around and you're paying attention to science, and I am somebody who tries to listen to smart people. You know, it's called Code Red for a reason. We're in a pretty scary spot as a human family.
And I wanted to talk a little bit about how do we stay resilient in such a challenging conversation. There was a wonderful article just a couple days ago that came out in the Atlantic. It's called the opposite of toxic positivity. And it's about some of the writings by a wonderful writer named Viktor Frankl, his most popular book that I'm aware of his Man's Search for Meaning. In his writings, Viktor Frankl talks a lot about something he calls tragic optimism. And the difference between what tragic optimism is true tragic optimism is looking for meaning and challenging experiences. And keep in mind that Viktor Frankl is a Holocaust survivor, he went through some incredibly challenging times was in a concentration camp for quite a few years, and was still able to maintain a sense of resiliency, a sense of optimism for the human species. But it wasn't the, you know, just think positive, and this is all going to change or keep your vibration high. That's not what he was talking about. Matter of fact, Viktor Frankl talked a lot. What they observed in the camps is that people who had that just stay positive. You know, over the top optimism, were some of the first people who would break, you know that optimism in the camp sounded like, Oh, it's only going to be a little while we'll get out of here soon. And then a day stretch into week stretched into a season stretched into a year. And people who are in that, you know, what the article is calling toxic positive activity, just are, can lose resilience in the face of really challenging circumstances. And all the scientists are telling we're in challenging circumstances right now. And even if we like somehow magically waved a magic wand, and stopped carbon emissions, you know, every car on the planet, every factory on the planet stopped right now, we would still see effects for least for decades, based on what we've already been doing as a human family.
So we're in challenging times that are not going to end next week with a magic wand or some tech is going to save us solution, right in without any sort of going through some challenges, right. So collectively, we're in a situation that's going to you know, for the foreseeable future, there's going to be really hard things going on. And that just rah rah rah rainbows and unicorns approach like I'm watching people around me crumble. And that's part of the back channel conversations that led to this episode. Instead, when we're in challenging situations, where Viktor Frankl what people who are doing research, and these are folks who are studying gratitude, these are folks who are into positive psychology. So it's not that those disciplines are wrong or bad. But if we're unskillful, about being aware of what's happening on the ground on this planet, right now, again, I'm seeing people crumble in the face of what the data is coming back to us about climate change, and the very real, for instance, some incredibly challenging experiences for colleagues and people I care about in California, its massive fires, and in the Pacific Northwest, massive fires this summer in the US, and talking to people and what it's like to wake up day after day, sometimes so dark, that it literally can't see the sun or you can't go outside because the hair is so unhealthy. is bad here in Albuquerque, where I live where we weren't running outside, which is one of my primary self care and community. And just, you know, nature is my church. And for quite a number of weeks, even though we're 1000s of miles from those fires, it was so bad here in Albuquerque that was either really hard to go outside, or we just couldn't go outside at all. But a few were 10 miles or 50 miles from one of these incredibly huge fires. There was just like Doomsday, right? In those situations, toxic positivity isn't going to work. Tragic optimism instead is looking for meaning not rah, rah rah rainbows. Everything's going to be okay but looking for meaning and opportunities to be a servant.
Let me give you an example. There's a very popular novel based on a true story called The librarian of Auschwitz. The story is based on a true story, a woman named DITA Kraus. She was a she was in Auschwitz concentrator Camp a horrible, horrible situation to be in as a young woman. But what meaning like for her was providing books, somehow a few books got snuck into Auschwitz, and she became the librarian of elsewhere. And she was literally risking her life, to help the next generation of Jewish kids learn to fall in love with reading and have books and storytelling, and I'm getting chills even as I tell the story, it was risking her life to do so. Very simple example. But point in one of like, even in challenging circumstances, we can choose to look for meaning we can choose to be of service, we can find ways to respond from a place of compassion, and optimism, somebody who's doing that had a sense that the Jewish tradition in human life would continue on after this horrible, horrible, horrible experience. And when I think of my response, you know, my heart breaks, and I'm concerned, and I'm having personal impact living in the desert southwest and drought fires. My choice is to bring a mindset of tragic optimist. And I personally am acting with care with choice fullness, as if the human species is going to find a way to navigate this for the benefit of our children and our grandchildren. And I don't have any illusion that this is going to be easy enough, sir. So the again, the general recommendation is, think about what tragic optimism might mean for you, how can you be in direct relationship with what's happening, not bypassing it, and it's all going to be better in a month or six months or a year, but also not collapsing into complete depression anxiety to the point that we can't be present in the world and choose to take action, not that depression and anxiety are wrong. And I think a choice will relationship with tragic optimism, from the minds that how to show up in these conversations. That's what I choose. And that's what I'm recommending, both from what actually works. Again, research of this is folks who take that approach seem to be more resilient and less, either, you know, bypassing a period called spiritual bypass, or just collapsing into like, kind of just freeze response, it's so overwhelming that I can't do any. Neither of those are correlated or connected to significant resiliency, we need you, we need your listeners. We need all of us to be as resilient. We know how, in challenging circumstances. This is the best I got. So I'll put a link to that article and Victor Frankel's book, Man's Search for Meaning. And let's move on.
Okay, if you're a listener, you might be saying now, that makes sense, Paul, thanks for help finding, you know, a research backed pathway to resilience and a challenging time. What do I do? What do we do? So let's go there. So there's two levels of this. And let's start with the personal what can we each do individually? Now, first of all, I want to say, in the modern world, I think we have a bias. I'll tell you a story, and it'll help you understand what I mean. Back in my early 20s, I did a very incredible wilderness leadership program through the Colorado outrebound school. We were in the wilderness in a small group. They're like I forget about 10 people, maybe it was eight, in my little pod, and all together, and I think there was 10. And altogether there were like four pots. There were 40 of us, but particularly in this little pot of 10. And we spent a lot we spent three months together all day every day. We did backpacking, we did rock climbing, we did back country skiing. It was just a remarkable trip. And we got really close and we lived, you know, community by necessity, like you couldn't have everybody have a big stove or some of the collective kitchen things. So we took turns carrying things some people carried a little extra food and I carried the gas for the stove, and somebody elves carried the stove itself and somebody, you get the idea. After three months of very little contact with the outside world, that ship came to an end, I remember being in the van coming back into town, in Moab, Utah, where the trip ended, or at least where we kind of came back into civilization. And I was looking around, and it was like, Oh, my gosh, the whole idea of how we live in modern humanity, like every house was on there, there's not too many apartments, or at least there weren't back then in Moab, every house was on a piece of land and the house is like, situated right in the middle of the little plot of land, it was on as far away from the neighbors as it could possibly be. And everybody has their own kitchen, everybody had their own automobile it everybody has their own everything, right. And everybody lives in their own box. And it was such a contrast, read a lot. And, and since then, I've worked on the pueblos, the native reservations here in northern New Mexico. I heard indigenous people talk about this, you know, sense of separation that's so baked into modern culture. But until I have lived something different as I cannot like, Oh, my gosh, is it was striking the physical design of how we create distance and design for individualism as opposed to community. So here we are, notice what can I do. And in a modern culture, I'm starting with the personnel because that's the cultural bias. But I'm going to say right now, I think there's only very limited again, thoughts of reading about the science, what we can do individually is important, but nowhere near as important as what we can do. And the next part, I'm going to talk about collective actions gotta name that bias, in my opinion.
So some of the big buckets been hearing about, and where there's, you know, some significant impact to be had in terms of our personal choices are things like transportation, food, our purchases, or our non purchases, some of you know, I'm a minimalist. So let's unpack that a little bit. Transportation, specifically, things like walking and biking. If we did more of that, as a human family with this many of us living on the planet, you know, that would be a really good thing. And living in the southwestern United States, you know, such a car culture, I made a choice to move downtown Albuquerque and I can walk to the grocery store and live more than average, at least in America, walking lifestyle. Being mindful to car I drive gets very good gas mileage compared to most of what's out there, and I don't drive very often. So that's a pretty significant place of personal choices have impact? How far away Do you choose, especially things that you do frequently. So like, if you work in an office that's pretty far away, or very far away from your home, then you're going to have more impact. And my office is in a spare bedroom, and it's about 25 steps away from my bedroom. So transportation, that's one significant place to look for impact and making a difference.
Number two food, what are we eating? We eat a lot as humans, I'm a trail runner. I eat a lot. I love food. Do you love food? If you love food, I'd love to hear what, what are some of your favorite foods, because I just love to write. So I eat a lot. But even as humans, we eat a lot. And what we do to get our daily nutrition is most of us see three, sometimes five, sometimes eight times a day, right? That's a very frequent activity. And there's a lot of humans on the planet. So what we put into our mouth again, this is a place where we can have a lot of impact. Over the past few years, I've definitely been eating less and less meat, don't cook it at home hardly ever occasionally have a little bit out. But eating more plant based and growing more of my own food. Little condo complex I have has a little garden and we've optimized that and those of us who are working in the garden, we're gonna have at least three acts the size of our garden over the next year or so we can grow more and more of our own food, we have fruit trees, etc, etc. Right? five blocks in my house. There's a farmers market and you know how to support that. And so you get the idea. Where are we sourcing our food? Can we grow even a little bit ourselves? Can we be more For what we aren't able to grow or, or, you know, source locally, ourselves, how is it grown? What's the impact, that's a high leverage place to pay attention to.
And then another place we can have a lot of leverage is our purchases, everything. There's a lot of talk in the social impact world about clothing. Greta Thornburg was just talking about fake, fake green fashion. You know, greenwashing in the fashion industry, and just how much the choices we make for things like clothes, and wear clothes, they're sourced, and she was getting a lot of flack because she was saying, I think she hadn't bought major clothing purchase for three years, right, or something like that. And that was based on some of her concerns about the environment. So be mindful of, you know, what kind of clothes we buy, where the materials are sourced, we've done quite a few episodes, we have more coming about sustainable fashion and the impact there. So that's something to pay attention to electronics have a huge impact, right? How often are we buying them? And where are they sourced from? And what's the ripple effects there. The other thing I'll say about purchases is, you know, I've been intentionally thinking about living a more simple life for many, many, many years, that my approach to life is oftentimes called minimalism, or voluntary simplicity, that I definitely resonate with that, that, you know, trying to make things last, really being mindful of, do I really need this is this thing that I'm thinking of buying, going to improve my quality of life, and create rich experiences, particularly with other humans, like a podcast mic, you know, I love podcasting. And the way it connects us all. So buying a podcast mic and the equipment, I need to sound decent. So we can have this experience together and create the kind of community we have, I'm aligned with that, try to be mindful where I source it. And, you know, I'm not buying a new podcast make every six months or something like that, right? Even though there's new technology coming out all the time, but but you get a sense of what I'm paying about letting your values lead and, and for me, buying new things all the time is not really where my values lie.
So it's kind of funny that the host of a podcast about social entrepreneurship and having positive impact left this one to last. But, you know, I'm human to what we do for work. In a modern economy, our time spent working, at least for adults, it's what we do with the majority of our waking hours. As you know, listeners, I love to travel, I love gardening, I love my girlfriend, I love my family, I love my community work, there's a lot of things I do. And all of them are maybe even add them all up together. And they would be less than the time I spend working. And I work last, then most adults in a modern economy, somewhere between 25 and 30 hours a week when you average it out. So this is an incredible concentration of our time and energy. And many of us, you know, like, let's think for a minute, somebody who's working out of business, or an employee, and that businesses doing something that's harming the environment. And you're doing that all day long, all day long. And then you come home, and are really, you know, diligent about recycling, or, you know, trying to pay attention where you source a clothing item from, you know, 40 or 50 or 60 hours every single week, you're doing something that's contributing to, in this example, case, something that's harming the environment. And then in your off time, when you buy something, which is much less of your life, energy and resources. You're trying to be mindful of the environment, you're trying to pay attention to climate change. You're working across purposes to your values. So one of the single biggest thing when somebody is exploring how can I contribute to positive impact and moving the needle when we're looking at climate change, got to take a look at what we're doing to earn a living that's aligned with our values. Then all day long. Every single time I am thinking about who comes on this podcast, who do I say yes to as a client, whereas they're less of a fit. These kinds of decisions are making with an awareness for where we are as a human family right here right now. including, but not limited to climate change. If somebody is in a situation where their employer is not having that beyond the radar, then yeah, what you're doing with the majority of your waking hours, is contributing to the problem rather than solution. This entire podcast, the entire where printers brand, entire aware printers community and everything we do is all set up to help people who have values and want to they're clear what they are, or clear what kind of positive impact they want to have in the world. Learn how to do that very effectively in terms of both a positive impact and making it a real livelihood. So if you're trying to figure that out, then you're in the right place. If you're in a place where you're still working across purposes to your values are one of the most significant things you can do, and start to work towards changing that. Try not to rush, try not to scramble, try not to go into panic mode, and some of those earlier decisions. While it can be helpful to pay attention to transportation, or food, or what you're doing in terms of your purchases or making last purchases, if every day that you go to work, you're working at cross purposes, to what you want to see for our children and our grandchildren, then what do we say, this is a place of very high leverage. And I encourage you to make this a priority to start thinking how you can better sync up your work and your value. So let's do this.
Let's take a quick break and hear a word from our sponsor. And then we'll come back and hear about what I think is the most impactful area.
Do you have a business that's about making the world a better place, and you're facing some significant decisions, where you need to decide about things like your business model or your branding, we're how to increase your marketing effectiveness. So you can help more people and make a better livelihood as you're helping more people. And you want to talk to somebody about some of these decisions. But you don't want to sign up for months of coaching. And you don't want to join some, you know, complicated mastermind program where you have to make calls and listen to recordings and do workshops, you just want to talk to somebody who knows this space. If so, I offer through Paul zelizer.com, a strategy session package, it's very crisp, and we can get to your situation in a customized way, in a very timely manner. Let me tell you what it looks like. If he sign up, you'll send me an email. And I'll walk you through what we're looking for when you get me up to speed, we'll do a 90 minute session where we'll go into the very specific two or three or four decisions that you're needing to make right here right now. And then we'll come up with some action steps that feel 100% aligned to. And I'm available after the session for two weeks via email to help you implement with support. It's called my strategy session package. And if you'd like more information, I've got a link in the show notes. If you have any questions reach out, and let's help you grow your impact business in a way that's going to really align with your brand.
So part three here collective activism, as I was saying, in part two, I think there's a real bias and a limitation of our worldview in modern life, that somehow, you know, recycling or eating less meat or, you know, trying to ride my bicycle a little bit more walk to the store, that's going to do it. And the research that I've seen, says Nope, it's not. And that's a hard pill to the swallow. And I do think there's another approach that goes a little counterintuitive to what modern life looks like. But it also is healing a on we can make this a more common way to think about life. We can both make a big shift in terms of how humans live more sustainably on the earth, but also just make more joy and more is a better world for humans to live in. To give you a sense of what I'm talking about. I want to read a quote some of you may have heard this, believe his name. I'm pronouncing it right. I believe the Greek philosophers name that I'm talking About is pronounced Archimedes. And if I got that wrong, somebody knows Greek better than I do, please tell me is a Greek mathematician and scientists to the background 200 before the Common Era, and he says, Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it. And I shall move the world. Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world. So this last piece is where my optimism comes from. And it turns out that really smart people have been thinking about climate change, and humans living sustainably on planet earth for a really long time. And a bunch of them got together through the United Nations and created something called the Sustainable Development Goals, the SDGs.
Millions and millions of people are now engaged in the conversation about the Sustainable Development Goals and people are working there 17 of them. We even have a new co working space that's in development here in Albuquerque by my colleague, Dana Koehler, called un 17. Big shout out to Dana, and literally a co working space that has the Sustainable Development Goals on the walls and is a center to help businesses and business leaders and social entrepreneurs come together, get more informed about the Sustainable Development Goals, learn about them, and bring them back into our businesses and into the community. One very small example, but very inspiring example to me of what people are doing around the world.
And when it comes to this conversation about the climate change effect, and I think this is just an unconscious bias on a cultural level, we default to what can I do personally as an individual, and I think it's not given where we are, remember, we just got code read from some of the smartest people on planet Earth, right? It's just a lever, that's not gonna, it's not gonna be long and the leverage is in collective action. So what do I mean by that? What does that look like for you, as an entrepreneurs business owner? What, for me, one of the things I appreciate about collective action and in just all of its forms, and there is a lot of it going on in Planet Earth, I mean, people are raising their voices, you know, with governments raising their voices in business, about employee activism and stockholder activism, right? all kinds of great things going on. We had an episode not too long ago, with Jennifer Briggs talking about employee ownership in businesses. And turns out when you give employees ownership, they make decisions, not just that are good financial ones. But when people who live in a community, you know, are steering the direction of a business and have input, that business starts giving back to the community and having a more listening and authentic and caring about the communities that the business is located in, over and over and over again. So it's not just the benefit to the employees that are engaged in involved in decision making. But suddenly, that business starts showing up as a better community members doing less harmful things, it's hard to pollute the water, when the people who live in a community and work in your company are seeing that you're polluting the waters, they stop it we live here, right? Whereas if the employees have no decision making power, a company is more likely to do something that will pollute the water, the air, etc, etc. Right.
So finding a way to join others who care about similar issues, and I'm pointing to the Sustainable Development Goals, because it is by the United Nations. It's the largest collective movement I know of, and it's so precise in these 17 levers. There are 17 areas, the Sustainable Development Goals. Each of them is an area and whether that's, you know, clean and fresh water for all, or educating girls and women, or, you know, a livelihood for each and every person with dignity and enough pay that you can afford to take care of your family. Over and over these Sustainable Development Goals came from very thorough conversation as inclusive as the UN knew how to be and what we're seeing is that when people Who are doing good work in these Sustainable Development Goals, areas, they impact more than just that area. Lots of pet a big topic, right? But if you start teaching girls and women, if you improve education for girls and women, we know all the research that happens when you put girls and women put women in leadership positions in business, not only does the business make more money, but it makes decisions that are better for the community and multiple SDG areas. So that's one example. You pull on the lever of better education for girls and women, you help them get into leadership positions.
And there are all kinds of good things happening, right? So each of these sustainable development goals are connected up to the other. So when I look at where I am, as an entrepreneur and what I'm doing, I'm, I feel that tragic optimism that some of my colleagues don't, because so many of the people who are struggling right now again, not that I don't have my moments, or that somebody who's plugged into collective action doesn't ever have a moment like Oh, god, this is really hard to see. It's super smoky. Today, it looks like night, you know, noon, and I'm freaking out. That's it. We don't ever have those moments, Viktor Frankl, I can't imagine the guy not freaking out at least some time at the concentration camp. Right? So this isn't to say, it's gonna be all rainbows and unicorns, if you, you know, sync up with others. But that tragic optimism that making meaning and a really point in time, that's the biggest recommendation I have why I'm not. I feel resilient, where I'm in motion in activism mode in talking to others. And whether that's a, you know, local, here in New Mexico earlier this year, we did a fabulous historic gathering here with over 200 people where we looked at this was borrowed right from the United Nations. How do we get people who have people in organizations who have money to invest impact investors, together with people who are actually doing social entrepreneur work in the Sustainable Development Goals, areas. So bringing together impact investors, people who want the community to be a better place and have money to invest and are looking for a return on that investment, but also want to see the world that we live in here in New Mexico be a better place, and people are doing the work in these areas, and getting that conversation going. That's a conversation that's happening in the United Nations. And we heard about it, and a bunch of us worked hard to create, and it was a fabulous event, we're still getting great feedback. And there's, you know, different ripple effects of that. So that's a local example here in my community. And a national and international level, part of why I love podcasting is we can amplify the message of people who are doing work in these areas can whether that's sustainable fashion, helping women entrepreneurs, you know, get what they need, in terms of capital like Yasmine cruise 14, and the work at visible hands helping founders of color and women founders of color, get capital, so they could start businesses, when somebody has a business like this, because of you listeners, because of you, we have a platform and a community that we can help learn about what they're doing, share what they're doing, amplify what they're doing, and help the next generation of social entrepreneurs, who also want to make the world a better place, be more effective, for free, because of you.
That's a couple of examples. There's many, many more in my life, but I’m not here to talk to you about my life. I'm here to invite you into the tragic optimism and the community and collective impact that happens when we stop looking only the way the dominant culture wants us to like, you know, just recycle the world to be fine. Just you know, plant a little garden, plant a couple of herb plants and you know, everything's gonna be fine. That's a recipe for low resilience and low meaning. But when we find folks who are doing incredible work and find our relationship with some of that, very powerful, it's happening all over the world collective action.
That's where I see The most resilient people, the most optimistic people in this very grounded, not unicorns and rainbows way, but I'm working hard and I'm plugged in with other people who are working hard. So that's what I got. Boy, there's so much more that could be said. But for now that feels like enough. I do want to say, so much compassion for all of us as a human family and this incredibly poignant time, all that's going on in the world and knowing there's more to come as we navigate the challenges that are here and are going to continue. And I do want to thank you for all of the positive impact that you're working for in our world.