Leadership and Climate Change
(Published in Business India, 19 Feb 2012 Issue)
Climate change has become a significant agenda for both the government and the corporate sector in the present decade. Climate affects all of us ? and the recent forecasts on the worsening global weather conditions (climate change) and their potential to unleash unprecedented catastrophes is a significant cause for concern. Drastic climate changes can be disastrous for the delicate balance of our planet and impact everything around us ? our livelihoods, our businesses and more importantly, our chances to continue existing in this world.
Natural forces aside, industrialization has been the key agent for climate change. The rapid expansion in industrial activity in the past 200 years has dealt a significant dent to the natural order of the elements that help maintain the Earth’s delicate balance. With industrialization, our planet has progressively become warmer and wetter, causing a range of unprecedented climatic conditions.
Today, the extent of the damage has become significant enough to elicit an urgent response from leaders across governments and industry. Business leaders today need to be cognizant of the moral, economic and social implications of not just the way they manage their business but also the way it impacts our world. They need to realize that state of our climate is essentially a function of the quality of relationship that we have had with our environment, energy resources and other natural sources.
While governments, interest groups and industry lobbies are aware of the looming crisis, they largely continue to battle over who needs to take the responsibility and ultimately drive the tough measures needed to combat climate change. However, a few organizations and leaders have emerged to the forefront, leading the way with initiatives that help protect our environment and restore our depleted natural resources.
I am part of ASQ’s Influential Voices and this post is in response to ASQ’s Blog: A View from the Q.
While you are correct that there is more greney in solar and wind. The problem is concentrating it enough for it to be useful and storing it in sufficient amounts to overcome the variability inherent in these modes. It is not a question of more research, it is a matter of physics.If you consider the path of development in almost all technologies the law of diminishing returns applies. That is to say the big advances are made at the beginning and subsequent ones return less and less improvement. In the case of wind and solar (and more importantly storage) this is what has happened. The gap between what we can do now, and what we would need to power an advanced civilization is simply too great to overcome and given that we know just about all there is to know about the theories that underpin these things, it is clear that it is unlikely that there will be a discovery that will allow that gap to be bridged.Now that’s not to say it’s impossible, just very unlikely and we need a source of clean power now. Waiting and hoping for a breakthrough that may not come in the situation that we are in now is just not possible. However no one is giving up on research and nuclear or not there will be people looking into these technologies, especially storage one way or the other, and if some discovery is made, and it leads to a cost effective technology, it will replace nuclear. But keep in mind that we are talking about a major discovery at the fundamental level, and these very rarely come from lavishing money on research.Your remark about weapons has been true: certainly wind, in the form of sailing ships, benefited from development for military reasons, but note to that the most efficient wind driven ships were those developed to carry tea – a commercial application. Reply
Hey There Suresh,
In addition to your post I was wondering, It is to identify the effects of coercive and pacesetting leadership style to the staff. What are the usual response from the staff, are they motivated? or refused to act as directed? If so, what are the impact to the business. Will the sales be better or worst? What will be the impact to the organization as a whole? More turnover or….????
Cheers